Business guides
Start
Starting your first business? We're here to help

We want your business to thrive. We understand that you need to invest time in planning your operations and determining your vision. This will help you decide where you want to take your business it in the short, medium and long term as well as how to get the most out of the resources you have.

Our business guides

How to start a business

Define your business vision

Writing a business plan

The How to start a business guide covers the essentials for starting a new business. Topics include:

  • Preparing to open your business
  • Registering your business name
  • Business structure
  • Your business plan
  • Start-up and on-going costs
  • Your finance options
  • Taxation, legal and compliance checklist
They also cover a range of topics including:
  • Planning, people, cash flow, growth, investments and expanding into e-business
  • How to conduct your own free business health check
  • Understanding business better, so you can take your business where you want it to go.

Business planning

The following sites offer useful tips, templates, links and other information:

Business licences

There are Business Licence Information Services in each capital city which can tell you what sort of permit, licence or registration your business will need.

State Governments

Each state and territory government provides information and resources for businesses:

Grow
If you're looking to grow or just stay on track, we can help

Business guides

Have you moved from being an employee to a business owner without having time to learn the necessary business management skills? Here's a selection of tools and information to help set your business up for success.

Running a business

Keeping on track with KPIs

Effective time management

Systemising your business

Managing people

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re starting, your staff will always be one of your most important assets. Managing them effectively can ensure that your business runs efficiently. Building a team and fostering a good work ethic requires strong leadership qualities and knowledge of basic HR practices.

Useful link on managing people:

To help you we also have the following human resourcing guides:

7 easy steps to recruitment

Writing your employment T&Cs

Checklist for new starters

Effective delegation

Rules for running team meetings
Promote
Increased sales and profitability could be around the corner with our help

Working out the best way to market your business can be tricky. We’ve pooled expertise from ActionCOACH to put together information about developing an effective marketing strategy. We cover boosting customer loyalty, low-cost advertising using direct mail and online marketing.

Marketing templates

Marketing plan template

Target market worksheet

Flyer templates

Letter templates

Marketing articles

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Selling online could help increase your sales

Online trading, or e-commerce, has grown enormously in recent times as customers have come to trust the financial security of trading over the internet. In fact, the online shopping industry is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
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Why your business needs a website

In a world where everything seems to moving online, you may be surprised to hear that the vast majority of Australian small businesses don't have a website.

Useful links

  • Austrade is the Australian government trade commission, providing information and assistance for exporters and companies wanting to do business in Australia.
Cashflow
A simple 3-step approach to manage your business cash flow

Even a profitable business can fail because of poor cash flow, which almost all businesses experience from time to time. Managing your cashflow is critical to running a successful business and we want to see your business flourish and grow. To help you run things more efficiently, we’ve assembled a range of information to guide cashflow management.

Our simple three-step approach

1. Business projection

Read an article on keeping on track with KPIs.

2. Getting paid sooner

Invoice promptly, and actively manage your debtors as soon as payment is due. To get more cash coming into the business you can also consider:

  • Reducing your terms of trade so you're paid sooner (e.g. offer a discount for fast payment).
  • Increasing your net profit, by either increasing your sales price or reducing your costs of sale or operating expenses.

3. Keeping the business running

There's a range of finance options to help you when cash flow is tight. You can use business credit cards to cover short-term cash shortfalls. Try our BusinessVantage Visa® Credit Card.

  • An overdraft, which can be secured or unsecured.
  • A line of credit (e.g. using the equity in your home or business).
  • Keeping an emergency cash reserve in a high interest, at call account.

How can we help?

St.George can help your business with cash flow in a number of ways, including: