ATO warning regarding small business record-keeping

According to the ATO, of all of the things that can cause small businesses to fold, “high on that list is poor record keeping”.

More than half of the businesses they visited in their Protecting honest business campaign needed to improve their record keeping.

Issues they found include businesses:

• estimating their sales and income;
• using the ‘no sale’ and ‘void’ button on cash registers when taking cash payments;
• not keeping cash register tapes and not reconciling at the end of the day; and
• paying their employees cash-in-hand.

They are writing to these businesses to recommend they attend one of the ATO’s record keeping workshops, which cover why good record keeping is important and how it will save them time.