Have you considered how your business ranks against others in your industry? Business benchmarks are a number of performance indicators to help you compare your business to others in a similar area with similar turnover and which are in a similar or the same industry as you.
From business benchmarking you can:
- Determine what the average bottom line profit is for your industry
- Determine whether your costs are too high
- Pinpoint areas of your business that may need some improvement (i.e. if your wages are too high compared to your sales, are you overstaffed?)
- Give yourself targets for expenditure – a great tool to assist with creating a business budget
The ATO also use benchmarking when reviewing your annual tax obligations and are regularly adding to their Benchmark Industry List. Should your business fall outside what the ATO consider to be “normal” for your industry then that may give rise for further investigation. For example, if your expenses on raw materials are much higher than your reported income, then the ATO may wish to investigate whether you have received some cash income that you have not reported and paid tax on.
Each year Ellco Group review and monitor your industry Benchmarks to ensure you are not exposing your business to unnecessary ATO investigation. If we feel there is an area of concern we will address this with you and work with you to improve your business record keeping and practices.