Last week marked the biggest change to depreciation legislation in 15 years.

As part of the government’s efforts to claw back negative gearing parliament passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Tax Integrity bill) into legislation.

This legislation means that you can no longer claim income tax depreciation for plant and equipment assets in second-hand properties unless you have personally made the outlay.

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What does this mean for property investors?

This legislation is grandfathered which means if you exchanged contracts prior to 7.30pm on the 9th of May and have previously been claiming tax deductions on the assets you will not be affected.

However for those second-hand properties purchased after 7:30pm on the 9th May you will no longer be eligible to claim these deductions.

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What are plant and equipment assets?

Plant and equipment assets are items considered to be easily removable from the property such as air-conditioning, solar panels, blinds and curtains, and carpet.

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What can be depreciated?

The good news is there are still a number of opportunities to claim income tax depreciation for investment properties.

New houses are still eligible for deductions on plant and equipment as are properties considered to be substantially renovated by the previous owner.

Plant and equipment assets that have been installed and paid for by you personally will also continue to be income tax depreciable.

Other examples where you will still be able to claim deductions for plant and equipment include:

• Deduction that arise in the course of carrying out a business
• Deductions for a property held by public unit trusts and managed investment trusts
• Where the property is held by a corporate tax entity.

Investment property owners will also continue to be able to claim for qualifying capital works depreciations. These are considered to be the building’s structure and permanently fixed assets.

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Still unsure what these changes will look like for you?

If you would like further information on how these changes might impact you contact your MGI advisor. BMT has a helpful tax depreciation calculator if you are considering purchasing a residential investment property in the future and would like to know what tax deductions you might be able to achieve.

A common question that we often get asked by our clients is “How can I protect assets left to my children from in-laws if their marriage breaks down?”

The best way to achieve greater control over the distribution of the assets in your will is to establish a testamentary trust.

A testamentary trust is also highly beneficial when splitting income with young children or where asset protection strategies are required (for instance if a beneficiary is in a high risk occupation).

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What is a testamentary trust?

A testamentary trust is a trust established in a will that comes into effect upon the death of the person making the will. The assets are held in the trust with income or assets distributed to the individual later. The trust can be fixed or as flexible as you like with discretion given to the nominated trustee over what and when is distributed.

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Protect inheritances from in-laws

A lineal descent trust is designed to keep your inheritance for your lineal descendants and out of the reach of the Family Court.

How this works

Person A dies and leaves their child $700,000 in inheritance.

No trust

• The $700,000 is passed on immediately to the child and is likely invested in their mortgage and other assets
• A few years later child and husband separate
• The Family Court takes into consideration all matrimonial assets which total to $1M after deduction of mortgages and distribute $500,000 to husband and $500,000 to child.

Lineal descent trust

• The $700,000 is distributed to the LTD
• A few years later child and husband separate
• Child and husband’s assets amount to $400,000 after deduction of mortgages
• The court takes into account child’s inheritance however because of the terms of the LDT these funds were not available for distribution to husband.
• Husband is distributed $200,000  and wife is left with $700,000 in LTD and $200,000 from matrimonial assets.

It is important that the LDT has been properly drafted otherwise the Family Court may find that its assets are available for distribution.

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Inheritance to young children

In the case of families with young children a testamentary trust can help generate extra income to support the surviving family and minimise tax.

This can also provide additional protection if the surviving partner remarries and that marriage subsequently breaks down.

How this works

Person A dies and leaves their wife and children $700,000 and 25% shares in husband’s business.

No trust

• The $700,000 is passed on immediately to the wife
• Business generates $100,000 income a year for the wife which is taxed at her personal tax rate
• Wife remarried and subsequently gets divorced
• Original inheritance is then split between wife and new husband with wife receiving $350,000 plus 12.5% share in the business

Testamentary trust

• Husband dies and his wealth is distributed to the testamentary discretionary trust in his will
• Wife is trustee
• Wife uses the trust to distribute income to herself and their three children
• Wife is able to receive $82,168 tax free each year for herself and her children

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Asset protection strategy

If your children are in high risk professions and have put in place asset protection strategies receiving a direct inheritance can present unanticipated problems.

How this works

Person A dies and leaves child $700,000 property

No trust

• $700,000 property is distributed to child
• Child operates her own business
• Child can continue to keep the property in her own name and have the property at risk of creditors if anything goes wrong in her business
• Child can decide to protect the property by transferring it into a trust but has to pay $23,000 in stamp duty

Testamentary Trust

• $700,000 property is distributed to trust
• No additional effort is required by child to protect the property from the risks of her business

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Disadvantages to beneficiary trusts

There are additional costs associated with establishing a testamentary trust and management of the trust upon the death of the testator. These are minimal however in comparison to the benefits the trust provides, particularly in the case where there is significant wealth involved.

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What a trust doesn’t protect against

Family members can still contest your will so if the distribution of assets amongst the family is not equal it can still be altered.

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Am I better off under a testamentary trust?

Every circumstance is different and there is no one-size fits all solution to estate planning. It is important that you discuss estate planning with your accountant and lawyer to come up with the best option for your family. If you haven’t reviewed your estate planning recently, or if you are interested in knowing more about testamentary trusts, please speak to your MGI advisor.

Unless you’re running your business as a sole trader, the time will come when you must decide how you will remunerate yourself for your time, efforts and entrepreneurship. The profits of your business belong to the company operating that business, not to you. But there are various ways in which you can extract the value you have created. There are a number of factors you should consider in deciding whether to pay yourself via a salary, dividends, drawings, or a combination.

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Legislative restrictions

Firstly, it’s important to note any legal restrictions that will limit your options. The most common of these include:

• PSI rules: if your business income is primarily produced through your personal skills, knowledge and efforts, the PSI rules may apply. This means you’ll have to attribute the company’s profit to yourself as salary income.
• Excess payments to associated persons: your company cannot pay excessive or unrealistic salaries to family members who perform no or little actual work for the business, to avoid tax.
• Division 7A: you cannot draw money out of your company that exceeds any amounts you have previously loaned to it. If making a drawing leaves you owing your company money, you will need to repay it or enter into an interest-bearing loan agreement with your company – otherwise the sum may be treated as an ‘unfranked’ dividend, which will assessable for tax.

Some of these rules are very complex, so you should seek detailed advice from your accountant if you think that they might apply to your business.

Apart from these considerations, you are free to decide how you wish to remunerate yourself.

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Tax outcomes

• Salaries
  You will need to include any salary your company pays to you in your personal tax return and pay tax on it at your marginal rate. Your company will have PAYG withholding, superannuation, workers’ compensation insurance and payroll tax obligations in respect of salary paid to you ¬– just as it does for any other employee. Reasonable salaries paid to working family members are treated the same way, in their personal tax returns. Salaries paid are tax deductible for your company – reducing its profits and taxable income, and therefore the amount of company tax it pays.

• Dividends
  Dividends paid by a company to a shareholder out of after-tax profits are taxable for that shareholder. If the company has already paid tax, and ‘franking credits’ on the dividend are available, the dividends may be franked. The credits for the tax that has been paid will be passed on to the shareholder, which will reduce the amount of tax they have to pay on the dividend. Dividends are franked at the company’s tax rate – currently either 27.5% or 30%, depending on the size of the company. If you as an individual are a shareholder of your company, you will be personally taxed on your dividends. But if your company is owned by a discretionary family trust, the trustee will decide how to distribute the trust’s income – and may distribute it to other taxpayers in your family group, who will then be taxed on that income. In this way, a carefully-considered ownership structure can help you to manage your tax burden by splitting your company’s profits with other taxpayers in your family.

• Drawings
  Drawings apply when you have previously leant money to your company – usually during the business start-up and initial growth phases. Drawings are loan repayments by your company to you, not a distribution of profits, so there will be no tax payable on repaying these amounts as long as you have not breached Division 7A (see above).

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Commercial considerations

If you are preparing your business for sale, are applying for finance, or are in any other situation where you need to maximise the apparent profit or value of your business, it might seem tempting to stop paying yourself a salary (because removing this expense from your P&L will boost the company’s reported profits, and hence the value).

Unfortunately this is unlikely to be an effective strategy – directors’ remuneration will generally be ‘normalised’ to a market rate of salary as part of the due diligence process in any of these situations.

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Conclusion

Depending on the individual circumstances of you and your business, it is likely that a combination of these strategies will be most appropriate. For example, you may choose to draw a base salary to cover your ordinary living expenses, then consider whether to pay a dividend at the end of each financial year, depending on the business’s performance and your expected tax profile.

It’s a good idea to discuss your options with your accountant, to make sure your strategy suits to your financial circumstances and tax position.

Measuring the right financial metrics is key to the ongoing health of your business. They can provide important insights into how well your business is doing, and allow you to make informed decisions to maximise your growth into the future. If you want to keep your business on track, you simply cannot ignore the process of developing financial metrics for monitoring your progress.

The specific metrics you need to monitor to achieve financial success will vary depending on your industry – but regardless of the size of your business, you should be monitoring these ten key metrics:

• Sales revenue

You’ll need to correlate your sales data to your advertising campaigns, price changes, seasonal forces, competitive actions, and other costs of sales.
You can use asset turnover ratio, return on sales, and return on assets ratios to compare your business against others in the same industry or location.

• Operating productivity

High staff productivity can be one of your company’s best assets and must be measured. You can apply productivity ratios to almost any aspect of your business.
Compare your productivity to industry statistics, and use your business’s accumulating statistics over time to measure improvement.

• Gross margin

Gross margin is calculated as your total sales revenue minus your cost of goods sold, divided by your total sales revenue. It is expressed as a percentage ¬– the higher the percentage, the more you are retaining on each dollar of sales you make, to service your other costs or enjoy as profits.
Tracking margins is especially important for growing companies, since increased volumes should improve efficiency and lower the cost per unit. But improving your margins may require both effort and innovation.

• Profit or loss

You should be preparing profit and loss statements on a monthly basis and analysing them against your budget targets. If you are not meeting your budgets there must be justifiable reasons and you should focus on these areas in future months.

• Overhead costs

Overheads are fixed costs that do not vary with the level of goods or services you sell. It’s important to track these on a monthly basis so you can clearly see where your business is spending its money.

Use this information when updating your business plan or preparing yearly budgets. If you need to cut your fixed costs you could consider strategies like moving to a location that is less expensive, or switching utility suppliers.

• Variable costs

Variable costs are expenses that change in proportion to your activity.

It’s useful to track these so you can make sure they are decreasing as the volume of product you sell or produce grows – and that they are consistent with industry trends so that your business will remain competitive.

• Inventory

Inventory is one of the most important assets of many businesses. Turnover of that inventory is one of the primary sources of revenue, and it must be managed carefully.
It’s important to find the balance between having too much stock, which can tie up your precious working capital, and not having enough to meet customer demands, leading to lost sales or lower market share. You can find guidance on how to forecast and manage your inventory here.

• Marketing and advertising

Investment in marketing and advertising can be a hefty cost to your business, so you need to measure that investment to see that it is paying for itself.
This metric assess the total cost associated with acquiring each new customer. Over time, your customer acquisition costs should go down, as your company and reputation grows and people become more familiar with your brand.

• Customer loyalty and retention

Your business needs to be able to attract the right clients or customers and keep them. A happy client will refer your business or brand to others, bringing you new customers with no acquisition costs.

There are three common methods for measuring customer loyalty and retention: customer surveys, direct feedback and purchase analysis.

• Break-even analysis

Break-even analysis is the process of finding your find break-even volume (the amount you need to sell to cover your costs and make no profit or loss).
It involves analysing relationships between your fixed and variable costs and your sales volume, pricing, and net cash flow. Understanding how these factors impact each other is crucial when it comes to budgeting, production planning, and profit forecasting – and break- even analysis is central to this understanding.

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to choosing financial metrics for your business, and you should use a mix of quantitative and qualitative factors.
However, one thing for sure is that you do need to monitor your numbers on a regular basis to keep your business health in check. Financial analysis will guide your business away from financial pitfalls and towards important opportunities, and put you on the path to lower risk and increased sustainable cash flow.

When you’re busy growing your business it can be easy to neglect managing your debtors – but good debtor management is critical to ensuring your business has enough working capital to reinvest and grow.

Here are six simple steps to help you effectively manage your debtors.

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1. Have a credit policy and terms of trade in place

Many businesses supply goods and services on the basis of informal arrangements. Unfortunately this means that disputes often arise that could have been avoided if there had been clear, written terms of trade from the start. Having clear terms of trade is an excellent way of minimising and preventing bad debts.
Make sure you complete thorough credit history and business reference checks before you offer credit to new customers. Clearly articulate to your customers up front, in writing, your terms and the credit limits (so they know you are serious about your collection program) and ensure that they sign acceptance of your terms. It’s important that all your staff understand and follow this credit policy.

If you decide to implement new payment terms and conditions, begin with new customers or customers who wish to extend their credit limit. You may find it more difficult to introduce new terms to existing customers, especially those who have been loyal in the past or who you know personally and don’t wish to upset!

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2. Provide the right information on quotes, invoices and statements

If you provide the right information on your documents, and invoice promptly, you are more likely to be paid on time.

All quotes, estimates, invoices, contracts, agreements, purchase orders, and related documents should refer to your terms of trade and credit policy. Invoices and statements should show clearly:

• the amount owed
• the payment due date
• the billing address
• your bank account details.

Include any extra details that a customer might need, such as the purchase order number, contract/account number, and details of who placed the order. If necessary, contact the customer before billing to check exactly what information they need to expedite payment.

A good way to discourage late payment is to show details on your invoices and statements of the collection charges you may apply to overdue accounts.

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3. Make sure your systems are up to date and monitored

The secret to good debtor management is well-maintained information. There are many software solutions available to help you with your credit management, and increasingly more of them are cloud-based. Good software solutions can relieve you of much of the administrative and management pain associated with debtor management.

The best way to minimise issues is to monitor your debtors ledger closely – by keeping close track of the days outstanding you’ll be able to spot adverse trends and take prompt action before they start to have an impact on your cash flow.

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4. Implement robust accounts receivable processes

It is very important to have a robust collections process in place, with set timescales for the various stages of communication (letters, emails and phone calls). Map out your process clearly and make sure it’s understood by all your staff. Here are some key points to consider:

Check your delivery systems and keep signed delivery dockets so that you can prove delivery.

• Invoice as early and as often as possible, as receiving invoices late encourages customers to delay payment.
• Automatically send 30, 60, and 90 day reminder letters and highlight your trade terms where these are not being met.
• Regularly follow up on all slow payers to encourage payment. Once customers know you will always make contact if payment is late, you are more likely to get priority when they schedule payments. Don’t finish a follow up call without obtaining a firm commitment to make a payment. Follow up again if it is not paid on the promised date – or better still, arrange a visit.
• In the event of debtor disputes, insist on the payment of any undisputed amounts to maintain your cash flow while you resolve the issue. Always deal direct with your customers’ decision-makers.

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5. Don’t over extend credit and avoid concentration risk

It’s critical that you regularly review the credit limits for each of your customers. Look out for warning signs that they are experiencing financial difficulties. Regularly check for any changes in their buying habits and increasing levels of debt – the new business the customer is giving you may be the result of other suppliers removing credit facilities. Long-standing customers can be the greatest credit risk, because no one thinks to check on them.

High customer concentration (i.e. doing a large proportion of your business with any one customer) carries substantial risks, which can far outweigh any benefits in the long term. Be careful when handling any requests for extended credit, and keep an eye on customers who appear to be expanding quickly. A growing customer may help your sales, but rapid growth also puts pressure on their ability to pay. Make commercial decisions based on their behaviour and any available information – industry gossip about a company’s financial position is often surprisingly accurate.

Stick to your payment terms and immediately stop supplying customers who haven’t paid accounts on time. When you stop credit, discuss the situation with your customer, and reach an understanding about payment for past supplies. You can use the fact that they need your goods or services as leverage to get paid promptly and set conditions for new supplies. This might cost you some business, but it will also reduce the risk of being exposed to bad debt.

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6. Bad debt provisioning

Have your terms of trade reviewed by your solicitors to make sure they are legally compliant, so there will be no impediments when it comes to recovering debts.

You may want to consider using credit insurance products and debt recovery services to manage the risk and effects of bad debts. Don’t put off sending professional demand letters or threatening legal action – and be prepared for the possibility of going to court.

Credit management is about safeguarding your profitability, so you should make provisions for bad debts in your annual or ongoing budgeting process, and act swiftly if your debtors begin to exceed your provisions.

Bad debts can quickly spiral out of control and have a serious impact on your cash flow. These six strategies will help you set up robust credit relationships with your customers from the outset – and give you the tools you need to identify and respond swiftly to individual risks or dangerous patterns in your receivables.

Formulating a strategy for your business means defining and setting your business’ mission, objectives or goals, and stating how you plan to achieve them. But while many organisations commit time and money to formulate great strategies, they often fail to turn ambition into reality.

If the execution or implementation of your strategy fails, all your time and money will be wasted. Here are the six top reasons why strategy implementation fails.

1. Your strategy isn’t meaningful

Be careful not to fill your strategy document with fancy words and grand aspirations that no one can actually relate to. If your strategy isn’t meaningful to the stakeholders in your organisation (your employees, management, clients) they can’t engage with it, and it will end up condemned to the bottom drawer.

2. You haven’t properly understood your current situation

Imagine being dropped into the middle of a jungle with just a map. The map is very detailed and shows the location of a beautiful secluded holiday villa. But you have no idea where you are right now.

A strategy that fails to properly map out where your organisation is now will be almost impossible to implement – because you won’t know what actions to take to enable you to move from ‘here’ to ‘there’. Your strategy will be as useless as a map without a current location.

3. Failing to engage the right people

You can’t simply delegate the implementation of your strategy to ‘that guy in marketing’. Sure, allocate activities for your strategy to key individuals – but you must get your executive team engaged from the start, as a lack of buy-in from management will doom your strategy to failure. To maintain momentum, you need to drive the implementation of your strategy from the top.

To ensure engagement, involve your executive team – or key individuals within the team – in regular meetings to review progress against measurable strategy implementation activities. Identify other influential individuals from across your organisation to help with implementation and drive successful engagement of all stakeholders.

4. Allocating insufficient time

Be sensible with the timeframe within which you want to achieve your organisational goals. Major change takes time to implement and bed down – and just as your business cycles wax and wane, so will motivation to achieve your strategy.

Make sure your stakeholders give appropriate priority to strategy implementation, rather than waiting until they are ‘less busy’. We are always busy – and most people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in ten.

5. It’s too far from ‘here’ to ‘there’

It’s ok for your strategy to be ‘blue sky’ – your business goals should reflect the organisation’s end game. But make sure the people on the ground who need to implement the strategy (and who might not have been involved in the strategic planning process) don’t find it too difficult to see the plan in perspective.
If your strategy doesn’t take your short term objectives into account, there will just be too much of a stretch between your strategy and what your team are doing on a daily basis.

6. Failure to follow-up

The development of a strategy is not the end of a process – it’s just the beginning.
To ensure that day-to-day operational issues don’t end up swamping your strategy you’ll need to implement activities to move towards your goals, and monitor their success using meaningful data.

Make sure your strategic objectives are translated to tangible activities, and make individuals accountable for reporting and monitoring their success. Linking strategy implementation with individual KPIs should ensure strong stakeholder engagement.

By avoiding these pitfalls and putting the same effort and energy into implementing your strategy as into developing it, you’ll be well on the way to achieving your strategic goals. Remember, though, that your strategy should be a living document – review it regularly to make sure it’s still relevant to your current market and your long-term plans.

The best way to create wealth will depend on your personal and business circumstances – and the same is true when it comes to protecting that wealth for the long term. There’s a lot to think about when you’re deciding on a strategy for building and managing your wealth. Here are the key wealth management strategies you need to consider.

Business structures – protecting your assets

When you’re choosing the structure that’s right for your business you’ll probably be focused on minimising your tax liability. But it’s important that you also think about asset protection.

The four most common types of business structures are:

• Sole trader
• Partnership
• Company
• Trust

From an asset protection perspective, a sole trader structure offers you the least protection. In fact, it provides no asset protection at all – if someone makes a claim against your business, all of your assets (including personal assets) could be at risk.

A company, on the other hand, is a separate legal ‘person’. This means that the company runs the business, owns its investments and can be sued in its own right. The owners of the company (the shareholders or members) are generally not exposed to any claims made against the company.

Trusts also make a very useful asset protection vehicle. A trust is a ‘relationship’, with the trustee holding assets on behalf of a group of beneficiaries. If someone makes a claim against the trust, the trustee will be liable, but the beneficiaries will not. And the risks to the trustee can be mitigated by, for example, having a company act as trustee of the trust.

Even if your business is structured as a company, all of your business assets could still be at risk in the event of a lawsuit. This is a common problem for business owners, and one potential way to mitigate the risk is to set up a ‘trading’ company to run your business and a separate ‘holding’ company to hold your business assets – for example the plant and equipment, which it would then hire to your trading company.

The good news is that you’re not locked into any one structure. You can restructure as you need, in response to changes in the size of your business or your asset protection requirements. In fact, Australian tax legislation incorporates a number of capital gains tax concessions, which can reduce (or even eliminate) the potential capital gains taxes you, or your business, may incur as part of a genuine restructure.

It is important that you speak to your accountant regularly, to check that your current business structure provides the level of asset protection you need.

Superannuation – your wealth management and protection vehicle

The superannuation system was created to allow Australians to adequately fund their retirement. Many people consider superannuation to be one of the best wealth creation and protection opportunities we have available.

But superannuation is widely misunderstood – it’s a common misconception that super is, in and of itself, an investment. Actually, it’s a specialised tax environment governed by its own set of rules and legislation. It’s only once you have contributed money to a superfund that you need to make decisions about how to invest it.

The superannuation tax legislation includes a number of valuable tax concessions for complying superfunds, which can make superannuation a very effective way to maximise and protect wealth.

These include:

• Income earned by a fund’s assets before any member draws a pension is taxed at just 15%. This is much lower than Australia’s current personal income tax rates (16% to 45% plus Medicare Levy) or corporate tax rates (25% for base rate entities and 30% otherwise).
• Capital gains on assets held for more than 12 months in accumulation phase receive a one-third discount, so only two-thirds of the gain is taxed at 15% (an effective rate of 10%).
• Once a superannuation fund has begun to pay retirement-phase pensions, the income it earns on the assets supporting those pensions is generally tax-exempt, up to the individual’s Transfer Balance Cap ($2.0 million from 1 July 2025). This exemption also applies to capital gains on those assets.
• From 1 July 2025, a new Division 296 tax applies an extra 15% on a portion of earnings for individuals with total super balances above $3 million. This does not change the 15%/0% rules above for most members but is relevant for very large balances.

One of the most common questions accountants are asked is whether a taxpayer (either an individual or a business owner) will receive a tax benefit by making a contribution to their super fund.

The answer is often ‘yes’. When either you or your business contribute money into superfund (within the cap limits) you may well able to claim a tax deduction for the contribution, because personal and corporate income tax rates are higher than the tax rate on superfund contributions.

Another important benefit of superannuation is that superfund balances are quarantined from your personal and business assets. This means your superannuation fund balance is protected even if you incur personal or business debts. As a business owner this gives you the peace of mind of knowing your superfund balance will be safe in the event of a lawsuit, or if your business runs into financial difficulties.

It’s wise to work with your accountant so you can make the most of all the opportunities superannuation offers you to maximise and protect your wealth.

Risk insurance – protecting your wealth

One of the most important wealth management strategies is taking steps to protect your wealth in the event of an unexpected death, injury or illness.

There are several types of risk insurance available that can help provide financial security to you or your descendants.

• Life insurance provides a lump sum to your dependants if you die.
• Total and permanent disablement Insurance provides a lump sum if you suffer a serious injury or illness that leaves you unable to work.
• Trauma insurance provides a lump sum if you suffer a specified critical illness such as a heart attack, cancer or a stroke.
• Income protection insurance replaces up to 75% of your income for an agreed period of time if you can’t work due to sickness or accident.

The premiums you pay for your insurance will be based on a number of factors such as your age, sex, health (both current and historical), family medical history, occupation and lifestyle.

Premiums can also be stepped (meaning they start lower but increase with your age) or level (meaning they start higher but do not increase with your age).

In the case of income protection insurance, premiums will also depend on factors like the waiting period before benefits become payable, the length of time over which payments will be made, whether payments are indexed, and whether payments will be an ‘agreed value’ (based on your income at the time of application) or ‘indemnity value’ (based on your income at the time of claim).

As well as thinking about which types of insurance you may require, you also need to decide where you will hold your policy. Life insurance, total and permanent disablement insurance and income protection insurance can all be held either inside or outside of your superfund, but trauma insurance can only be held outside.

The tax treatment for both the premiums you’ll pay and the benefits you or your dependants may receive may be different, depending on whether you hold the policy inside or outside your superfund. It’s a good idea to ask the advisor who arranges your risk insurances to work with your accountant to formulate a strategy that is right for you.

When you’re busy running your business and building your wealth it’s easy to forget about the future. But considering these three wealth management strategies, and discussing your options with your accountant or financial advisor, will set you on track to protect everything you’ve worked so hard for.

Give the team at MGI a call or contact us to arrange an informal consultation about wealth management to explore how we can help.

It seems like almost every week that you read about a new email virus making its way around town.

While some of these emails are easy to spot others are more sophisticated and can easily be mistaken as legitimate communication if you don’t know how to spot a dangerous email.

There are four key steps that every business should know to help determine if an email is safe. Make sure everyone in your organisation is aware of these steps and follows them vigorously to help prevent your business from being infected by a virus.

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How to identify a dangerous email

Step one: check the senders email address

Specifically look for an unusual address or .com values. If you see something unexpected here, treat the email as dangerous and avoid its links/attachments.

Step two: hover your mouse over the link (DON’T CLICK). This will reveal its true address.

If you see ‘garbage’ here or unrelated words consider the email high risk and avoid clicking the link.

Step three: look for something in the body that is not generic and would be hard to guess/fake

Information like your business name, a known order number, or a valid account number would be hard to fake. Dangerous emails usually only have generic information in them. If you cannot find anything specific to you or the subject of the email then treat the email with caution and avoid its links/attachments.

Step four: If it is unexpected, verify the email by other means

For example if the email claims to be dropbox, verify it by logging into your dropbox account to see if you have this invite. If it is an ASIC renewal, contact ASIC or check with us to confirm if a renewal is due. If you cannot verify the email, it would be safest to treat the email as dangerous and avoid any links/attachments.

Remember viruses can be costly for business. These tips might add a few more seconds to your analysis of a new email however we all know prevention is better than cure and these tips could see you avoiding a very costly virus infection.

As a last line of defence please also ensure you have a reputable AntiVirus solution on your computers. This can offer strong protection in the unfortunate event something does get past you.

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MGI Techology Services

If you have questions about this or would like us to review your current IT Security setup to ensure you have strong levels of protection in place, please reach out to us at the following email address: Technology@mgisq.com.au or call 3002 4800.