Help for Small Business in Getting the Right Mix of Skills

While business loses millions of dollars through fraud every day, quite often losses are made through ill-equipped people making bad judgements and poor decisions. Using the right mix of skills, training and experience in business can be a relatively simple way of reducing the level of the business’ exposure to risk.

CPA Australia has published a guide for employers to help small and medium businesses find the right person to manage their business finances. Named ‘Minimise Risk – Maximise Potential’ the guide explains the difference between a bookkeeper, an accountant and a CPA qualified accountant. It also explains at what point in the growth of a business they should use either a bookkeeper or an accountant. CPA’s Aneta Pazeski says many businesses cut corners or don’t understand who they should employ and while daily financial processing involves a different set of skills to those needed for strategic business planning, many businesses wrongly assume the same staff can cover all these functions. These assumptions can come with costly results.