189. Avoiding Tax Shock With Josh Hallam and Sam Falanga

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder's Secrets. In this episode, I interview Josh Hallam and Sam Falanger from Falanger and Co. Josh and Sam lead an Australian accounting and advisory firm that specializes working with builders. They help building company owners take control of their finances so they can grow with confidence. In this episode, we dive into a topic that causes stress for far too many builders. Tax shock. You'll learn how to structure your financial planning across the entire year, from monthly and quarterly habits to end of year strategies to minimize your tax and make sure you don't get any surprises. Keep listening to discover how to stay ahead financially and run a more profitable building company. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope end to end QuickBooks, precision construction, accounting and and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

If you're afraid to ring your accountant, you've got the wrong accountant. If you're worried that they're going to charge you for their advice, you've got the wrong accountant. Because data is the most important component in the whole situation. We've unfortunately had looked at some of accounts out there and they just dump everything to office expenses. And that's just unfortunately laziness from the bookkeeper or the accountant's perspective because they're busy too. They pay, sometimes pay a little bit extra. They'll get a better quality output. All they've got to do is continually improve their intellectual property. That's all the business owner should be doing anything. Listening to podcasts, talking to their advisors, getting in the right rooms, talking to bigger builders and see what they do and implement the same strategies or technology in their smaller business.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt and today I'm joined by Josh and Sam from Falanger and Co Accountants. Josh, Sam, welcome to the show.

Hey Will.

Hey Will. Good to see you again.

Great to see you again. We were just chatting before. You guys have been on the podcast before. Episode 128 Getting More from your accountant if anyone wants to check that one out. But today we're talking lots more fun topics about tax and all of those, all that stuff that no one wants to think about, but everyone needs to. Sam, do you want to dive in by just giving anyone that hasn't heard about you guys a bit of a background on what you do?

Yeah, so we're basically a Sydney based firm. We've got multiple offices now across Sydney. Well established accounting firm. Obviously we do the reconciliations from bookkeeping, but we now sort of in that coaching space and assisting the small business owner along their journey. So we've been established since 2010. We've got about 350 business clients now, which is growing, which is great. We're trying to fit the space of that mini coach in that regard.

Well, obviously primarily builders listening to this show, I imagine. So you guys work extensively with building company owners as well. What trips them up when it comes to managing tax obligations?

Yeah, so first and foremost, well, they've got to understand what they are. Right. Too many times we hear unfortunately that they just leave it to the accountant. They leave the numbers to the accountant and wait for the bus. They wait for year end and they don't really understand what's coming up. So our job as accountants and advisors is to obviously educate them on what those particular tax obligations are first and the frequency of the payments. We work with a lot of clients, we work with a lot of builders and they have, you know, lumpy income in that regard and then the tax flow of that cannot be. When they hit $150,000 as one payment, they're not putting enough aside. So our job, like I said, is to more educate them. Tripping them up is their cashflow. They're very poor with cash flow management unfortunately because of that lumpy lump sum payments that they get along the completion of their project.

It makes sense I think as well. Like if you're not from a financial background and you're getting a lot of money in and out of a business, it could be hard to handle.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, they probably started, you know, as a sole trader or worked for someone as wages and then they went out on their own and said, I can do this myself. And they never really learn about the fundamentals of tax. They never really understand GST or wages payg. And we see a lot of people unfortunately falling behind in regards to superannuation and making sure that that's paid on time. Our job, like I said, is to educate them and sit them down and sort of give them the fundamentals 101 of accounting and small business in that regard. Making sure that they lodge on time and pay in full is our job.

Makes sense. Josh. Anything from your perspective that Sam didn't cover off or.

Yeah, I think it's again coming back to understanding the obligations and the time frames around them. Having been around small businesses for over 15 years now in different industries, it's really key and important to know when your obligations are going to become due and planning for them so that when a GST bill superannuation tax bill arrives that you've already pre thought about that and you've pre planned for that and that way you constantly at worst maintaining the cash position of your business and at best you've planned more in advance and so you're actually in a more advantageous position. The scenario that we or the key 101 of this for any business is to ensure that when cash inflow comes in is to always separate a percentage of that revenue into a separate tax account or a separate liabilities account that you know that account's not for your day to day business expenses. That's for the obligations that are just around the corner. Too often we see and one of the you asked about what trips them up. It's that lack of understanding can often lead to rowing the boat in the wrong direction. And I love the phrase where we, you know, just by rowing harder and working harder and trying to generate more cash. If the operation or the system or the process, the understanding isn't there then if you're pointing in the wrong direction, doesn't matter how hard you're working guys, we're not heading to the right destination. That planning is critical and that understanding of your obligations is where we've got to start.

Yeah, that's a great point. I like that metaphor too because not just any business owners would probably know that sometimes it feels like you're working so hard and not getting the outcomes from that and then so your instinct is oh I just work harder. But sometimes if you're working on the wrong things doesn't help 100%.

Piece of advice. There may be, you know instead of doing quarterly lodgments and then they the builders get a big large bill at the end of the quarter because it's entirely three months and then the accountant prepares that probably two months after the due date we recommend probably just going to monthly will. So then they quickly understand how much should be put aside and like Josh said, they've got that money in the side account based on a certain percentage and then that should be readily available because unfortunately when they fall behind it's very hard to catch up.

Then you're just chasing your tail trying to get more revenue, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. With the ato, the way that they are now with tax debt, it causes internal, you know, business stress because they're dealing on site, they're trying to collect money, they're trying to pay all their bills, they're working with their team and then they've got the added stress of unfortunately, an amount that they didn't plan for properly.

Yeah, I would say inadequate financial planning, even though that's the cause, not the symptom, could be the biggest cause of stress in the building industry, I would say, and most industries.

Yeah. Well, we call it here at Falanga Green Company, we call it Tax Shop. So we don't ever want a client to not understand what's coming up and what's due for payment. And then obviously when they do the company tax return at the end of the year, we want them to have planned for that. So if they made a substantial profit, that there's going to be 25% of that to be paid as well.

Makes sense. You've spoken a lot about planning and you've touched on the monthly cadence of preparing your accounts. Can you talk more about what that looks like for builders on a monthly, quarterly, yearly basis, how they can better manage their finances through that period so they're not getting this tax shock?

Yeah. So on a monthly basis, I'd be making sure that you're always looking at your accounts receivable and accounts payable. Now with the use of Xero, that's easily, you know, the data is easily accessible. Now, as long as it's up to date and accurate, of course, but on a monthly basis, I'd be making sure that they're making, you know, that there's enough money going to come in and then being able to pay the bills when they fall due or supplier at the end of the month, I'd also be looking towards, you know, what super and PAYG and gst, like we said before, have been put aside in that regard. And again, if the, if the data is up to date, which it should be, then you can click a few buttons in Xero and you'd be able to, you know, not reach out and have to. You should be understanding what reports to get that information on a quarterly basis, obviously you'd be forecasting for the next three months. You know, you'd be looking at what is actually going to come in for the next three months and what part of the project you've actually completed. So again, that large sum, if, if 200 or $500,000 is going to come in the next three months. What bills need to go and be paid every three months as well. I always suggest that they also look at staff capacity. This is where we see unfortunately staff not being utilized to the full potential because they're not busy or they might be in between projects. So they need to look at the utilization of where their staff's going to, you know, where this, what they're going to be doing on a day to day in those quiet periods. Maybe you know, ask them to take a holiday because again you're going to have to keep paying the staff every week or that you have to pay the team every week. But there's no work coming in because you, you know, you've got the excavators out there or you know, you're preparing site for the build every year. And again every year you should be reviewing, you know, your job. Unfortunately everyone says that it's, you know, they don't have time to do it. And we hear this every single day, we don't have the time to look at it. Our job is to understand with the client what they want, build the report accordingly. So again when they do have that spare hour, they can jump into Xero, produce that report and then understand where they're up to immediately. So that's what I've been doing on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.

Yeah, I'd like to just add into that will around the importance of collection and the importance of, you know, every month a key keeper or every week even a key role or business owner or whoever runs the account is to always be aware of the accounts receivable. An example that we had, it was an unfortunate story where we had a client who's in the building construction industry and their main client. So the, the client provided them with most of their work, weren't very good at paying their bills on time. And the consistent approach or the consistent response to that from the builder was that they're a solid client, they'll come good, you know, they'll pay that bill. And then inevitably this, I think we got up to 270 grand worth of, you know, unpaid bills and then that, that client of theirs went bust and weren't able to pay the 270. And so then obviously our client is then out on in a big way in terms of what they've done internally to navigate that cash flow that was always going to come, was always going to come, never came. And so they learned the really hard way that your listeners can learn slightly easier way is to ensure that there's a focus on that collection and that it doesn't matter how good your client is on paper or at an event or on site, ensuring that you're rigorous in terms of that collection and the payment terms around that, so that the hard work that you do is remunerated on time. So then you can put these plans into place and that kind of comes back to where the boat is pointed. And so if those processes are in place every week, every month, then you can start to organize your cash to meet these obligations. And then on quarterly basis, always coming back to, what did we forecast to do for the last three months, how did we go, what did we learn? And how do we then integrate those learnings into the next three months on an annual basis? As Sam touched on, it's working with your accountant to understand before the end of the financial year, what's the tax going to be, what's the liability going to be, and what can happen in that last 30 days of the financial year to potentially change the scorecard of the year it was, and therefore the tax liability. Because it's decisions that you can make pre June 30th that can't be made after July 1st. And so having that conversation with your accountant pre June 30th, towards the end of the year gives you a good scenario and a good expectation of what that tax outcome for the business and the directors and the owners will be, and some, some decisions that you can make to enhance that result.

270 grand. I mean, for many builders, that could be that wipes out your whole net profit. Almost like that can put you in a really sticky situation.

And what we've seen with that client is they paid all of their, you know, their materials and they paid all of their subbies. And it was very hard to claw back from that. You know, unfortunately, some people then fall in the path of restructure or liquidation because they just can't come back from that. The best thing you could probably do is allocate time in the diary and stick to that. So if there's two business partners is you just put a reminder to sit down and make each other accountable. Just like the gym or, you know, go on a sport. And you say, at the end of the month, we sit down and we actually have a look at the past month. At the end of the quarter, we actually sit down. But you've got to commit. It has to be a routine. And it doesn't matter what business is in or what industry they're in. Those leadership meetings or those budget meetings or those four, that you have to sit down and look back at what was achieved because then you find the inefficiencies, you find where you made mistakes. If you never look back, unfortunately, you're going to keep making the same mistake.

Yeah, 100%. We recommend builders do a project completion audit every single time, which is one example. But you're talking even more just at a business wide level as well on all of the key financial metrics. But yeah, looking back is always a great way to improve the way you're going forward. How much can builders, and this is a tricky situation because you guys are accountants, but how much can builders rely on their accountants for a lot of this information? Because we kind of suggest that you can't rely on anyone else. You're the business owner, you've got to take responsibility of that. Right. So what's your perspective on that?

Your accountant also now is not just someone that prepares the books and records and sends you the bus. They need to be part of the business. They have to be your second point of call that you can always, you know, touch base if you're unsure about something or what we recommend is, you know, you could do monthly meetings or quarterly meetings or sit down with the accountant or advisor at the end of the day the project and go through just to make sure that the numbers are correct in what they're looking at. Then once it becomes routine and they learn certain things, then they can take the responsibility on themselves. And especially if they've got multiple projects at the same time, that also helps. But you need to make, you know, you need to put your hand up and say, guys, I need help. Unfortunately, sometimes we just cop it on the chin. We try to do it ourselves. You got to remember the accountant studied and does this day in and day out. It's the same as you trying to ask me to build a trust. I can't do that. Right. And it's the same. We learn numbers and we just make them accountable or ask for their time in a meeting or a table talk meeting to go through and there's no stupid questions. It's basically whatever my understanding is at certain level. Ask any question you want and make sure that they don't leave the meeting until you fully understood.

Yeah, I think, I guess my point was you got to find the right accountant so that you can have that kind of relationship. And you've got to know your numbers well enough that you can then hold the account like accountable and have a conversation with them like you're suggesting Sam.

Yeah. The right accountant obviously is the key. Right. Sometimes you've just gone to mum and dad's accountant because that's who they, who they trusted. Unfortunately that might not be right for your business because you need someone that works with this stuff day in and day out. Your wip, your wipa. To know the difference between cash and accruals is vital at tax time as well. From a 30June perspective to learn about self managed super funds if there's surplus cash. There's different levels of a builder. There's also different levels of accountants.

Yeah, I think it's particularly important to work with an accountant that has experience in this industry. I think that's the number one thing.

Yeah, absolutely. You know you could, they've got to be part of your business. You know, sometimes we see that they've bought a new vehicle. Is it under the right entity? That could all be, you know, done in a better manner if you just made that call. Now if you're afraid during your accountant, you've got the wrong account. If you're worried that they're going to charge you for their advice, you've got the wrong account. We prefer them to ring, we prefer them not to make the mistake so we can give the advice before they make the decision. And we're just a soundboard. That's all we are, we're just a soundboard. And if it's, you know, to give me advice because if they make the wrong decision, we can't just move a vehicle out of a separate entity. We've got to then sell it from a technical standpoint. So again you should be having regular meetings with your accountant. You got to think of them not as an accountant but as an advisor because there might be things that you're missing. But it all goes back to making sure that the data is correct. Because data is the most important component in the whole situation. It's like making sure that your string line straight. If you're building that brick wall before you start building it because the wrong data. And you know, we've unfortunately had looked at some of accounts out there and they just dump everything to office expenses and we see that and that's just unfortunately laziness from the bookkeeper or the accountants perspective because they're busy too. So it's not until they understand their numbers and they look at their own zero and they go, this is not of good quality. And then they start to realize if they pay, sometimes pay a little bit extra, they'll get a better quality output which has a multiplier effect on the back end. And for them, it might be this business or another business or, you know, one, 10 years away, or all they've got to do is continually improve their intellectual property. That's all the business owner should be doing anything. Listening to podcasts, talking to their advisors, getting in the right rooms, talking to bigger builders and see what they do and implement the same strategies or technology in their smaller business.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Josh, I feel like you added something on the tip of your tongue.

Yeah, I mean, you raised a really good question or you framed the question really well in terms of how you advise your business owners around them being accountable to make the business decision and not having reliance on other people. That's critical. It doesn't matter how good your accountant or your advisor is, at the end of the day, the business owner makes the business decision. I think where the accountant can play the highest value role is providing the information so you can understand it to make that better business decision. You know, I've been on the other side of, of business owner and operator and having accountants provide information. It's unclear information that doesn't make sense. And I've taken that away and joined the dots myself. To make a business decision and often a poor business decision, your accountant should play one of the most trusted roles in your business other than your life partner or business partner. No one else knows your business numbers, no one else knows your financials. And so if you look at it through that lens, then there has to be a high level of trust in what your accountant is advising you and what information they are giving you. And ultimately you should have a high level of accountability on them to give you the right advice to make the business decisions you need to make with great advice. If you decide to make a wrong decision, well, that's on the business owner. But ultimately you have to have the right accounting partner in place that you trust where that if you have a question, it's going to get answers and that they're communicating to you information that you understand so you can focus on the areas that you really need to focus on.

Yeah, I've never thought about it that way. In terms of you've got your business partner, your life partner, and then your accountant. The only three people they ever show you books to.

Absolutely, absolutely. I was sat on the flat the other day next to a gentleman and I told him what we did and he was from the other side of the world at the time and he was talking to me about, oh, you're an accountant. There's three, three good people you need in your life. Your partner, your priest, and your accountant. And I thought we had a good conversation around that, you know, and so it's about making sure that you find the right person that suits you and that the working relationship there is really strong. Again, I'm talking about an accountant or someone who's by your side and by your business side and you're communicating with you regularly. If you're listening to this and you're only hearing from your accountant via email, or you're only seeing your accountant once a year, that's probably, probably time to level up that relationship.

Sam, you spoke a lot about having the right data, which I thought was, was really important. And I guess accounting historically is a, is a historic kind of process, right? You're looking at the data and making decisions based on that. But how can builders start looking forward as well in terms of forecasting and planning when it comes to finances?

When the business grows, they need again, they need to be disciplined. They need to sit down and spend the time to look at their own business and actually to draw out what's going to be on the horizon for the next three to six months. Like I said before, the capacity issues with staff is a big one for us. Depends on the size of the team. Forecasting from a cash perspective is probably the most vital because we all know without cash, the business won't operate. So where unfortunately, business owners get wrong is they always look at their profit and loss or their bank account profit and loss will is always historical data, so they need to start to also look at all of their higher purchase and lease payments because unfortunately they're not going to stop. Hopefully we never have Covid again where the banks gave us that relief. They need to make sure that they can cover all of those repayments because we've had a client looked at their profit and loss and realized that they were doing quite well. But in the next three to six months, they weren't sure about what was going to come in. Now they've got probably eight or nine machines and there's $40,000 a month going out. So if you're not forecasting and sitting down, you're going to come to the party too late and realize there's no cash and then go, oh shit, what do we do now? But again, it comes down to discipline. It comes down to actually, you know, sitting down and realizing like a cash flow forecast what's supposed to be coming in and what will be going out.

Yeah, you made a good point. About the bank balance as well. Like it's a point in time. Right. And you touched on it earlier. It's like there's a lot of cash coming in and out of building companies. You might look at your bank account one day and it's got half a million million in it and the next day you got to actually send that to someone else. So.

And that's, and that's the lumpy income that we're talking about. You know, you need to make sure in the forecast that we're not paying our subbies and suppliers as quick as what we're receiving as well. And again, just make sure that our business is running well. I get the subbies will always be ringing you. You've got to try to put them on the same payment terms as what we're getting paid. And if we're going to get paid every 90 days, they can't be getting paid every week. You might push your materials out to month end and get a statement rather than every 14 days. Some of these little tweaks will help with cash flow along your way because you don't want that unwanted stress of waiting for the next payment, knowing that you're in overdraft or you're waiting for the next payment because you got 100 grand outstanding to the ATO or your mortgage repayment payout too quick rather than collection. And if you don't sit down and actually look at what's coming in and going out over the next 60 days, you could be stuck in that position where you go, oh shit, I'm actually behind. My cash balance is negative and I owe the ato cause I didn't plan it too well. But I know that in three, six months time I'm getting that 500 grand.

Yeah, there's probably something to be said just for whoever's listening out there to have a look at all their payment terms. There could be a lot of value right there.

And again, it's just a bill comes in, we pay it, or you give it to the admin or you give it to your bookkeeper and they pay it straight away. Pushing those out in terms of the payment terms helps us to make sure that there was always going to be cash in the, in the bank account and sometimes prices of materials go up. We've got to be flexible in that regard. We've got to make sure you know that we're going to have enough for the increase in materials. Another thing for forecasting or builders in general is that they don't charge for a lot of Their variations, unfortunately, I think it just comes down. And I've been on the other side. We've built houses and things, my wife and I, but it comes down to just clear communication from the client's perspective. If there's clear communication, there's a clear variation that will assist in the cash flow rather than they just cop the fee or, you know, change the color or make the tiles go up higher in the bathroom. Every variation should be documented, communicated, then charged accordingly. It's like accountants. Sometimes we do work and we, you know, there's a lot of times when we don't charge. But if it was clearly communicated from the start, the client would fully understand that they could see what they've paid for. And this is obviously more than that to make sure that, again, there's cash in the bank, because that's. Cash is king.

Yeah, communication is critical across all of that. As you, as you said, as a.

Customer on the other side, will, I would appreciate that and I would understand that.

Yeah, as long as the expectations are set up front. Right. Like you said, that, you know, changes will result in this communication, etc.

We had one, you know, client came in and we realized the spreadsheet that he was using as his template was actually incorrect. So unfortunately, he was charging GST on top of gst. So when we found that, he's obviously had to go back to the client and say, unfortunately, I've charged an extra 10% of all the costs. You know, that then put him back. He thought he had an extra 200 grand that he didn't have because he had to give back 200,000 bucks just because the spreadsheet was wrong. So there's little things that, you know, if you're still running off a spreadsheet and you, you know, you haven't got the system in place like a build exact or build a trend or builder or something like that. Mistakes always happen in spreadsheets. You've got to automate as much as possible because then you'd be able to. If you wanted to sit down with your accountant and do a forecast, the historical data is already there. Then it's a matter of sitting down and brainstorming what's going to come in the next 60 days or 90 days and what has to go out. But if you don't spend the time looking at it, it's just like this. Put the thing, you know, what direction the wind's going at. And again, unfortunately, they say, oh, my accountant's got my numbers. They know my numbers. You've Got to remember the accountants probably doing three or 400 passes. That's three or 400. Three or 400 businesses that they're looking at. So you just make your accountant accountable and say, I want to sit down with you every month. I want to go through my stuff. I want to learn my numbers better, I want to learn my tax obligations, because it's not hard. It's just routine.

It's a great point. All right, well, Josh, I'll throw back to you and maybe, Sam, you can wrap it up. But what's your approach at Flangren Co? Just to manage all this planning and making sure that builders aren't caught out at tax time.

I think we touched on a few of this already and wrapping it up. It's, it's that regular communication and just. It sounds like we're adding a lot of work into your builder's average week. Right. But ultimately it's having the right data coming into the business and setting up some form of reporting or analysis on that so you don't have to spend time interpreting that information and then regularly looking at that. So whether that's, you know, we work with businesses, whether they're at, you know, in a launch phase, in a build phase, or they're growing or they're, you know, they're looking to, to solidify and exit. And depending on what stage your business is up to, you want to be able to understand, you know, the key information around the financial health of your business. How we support that or our approach in supporting that is ensuring that, you know, at that early stage, ensuring that all the information is accurate. Sam touched on spreadsheets. We talk about bank fees, we talk about looking at cash flow statement or cash flow trends, as opposed to the cash balance in your bank today. You touched on it Will. I mean, you're 100% right. You, you might have half a million bucks in there today. But then if you're looking at the bank account, but if you're looking in your accounting platform or the data that underpins your business, you can see. Well, actually, of that 500, I've already spent 600.

And.

Yeah, I've got to really understand the full picture. Not just cash in the bank isn't profit of the business that's ready to spend. The one thing that I just really want to highlight is that communication piece and that understanding piece. And so, you know, we talk to businesses every day where, you know, we'd say that we'd explain to them whether it's a NFT situation on a vehicle and we'd explain that to them. And there was, you know, the nodding and the yes in. On the other side of the table. And if you have a conversation with them half an hour later, the fbt, they didn't know what it means, didn't know what it was, and so didn't, you know, didn't want to be the, the idiot in the room, so to speak, to say, actually don't know what that is. Can you explain it to me? I think we open with that. It's really understanding the obligations and the timing of that, mapping that out in the year so that you're always ahead of the game, you always know what's around the corner, and then you can plan for that accordingly. I think if we take anything away from this episode, it's about understanding and having that planning in place for you to be regardless of what stage of business you're up to is so that you can not only maintain good outcomes, but turn those good outcomes into great outcomes for you, yourself as a business owner and your business as a whole.

I'll be the stupidest person in the room. What's FTP?

FBT is fringe benefits tax.

Okay, sorry, I thought you said FTP. I was like, I don't know what that is.

Gotcha. But yeah, it's that, it's that understanding. It's that communication and having the right person by your side that you know that if you've got a question, they can answer it for you. They're accessible and they're. They're equally invested in, you know, managing your business alongside you, helping you manage your business proactively as opposed to retrospectively after the quarter's done or after the year's done. That's really important for helping you grow your business.

Yeah, I think it loops back to what we were talking about earlier with your accountant, your life partner and your business partner. You've got to be in a relationship essentially where you can ask them anything, no matter how stupid you may feel it is, because more information is going to make you, help you make better decisions.

That's right. And you know, we often wear the reporters of bad news. Right, because we're talking about tax and we're talking about, you know, you want, business owner might want to buy that, that ram ute and we might have other ideas as to what vehicle is. Is most appropriate at that time. I think we had that conversation on Monday, last week. Sam, with an owner, we do it from the right place we're coming from. You got to have an accountant that just that that tells you that information and gives you that and says, you know, we think the RAM is a bad decision. Here's an alternative. The owner decides to buy that RAM anyway. The next day we've done our job and they've made their decision. And that talks about, you know, what you said, Will, about the accountability side of things for the business owner. But the relationship is key. And so having a great relationship with your accountant, half a step towards having your financial health, your business, in really good shape.

Awesome. Sam, anything else to add?

Yeah, I was speaking to someone yesterday in Building construction that will come on as a new client, which is great. And he said, I hate maths. Our job there is to sort of just explain to them it's not about maths. Everyone thinks about tax and mathematics. It's not. It's about data. It's about data. And reporting is now the level of what they need to understand. Our job as advisors and accountants is to make sure the data is correct and then put it in a report that they can review to not take so much time and then they understand what that means. That's our, that's our role now. And we're along, you know, like Josh said, we're only a phone call away. And we prefer that. We prefer to be along their journey. We prefer to be their silent business partner because then they make better decisions like the RAM that Josh said instead of, you know, a lesser value vehicle like a BT or something, still does the job, but then in the long run will save them a lot of money.

Perfect. Well, Josh, Sam, thanks so much for coming on Professional Builders Secrets today. For anyone that wants to find out more about Falanger and Company will include that in the show notes. If you want to find out how you can squeeze more out of your accountants, go to Back to episode 128 where Josh and Sam are on as well. And also if you're an APB member, check out Flanger & Co. On our rewards directory where you can get a cash rebate using their services. But thanks for coming on.

Guys. Thanks. Appreciate your.

Time. Awesome. Big thank you to our listeners as well, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.