Get yourself in order - Legals, Finance and Business Sense

How do revelations about a new product or service turn into a functioning business? Many people have no clue how to bridge the gap between new ideas to a fully-fledged business. The devil can be in the detail so making sure you have completed all your legal requirements, have a sound financial structure and a plan to promote and sell your business is a great start.

The second checklist in a series, we have provided a comprehensive list below of vital actions you will need to do or consider before you switch on your new website and wait for the customers to come rolling through: "How to get your business ducks in a row".

Identity and Branding

VITAL

• Register your business name
• Register a website domain and email address
• Create a logo, 99 designs or Logo Garden. If you aren’t creative, hire a freelancer for your creative work using Fiverr, Odesk or Elance to find the creative people to help you out
• Create and print business cards using Zazzle and Vista print. Or for something special use Moo

VERY HELPFUL

• Develop a creative style guide and web style guide for your business collateral, signage and advertising materials to help keep it consistent and on brand. This guide may help you to decide how to get started
• Create a Zen desk account to log and track online queries and improve your customer service
• Create banners, flags, reception signage, embroidered uniforms and pamphlets

Operations

VITAL

• Decide whether you will have a home based office or you would need commercial space
• Decide how you will track your sales and customers, pick a CRM for your business, Zoho is best for businesses with ten staff or Salesforce for larger businesses
• Pick an email system such as Outlook, Yahoo Mail or Google Mail
• Set up a phone system, Asterisk is a widely used open source PABX
• Decide how you will communicate with your staff and share files/documents or sales material

VERY HELPFUL

• Set up an intranet like SharePoint to share files, store important documents and inform staff of operational updates and changes, use a company like nSynergy to make it for you
• Don’t know how? Learn on Lynda.com

Financial Planning

VITAL

• Set up a business banking account
• Find an accountant
• Identify what taxes you must pay and budget for them
• Create and maintain the top 3 financial statements: income statement, Balance sheet and Cash Flows on at lease a quarterly basis
• Use an online system to help manage your finance and business cash flow XERO, MYOB
• Set a budget, sales targets and sales forecast using You Need A Budget (YNAB)
• Consider and budget for your business expenses including cashflow, operation costs, overheads, employee wages, rent and taxes

VERY HELPFUL

• Research whether a business credit card is right for you
• Register your business with Dun and Bradstreet

Legals and Insurances

VITAL

• Once your business name has been registered:
  • Create an ABN
  • Register for a Tax File Number
  • Register your company
  • Register for either Pay As You Go withholding or Pay As You Go instalments
  • Register for GST
• Identify what insurance you may need. We recommend researching the Business.gov.au Registration and Licences page and your local council that you can conduct the business you are starting in your area

VERY HELPFUL

• You may want to register a trademark
• Use an insurance broker to help you with your business insurances
• Register with your industry governing bodies. For example AHRI for Human Resources, or AMIF for the Motor industry

Workplace Health and Safety / OH&S

VITAL

• Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S), also known as WHS or Workplace, Health, Safety and Quality (WHSQ), states that you may require permits to conduct your business, you may also have to adhere to some stringent WHSQ practices over and above just safe business practice
• Provide first aid in your workplace
• Ensure your employers are protected by Workcover. Workcover provides protection to workers and employers in the event of workplace injury. Workcover aims to assist injured workers and return them safely to the workplace and is provided in each state by different providers:
  • SA – WorkCover SA
  • VIC – WorkSafe Victoria
  • NSW – WorkCover NSW
  • QLD – WorkCover Queensland
  • TAS – WorkCover TAS
  • NT – NT WorkSafe
  • ACT – WorkSafe ACT

VERY HELPFUL

• WHS may vary slightly from state to state, check WHS in your state

Sales approach

VITAL

• Decide on your pricing model for your product or service
• Learn how to sell
• How will you invoice for your service? Make it easy for customers to pay using credit or debit card, online payments, cash cheque, cash, money orders, layby, payment plan, bPAY, Paypal
• Set up tools for estimating your jobs, e.g. Commonwealth Bank's Emmy compact payment terminal
• Hire sales staff and provide training
• Make a customer service plan to create standard business procedures for complaints or refunds
• Review your products and see what sells best and which have the best margins
• Create an approach to identify new customers e.g. soft selling, hard selling, consultative selling, solution selling, customer personality types or social selling, and then come up with a customer service plan. You may choose to use introductory offers, discounts, referral discounts to attract your customers with the sole aim for have customers buy or re-buy your product or service.

VERY HELPFUL

• Have an online business? Create a Shopify website which includes built-in ecommerce tools. Attach a Zen Desk account to your Shopify site to track any customer complaints or returns
• Starting an ecommerce business? This article it contains everything you need to know to pack, ship and fulfill your order
• Like your apps? Here are the Top 20 apps for small business

Marketing and PR

VITAL

• Create a website to go with your domain name. You may choose a free website building company like Wix, Webbly, Strinkgly or Moonfruit. You may like to try creating your own on WordPress or Joomla. To make life easier you could also use a template for your website to add to your Joomla or WordPress sites. All the "creative" heavy lifting is done for you and you are left to include content/wording and images to your site. Check out Theme forest or YooTheme for some themes and colour schemes you may love.
• Decide on which advertising channels will work best for your business
• Create social media presence and manage it with a social media desk like Hoot Suite
• Identify clients and start to create a database of customers – use mailBANK to communicate offers, events, openings or new products to your customers via email marketing with a free 30 day trial
• Create advertising materials such as banners, flyers, email templates and pamphlets
• Create and post online advertising materials using free services like Canva

VERY HELPFUL

• Decide whether you will be surveying your customers (recommended) and register for Survey Monkey to gain customer insight and levels of customer satisfaction
• Create online invites to events, launches or openings using paid services like Paperless Post or emailing your customers direct using mailBANK
• Register for Google AdWords or hire the professionals to set up and manage this for you