The ATO has an online learning platform designed by small businesses for small businesses: Essentials to strengthen your small business.
Essentials to strengthen your small business provides free and professional courses to support small businesses improve their tax, super and business management knowledge, covering:
- Business lifecycle stages – idea, start-up, day-to-day, change and exit
- Reporting obligations – for example, Goods and services tax (GST), Fringe benefits tax (FBT), businesses with employees, businesses who pay contractors
- Learning needs – what good record keeping is, how to improve cash flow or grow the business
- Other circumstances – for example, help setting up a business, using business money and assets, checking if the business is viable or help with closing a small business.
Support available
- Select a course or courses relevant to your members' needs from Essentials to strengthen your small business. There over 30 short courses to choose from. Keep an eye out as new courses will continue to be added.
- Follow up the online learning with a masterclass, an opportunity for members to delve deeper into the course content, ask questions relevant to their business needs and hear from others.
- Masterclasses are created as closed sessions specifically for your clients.
- Masterclasses are held via webinar, and typically take 45 minutes
- We can host as many Masterclasses as you think beneficial to your small business clients.
Take advantage of the short site tour video to familiarise yourself with the site’s useful features: Site tour Essentials to strengthen your small business
The following masterclasses are available for you to select from:
- Cash flow for small business success - supports the following 2 online courses, Cash flow for small business success and Strategies for improving your cash flow.
- Claiming deductions for your home-based business - supports online course of same name.
- Claiming small business tax deductions - supports online course of same name.
- Closing your small business - supports online course of same name.
- Considering your small business viability - supports online course of same name.
- Growing your small business - supports online course of same name.
- Goods and services tax (GST) - supports online course of same name.
- Hiring and paying workers - supports the following 2 online courses, Hiring workers and Paying workers.
- Recording business income and expenses - supports online course of same name.
- Record keeping - supports online course of same name.
- Reporting payments made to contractors - supports online course of same name.
- Starting a small business - supports the following 2 online courses, Starting a small business and Setting up your small business.
- Super guarantee employer obligations - supports online course of same name.
- Using your business money and assets - supports online course of same name. (This course/masterclass is targeted towards company or trust structures. Sole traders and partnerships would only gain benefit from undertaking the online course and attending the masterclass if they were thinking of changing their business structure to a company or trust).
More masterclasses will be developed in the future.
