What Your Balance Sheet Says About Your Business

A balance sheet is a vital financial report for a business, providing a snapshot of the company’s financial health by detailing its assets, liabilities and owners’ equity. These are also used to calculate important financial ratios.

Building a Business: Should You Bring in Funders or Go it Alone?

Building a small business on your own can be hard. It’s difficult to know just where each hour of work and precious cent should go to maximise growth. Product testing, marketing, website costs and infrastructure – these are not cheap and may be hard to put together all at once when starting out. This is why many turn to external investors for help.

Why Email is Destroying Your Business (And How to Stop it)

In June 2019, Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield declared that business email would be dead and buried within seven years. Now, six years later, email remains as strong as ever – despite the weaknesses Butterfield saw still being there.

Starting a New Business? Here Are the Tax Implications...

Starting a new business isn’t just a challenging undertaking. It also comes with a list of tax liabilities and administrative obligations. Not to mention an impact on the business owner’s personal tax affairs.

3 Things You Have to Do to Position Your Business for Growth in 2025

In a world where market conditions and consumer preferences are constantly shifting, many business advisors tell leaders to be agile and adaptable if they want their businesses to succeed. While this can be effective, it’s even better for your business to already be positioned to take advantage of any changes that may occur.

Unlock the Benefits of an End-of-Year Company Review

An effective year-end business review can be a powerful tool for any firm. It identifies effective business processes and highlights areas for improvement, making it easier to formulate a solid plan for the upcoming year.

Why Aren’t You Hitting Your Revenue Targets? 4 Hard Truths

Revenue targets are an essential business tool. They allow leaders, teams, and investors to track the performance and growth of a business across any given period of time. And they open up the possibility of forecasting, planning operations, and rewarding employees.

Africa: A Continent of Growth and Opportunity

Africa, a vast continent covering 30.2 million square kilometres, is home to approximately 1.5 billion people, representing about 18.6% of the world's population. ​ With its diverse climates ranging from hot deserts to tropical rainforests and frozen glaciers, Africa is a land of immense natural beauty and resources. ​ The continent is rich in oil, gold, platinum, and diamonds, many of which remain untapped due to infrastructure and financing challenges. ​

Not Another Lanyard! How To Make the Most of Promotional Gifts

Anyone who’s attended a conference or expo has been given a promotional gift. Usually, it’s a water bottle, a pen or, worse still, a branded lanyard. It’s got so bad that very few of us understand why they even exist, including the marketing teams themselves.

6 Ways to Make the Most of Your Employees’ Performance Reviews

With the end of the year around the corner, many businesses will be thinking of conducting their annual performance reviews. These discussions are essential for streamlining business operations and strengthening the bonds between team leaders and employees. But all too often they’re viewed as nothing more than a necessary evil by all involved.

Five Signs It’s Time for a Rebrand

Marketing is a tricky game with ever-changing rules. When your marketing doesn’t seem to be working and you aren’t getting the results you want, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.

Business Owners: Have You Tried These Money-Saving Hacks?

Times are tough, so it’s only natural to look for ways to scale back and save money.

SMEs Embrace AI to Boost Efficiency and Competitiveness

Berlin, October 2023 — Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their operations, improve customer experiences, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. ​ A recent study published in the Journal of Business Management highlights the key AI applications being adopted by SMEs and the challenges they face in implementation. ​The findings reveal that while only 28% of SMEs have integrated AI solutions, those that have are seeing significant benefits. ​

5 Top Tips for Managing Debt in Your Startup

Whether you’re launching a fintech app or a fish ’n chips shop, taking on and managing debt is an essential component in the success of most startups. As your business grows, it may be necessary to take out a loan for advertising, infrastructure improvement or expanding your workforce.

Is Venture Capital Right for Your Business?

Few methods of finance in business cause as much confusion as “venture capital”. To most, it’s just money tech businesses get in return for a game changing idea. But the truth is it may be just the tool to help your business, regardless of what you do, how long you’ve been around or how many people you employ.

5 Top Employee Retention Strategies

Remote work, freelancing, and the gig economy have changed the face of business completely. The ease with which employees can sell their time, change jobs, or work for global brands means the competition for top talent has never been more aggressive.

7 Effective Business Lessons Inspired by Madiba

Quick Tips for Preventing Time Fraud

Fraud: it’s a word that strikes fear into every business owner’s heart and something any good leader takes steps to avoid. By hiring an accountant, you have already gone a long way toward ensuring no one will be able to slip finances out of your company illegally, but did you know there is another, more insidious kind of fraud that’s just as dangerous? Time fraud.

The Benefits of Business Process Automation

Over the past years business process automation, or BPA, has become more accessible to each and every business, regardless of their size or capacity. Thanks so numerous plug-and-play software and applications that are readily available online, you do not even need a whole tech team to implement and maintain automation within your business,

How and When to Save a Struggling Start-Up

When people speak about start-ups, they often only mention the successful ones. Stats, however, show that five years after founding only half of all businesses are still alive and after ten years only one third remain. The list of reasons for this is endless, ranging from a lack of capital to volatile markets and poor hiring choices.

The Importance of Strategic Planning for Business Success

Strategic planning is not just a buzzword; it’s a critical process that can significantly impact the success and longevity of your business. Whether you’re a startup or an established company, having a well-defined strategic plan is essential. Let’s delve into why strategic planning matters and how it can benefit your organization.

Employer Annual Declarations (EMP501): 1 April to 31 May 2024

As an employer, it’s essential to stay informed about your tax obligations. The Employer Annual Declaration period is a crucial time when you need to submit accurate information to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Let’s dive into the details:

Freelancer vs Employee: How to Decide

With so much of the population now working remotely as contractors or freelancers, the traditional employer/employee model is being scrutinised more closely than ever before. While considered a classic form of doing things, there is little doubt that the full-time employee still has much to offer a company, in the right circumstances.