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What the Super Bowl has to do with accounting 🏈

February 25, 2022

Things that should be on your radar this month

1. ICYMI, the High Court recently made two important rulings about workplace contracts for employees and independent contractors.

2. A third round of SA Covid Grants has been announced. Details on the support available for businesses impacted by the health restrictions can be found here.

3. The Federal Government announced a doubling of funding for free mental health support to small business owners, along with an additional $2.1m to extend the Small Business Debt Helpline.

4. Businesses in the RAT race, beware of fringe benefits tax.

5. There are heaps of business loans out there, so how do you choose the right one?

Tech to help streamline your business

Espresso Displays - We're seriously impressed with the specs on these. They’re the world’s thinnest portable display, and are light but also durable so you can set up a productive workspace anywhere you go – we love ours, it makes work travel a breeze (see it in action here)!

Invoice Scheduler - If your sales team uses Hubspot, this is a powerful app that allows them to send invoices to Xero and create Xero contacts pre-populated with client data without leaving HubSpot.

Workona - For people who always have a lot of tabs open in their browser (guilty!), this browser extension allows you to organise all the links you need to come back to, project by project, in different browser workspaces.

The highs + and lows – of small business life

+ We’re making our first new hire! We’re blown away by how quickly we’re growing and we’re very excited to bring on a new member to our team soon (if you know a junior accountant who might be interested, send us an email for more info).

+ As big NFL fans (and big advocates of flexible working) we took the time to watch and celebrate the Super Bowl last Monday! 🏈 What a finish! đŸ€Ż

– We’ve had to have some tough conversations recently. Sometimes you have to know when to cut your losses. Not everything in business goes your way, but we’re big believers in the idea that when one door closes, another one opens (and that’s certainly been true for us lately).

Things to think about and try this month

Quick read: Check out our top tech picks for 2022. There’s so much tech out there you can harness to save yourself time, and this is our list of the apps we think everyone needs to know about this year.

Longer read: An unexpected bonus of starting our own business has been meeting the people behind businesses doing some really cool things. We recently had the pleasure of talking to Paytron co-founders Francois Henrion and Jaco Veldsman to learn more about their experience as fintech entrepreneurs. If you're on your own startup journey, this is a must-read!

Productivity booster: Do you already use Xero for invoicing and accounts but want to get a better grasp of where time's going (and how that's impacting your bottom line)? Try Xero Projects – you can record expenses, track time and check your profit margin on any project/job.

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We can’t believe we’re nearing the end of February already (it’ll be EOFY before we know it, and we’re already getting ready for the influx of new clients that time of year always brings). We hope your 2022 has started well and you’re starting to put some goals and strategies for the year ahead into action, particularly when it comes to growing your business.

That's just our two pennies' worth.

- Liam and Amy, co-founders of Project Alfred
(changing the way people think about accounting)

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