If the rain doesn't stop, build that ark

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but South-East Queensland is pretty damp right about now. The heavens have opened and has poured their many bathtubs all over the little pocket of the world for quite a few days. Rain on the roof while falling asleep is one of my favourite sounds in the world, but c’mon, enough already! With so many people posting videos of flooded businesses in the local area on social media and coupled with it being the same weekend BAS returns and payments are due, it got me thinking about business disaster planning. More to the point, how we should advise our clients to plan for business continuity during and after a natural disaster.

Well, the best way is for us to encourage them all to actually plan. Business Queensland has developed a great resource to assist. It’s a business continuity template called the “Emergency management and recovery plan” and can be found at the below link.

https://business.gov.au/risk-management/emergency-management/coronavirus-information-and-support-for-business/create-or-update-your-business-continuity-plan

The document is broken into 3 sections:-

• The continuity plan – this prompts you to think about how to prepare your business for an emergency, identifies the essential areas of the business and pushes you to think how you will keep these services running during a disaster
• The emergency action plan - this breaks down what to do in an emergency and who to contact. It’s an essential part of caring for your staff and customers as well as your business
• The recovery plan – defines your plan for after the emergency. What will you do to help your business recover? We’ve seen how essential these plans are to moving business back towards profitability after the pandemic.

The answers will different for every organisation. But that’s what you want; thoughtful solutions discussed calmly well before an emergency.

How can Appy Books specifically help out during an emergency? Well, all of our clients have cloud-based accounting solutions. That means that if they have internet and a device, they can run their business accounts from anywhere. Or they can call us and we’ll do it for them. We also encourage clients to squirrel funds away during the year to pay their tax obligations when they come due. This avoids nasty surprises at year or quarter end so even if there is an emergency, money is available ready to pay the most important bills.

And finally, we are only a phone call away. As our tag line says, “Relax, we’ve got this!”