Ordinis Advisory

06/09/2026

30-Minute Business Challenge

This week, spend 30 minutes testing how well your business can explain its numbers.

Choose three significant balance sheet accounts.

For each one, identify:
• The balance
• The supporting evidence
• The person responsible
• The date of the last reconciliation
• Any unresolved items

You don't need to be preparing for an audit to do this.

A well-run business should understand and be able to support its significant financial balances throughout the year.

Thirty minutes now could save a lot of scrambling later.

03/09/2026

Try this before your auditor asks.

Choose one balance sheet account.

It could be:
• Bank
• Debtors
• Creditors
• Inventory
• Loans
• Fixed assets

Now ask:
• What makes up the balance?
• When was it last reconciled?
• Who is responsible for it?
• What evidence supports it?

Are there any unresolved items? Could someone else explain it if the usual person was away?

If those questions are difficult to answer, don't wait until the audit to find out.

Start with one account and work from there.

01/09/2026

Facing your first audit?

Hearing that your financial statements need to be audited can make business owners nervous.

But preparation doesn't need to be complicated.

Before the auditor arrives, ask:

✔ Can we explain our significant balance sheet accounts?

✔ Are our reconciliations up to date?

✔ Can we provide evidence for major transactions?

✔ Do we know who owns each area of financial information?

✔ Could someone else find the information if the usual person was unavailable?

If some of the answers are "not quite", that's useful to know now.

The first audit can highlight areas where a growing business has outgrown informal processes.

The objective isn't to panic and fix everything at once.

It's to understand where the gaps are and work through them in a sensible order.

Read the latest OA article for a practical guide to preparing for your first audit.

For a growing business, the words "your financial statements now need to be audited" can create an immediate sense of panic.Until this point, the business may have operated successfully with a relatively lean finance function. The accounts are prepared, tax returns are lodged, management reports are...

30/08/2026

30-Minute Business Challenge

This week's challenge is to identify one piece of information a major customer could ask the business to provide.

It could be:
• energy usage
• fuel consumption
• employee numbers
• insurance information
• safety records
• environmental information
• supplier information

Then spend 30 minutes answering:
• Where is it?
• Who owns it?
• How is it collected?
• Can it be reproduced?
• Could someone else find it?

You don't need to build a new reporting system.

The first step is simply finding out what the business already knows.

27/08/2026

Could your business answer a major customer's information request within 30 days?

Try this simple test.

Pick one piece of information a large customer might reasonably ask for.

For example: Annual electricity consumption.

Now ask:
• Where is the information?
• Who owns it?
• What period does it cover?
• Is it complete?
• Could someone else find it if that person was away?
• Could the business provide the same information next year?

If those questions are difficult to answer, that's useful information in itself.

It doesn't necessarily mean the business needs another system.

It may simply need clearer ownership and a better process.

That's governance in practice.

25/08/2026

Your business might not have to report climate information. But could your customer ask for it?

This is becoming an important question for growing SMEs.

A large customer may need information from its suppliers to support its own climate reporting.

That could mean being asked:
• How much electricity does the business use?
• What fuel does it consume?
• What are its major sources of emissions?
• Can it provide information about environmental impacts?

The good news is that preparing for these questions doesn't necessarily mean buying new software or building a sustainability department.

A sensible first step is understanding what information the business already has and where it is held.

• Finance may have electricity and fuel costs.
• Operations may have production and waste information.
• Procurement may have supplier information.

The information may already exist. It just may not be organised.

Our latest article explains why this is becoming a governance and commercial issue for SMEs.

Climate reporting can sound like an issue for large corporates. For many SMEs, the immediate reaction is that the new Australian climate reporting requirements do not apply to them, so there is nothing they need to do.That is only part of the story.An SME may not have a direct obligation to prepare....

23/08/2026

30-Minute Business Challenge

Choose one system your business already uses.

Spend 30 minutes answering these five questions:

1. What problem was the system originally intended to solve?

2. Is it actually solving that problem?

3. What time or capacity has it created?

4. What decisions are better because of it?

5. What are employees still doing outside the system?

You may discover that your system is delivering more value than you realised. You may also discover that the business is paying for functionality it isn't using.

Both are useful findings.

The objective isn't to have better technology. It's to have a better business.

20/08/2026

A quick test before your next systems investment

Before approving a new system, ask:

What will we be able to do afterwards that we cannot do now?

Be specific.

Will it:

✔ Reduce administration?

✔ Increase capacity?

✔ Improve customer service?

✔ Give leadership better information?

✔ Reduce risk?

✔ Allow the business to grow without adding overhead at the same rate?

If the answer is simply:

"It will make things easier,"

keep asking questions.

A good systems investment should create a measurable improvement in how the business operates.

18/08/2026

Is your business measuring the right return from its systems?

When considering new technology, it is easy to focus on the price tag.

But what happens after implementation?

Could the business:
• take on more customers without adding the same level of administration?
• give managers better information sooner?
• reduce reliance on one person who knows how everything works?
• spend less time reconciling information?
• identify problems before they become expensive?

These are all potential returns from a systems investment.

Time saved is only valuable when the business knows what to do with that time.

Our latest article looks at how growing businesses can think about systems ROI beyond the software licence and implementation cost.

Growing businesses invest heavily in systems. ERP platforms. CRM systems. payroll platforms. project management software. business intelligence tools. workflow automation.The business case often looks straightforward. The system costs $X. Implementation costs $Y. The expected saving is $Z.But this a...

16/08/2026

30-Minute Business Challenge

Choose one repetitive task your team would like to automate.

Before researching software, spend 30 minutes answering:

What problem are we actually trying to solve?

Then ask:
• Does the process need to exist?
• Which parts actually add value?
• Where do errors occur?
• Who owns the outcome?
• What happens when something falls outside the normal workflow?
• What will the business do with the capacity created?

You may discover that the best solution is automation.

You may discover that the process needs to be simplified first.

Or you may discover that the process doesn't need to exist at all.

The best automation is sometimes the process you no longer need to automate.