So here we are working through the craziness and madness that is the end of financial year. I’ve seen a few things in my 6 ½ years of working in this business and I still to this day see things that flabbergast me, things that make me wonder.
Recently I had a client who in setting up a business was able to obtain finance through the National Enterprise Incentive Scheme through Centrelink. In setting up the business they got funding for a business that in my opinion is doomed to fail. Why someone would get funding for a business that is doomed to fail, government funding no less, is beyond me. That combined with the fact that obviously there was no proper due diligence done as to whether the business proposition would work makes me seriously wonder and somewhat angry that our taxpayer money is being spent on something that is not likely to achieve a productive outcome.
I’ve also seen situations recently of people who haven’t taken good advice or who have done things the same way for years and years and don’t know any better. This comes to be a problem when someone new comes in and decides that there are more efficient ways to do things. When this happens old ways should get thrown out, however they don’t. What this results in is inefficiencies and in the business environment we are in now, inefficiency equals death.
There is also another instance I’ve seen recently of a client who working with a previous bookkeeper had no real understanding of what the bookkeeper actually did. The bookkeeper did some things that in my professional opinion were not entirely correct and not entirely best practice, but because the bookkeeper was getting away with it and because the client was in no way knowing exactly what was being done it made it very difficult to change things. As a result of that, the poor client got left in a mess which Business Books South West is now working its way through.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter who the client is or what the business is. Efficiencies, best practice and good advice are always going to be of benefit. It’s only through these that a business can grow. It’s only through these that a business will thrive.