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Keeping good records is critical for small business for survival. Glen Turner, of Glen Turner Furniture, discusses how doing a small business mentoring course helped him understand the importance of keeping records for tax purposes.
Taken from website http://www.business.vic.gov.au/BUSVIC/STANDARD//PC_62648.html

*Interviewees: Glen Turner (G), Male (M)
*Interviewer: Amanda Gome (A)
*Date: 24/03/08

A: Today on Going to the Next level, we’re going to meet Glen Turner. At the age of 26, this cabinet-maker decided to start his own business.

But he learned a lot of lessons along the way about book-keeping and we’re going to talk to him about what he learnt and how he’s forging ahead with the new skills that he’s got. So Glen, you were 26 when you started your own business. Had you done any book-keeping skills before?

G: No book-keeping, no real business skills, just … really just wanted to start making furniture and started the business without really knowing anything about what to do, how to run a business. Like no experience at all.

A: You started the business with about 15,000 … took that to set it up. How … what did you do then? How did you set-up your invoicing and your … your books?

G: My wife helped me with doing the invoices and quotes and things initially and we had an accountant but again we weren’t registered for GST. We didn’t have to do the books quarterly or anything like that and so we were doing it annually in the beginning. And that was obviously not ideal (laughs).

A: So you didn’t look forward to that time of year?

G: No, and especially my wife, as she was typing in at the computer as I was reading all the invoices and … and stuff out. And no, it used to take days and days.

A: Right. And then what was the next step? How did you know that you needed help?

G: Well, after a couple of years of working hard and being busy all time and not really making any money, we decided to do something about it and did a small business mentoring course.

A: Did you have any disagreements with the mentor about different directions?

G: No, absolutely not. The whole idea of the mentoring set-up is that you choose someone that has a similar business background to you from the … from their website. And you sit down and work out where you want the business to go together from the very beginning, so you’re always working together on a common goal.

A: Would it have been good to have started with the mentor at the beginning?

G: I think it’s an excellent idea if you’re looking to start a business and you’re not quite sure like I was I the beginning but I went ahead and did it anyway, that you get some terrific advice to start with. And using the Small Business Mentoring Service is an excellent place to start.

A: What are the key things you can take from doing your books on a very regular basis and in a professional manner that then help you grow your business?

G: Once we started doing the books monthly, it became quite apparent that during the month, you can really keep track of the difference of how much income’s coming in and how much you’re spending. And towards the end of the month, you just really focus getting more income in and reducing your expenses so you can start turning a profit each month. Obviously that turns into a profit each quarter and so forth.

A: So you have been setting targets?

G: We set targets, we set goals. Obviously one quarter against the next we try to improve the second quarter against the first quarter and just keep going.

A: What advice have you got for other small businesses about their finances when their starting their own business.

G: From the beginning, get some good advice. Do your books monthly. It’s absolutely vital to keep on top of your books and record-keeping. Do good quality professional quotes, good quality invoices, yeah just keep on top of your book work. Do it all the time.

A: How do you think it’s going to help you in the future?

A: Clearly we have an understanding of where the business is travelling now where we didn’t before. We’re looking at buying some new machines and we can clearly see well, we need to wait a couple more quarters before we can afford to either borrow some money or … or do a leasing arrangement. Whereas before we wouldn’t have had any idea if we were able to afford it or not.

End of recording