Annual accounts preparation

An article in stuff today headlines the benefits to SMEs of reporting changes. These changes simplify the reporting requirements for all businesses whose turnover is less $30 million(!).

But the article is merely a reminder for the changes as they came into effect last year. All of the accounts we prepared for you and our clients for the year ended 31 March 2015 used this new format. We will of course continue this format for the year ended 31 March 2016, which finished last week. These changes removed some of the technical reporting and footnote requirements, facilitating a focus on the key financial information. Though a statement of cash flows is not required one could argue it is an important financial report that should be part of SME financial statements.

The key point to take from the article is that maintaining a good set of financial records is a necessity to manage effectively your business throughout the year and not just to focus on the technically based end of year reporting. Our approach (which is also continuously evolving and which we strive to improve on) is to liaise with you on a regular basis on your financial results and the unusual items and anomalies in your business. Looking at these timely is far better than reviewing accounts, however constructed, at the end of a year’s trading. That’s just too long.

Feel free to contact us to arrange for a discussion and how we can, together, enhance your financial performance management. Though banks, Inland Revenue and others still require financial reporting, the changes, which we have adopted a year ago, enable a stronger focus on day to day results and changes to improve how the business can be run more effectively. Using Xero for instance, or similar, is now just about a mandatory requirement.

The full article may be found here: Impact of changes to financial reporting requirements on SMEs.