By Russell Zimmerman

The end of financial year can be a busy (and occasionally stressful) time for retailers but with a little planning it can go smoothly.

There are a whole lot of things that retailers need to be aware of. Obviously, retailers have got to finalise their Pay As You Go (PAYG) tax towards the end of the year. Although it may be paid monthly, you’ve got to make sure you do a reconciliation on that to start off.

Sometime in the next couple of months, you also have to finalise your workers' compensation, most employers need to send in a report. In other words, you submit what you expect will be your payroll for the year, and then you’ve got to reconcile that with what you’ve actually paid.

Obviously, your group certificates have to be done and they should be out fairly quickly. Those actually have to reconcile with what you’ve paid in PAYG tax throughout the 12 months, if it doesn’t, you’ve got a problem.

On 1 July, there are a number of transitional arrangements with regards to wages for your staff. The first is the next transition of the modern award and the increases there. You also have the latest minimum wage increase of $15.80 per week. And last, but not least, you’ve got a superannuation increase of a quarter of a per cent from 1 July.

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From a stocktaking point of view, you need to ensure that you’ve done a full stocktake to understand what your stock levels are, and make sure your stocktake actually reconciles with what you have in stock. Most computer systems these days will give you a read out of what your stock should be, so you’ve actually got to check that against what you’ve physically got in stock.

If you’re carrying things like lay-bys, you’ve got to ensure that lay-bys are included in your stocktake in various forms. So work out what’s paid for and what’s sitting on your shelf.

One thing that a lot of retailers often forget to take into to account is the stock out the back, products that are going back to suppliers and faulty goods waiting to be packaged up and returned. Retailers should have it packed up and away this month so there’s as little as possible to go back to suppliers. Anything that is left has to be included in your stocktake as being stock on the shelf, albeit stock that’s faulty — you’ve got to make sure you’ve accounted for it, somewhere in your system.

If you’ve got stock that’s in limbo — so you’ve actually sent it back but you haven’t got a credit note for it — you’ve got to recognise that stock somewhere as stock that’s not to be counted. You can also have stock on the shelf that you haven’t been charged for, so there are all kinds of anomalies you’ve got to look for.

Another thing worth thinking about is if you’ve got empty boxes on the shelves, but the product is on display somewhere, you need to make sure that you can marry all those boxes up so what’s out there is actually the matching product.

Once the stocktake is done, you’ve got to get your numbers ready for the accountant. Some of the larger retailers might have people to do that internally, but some of the small ones may not. There’s a raft of things that you’ve got to think about, but my final advice would be to talk to your accountant and get a list of things you’ve got to do to make sure you’re compliant.

End of Financial Year Checklist:

  • Pay As You Go tax (PAYG)
  • Workers compensation
  • Group certificates
  • Wage increases
  • Superannuation increase
  • Stocktake
      – Lay-bys
      – Stock yet to be returned
      – Stock that is returned but uncredited
      – New stock yet to be invoiced 
      – Display stock
  • Talk to your accountant

Russell Zimmerman is the executive director of the Australian Retailers Association. He spoke to Claire Reilly for this article.