Business and Money Tips

Everyone knows the PIC ( Productivity and Innovation Credit ) scheme, which started in 2010, will end in 2017.  You can read our 7 blogs on this PIC by searching for 'PIC' at our blog ( Successful Sales Strategies is on 11 Sep 2014)  Today I will talk about 5 finer points of PIC that most people may not take note: PIC Bonus will definitely expire by December 2014 or your financial year end in 2014, WHICHEVER IS EARLIER.  There is no extension to PIC Bonus scheme All PIC Cash Claims must be done using online form and no other manual forms will be accepted from 1 August 2014 onwards. The IRAS site to get the form, plus how to use the form are found here   Equipment List: you need to follow the list of equipment by industry and any equipment not found in the list will need to apply for approval first. Click here for details Training fees: you can only claim PIC for training done for employees. Employees include part and full time employees, local and fo...

Note: How to be a Better Manager starts from 4 Aug 2014 Training is now considered no longer a luxury but a necessity.  It is said that if you don't train your people to be good, you're training your people to be bad .  This is because everyday there are so many bad influence - from market, the media, Facebook, contractors etc that many people have lamented that today's workforce does not possess the core values that workers used to have.  There are 7 ways that you can train your people: You let them learn on the job - that is, purely from work experience. This method is costless in terms of your time, but is extremely costly as mistakes made at work have many repercussions later on.  Highly not recommended, but still beats having no training at all (i.e. you never let them make any mistakes).  You get a senior staff to train them . This On-the-job training is the most common method.   PIC funds up to $10,000 a year for such internal training. ...

The first thing that comes into people's mind when you ask them to increase sales is "Where do I advertise?"  Next is to increase the salaries of salespeople.  After that, you've got to increase the marketing budget and so on.  They are all costly ways with no sure guarantee of success.  No wonder they say many people would prefer to not increase sales for fear of wasting money!  It doesn't have to be this way.   Companies can always increase their sales without incurring a single cent.  In fact, many of them have realized that not only there is no cost involved, you can actually make money from increasing sales .  Here's how it works: You send your salespeople for trainin g that teaches them how to increase sales by say, 61.1%.  Since the Singapore government funds 60% of the training cost under PIC Productivity and Innovation Credit, your net cost of the training is 40%. But under the PIC Bonus scheme, your company will receive a...

The reason people make mistake is that they are unaware of the mistake.  But if you tell them and they still make the same mistake, that 2nd mistake is no longer a mistake but a belief.  Mistakes are not the same as Fraud in that they are all made unintentionally and are all 'honest mistakes'. When you make mistakes in PIC (Productivity and Innovation Credit) claims, you won't get fined but the IRAS will just simply delay the claim process.  So the more mistakes you make, the longer it takes for you to get your money .  The top 11 mistakes make in PIC claims are (in order of frequency) are: Wrong Y/A (Year of Assessment).  YA is always one year faster than this year, so for this year 2014 claims, it should be YA 2015 Include GST when the business is GST registered.  You have to take out the GST portion as you're already getting back the input GST in your monthly GST returns Include non-qualifying amounts , like warranty, consumables, finance c...

Unknown to many people, the PIC (Productivity and Innovation Credit) Scheme was tightened on 21 February 2014.  Effective from 2015 to 2017, all claiming businesses must have 3 CPF employees (excluding the directors and shareholders) every month , instead of only the qualifying month (i.e. March, June, September and December) as in the past. As for the popular PIC Bonus Scheme, it shall  expire for financial years ending in 2014 .  So if your company's financial year-end is on 31 March 2014, the last month for you to receive the PIC bonus is March 2014.  This is because although the PIC Scheme was extended till 2017, the PIC Bonus is not extended , thus it will end as planned in 2014. For those that are not familiar, the PIC Bonus is automatically given out to companies as long as their PIC claims exceed $5,000 in a year.  The PIC Bonus is given out in cash (not tax deduction) up to $15,000.  This PIC Bonus, unlike the PIC Cash Payouts, is taxable . ...

With the PIC Grant , companies can claim up to $10,000 a year on internal training, i.e. their own people conducting training for their own people.  A good example would be HR Department doing Induction for new staff.  Other than that, it has become something as common as buying stationery when companies send their staff for external training .  This is because under the PIC Bonus scheme, companies get 160% of what they spend on training.  Before you sign up for your next public course , or get the trainer to come to your premise to conduct an in-house training , make sure that your next training program has the following 5 key attributes: Mix New School with Old School .  If what the trainer is doing is to replay old school principles, there won't be much value in today's context as the world is changing rapidly.  A phrase we often use in our training in describing what needs to be today in 2014 is a "time tested tactics blended with time relevant con...

Over the past few days, I poured over 20+ pages at IRAS website and managed to sniff out the 7 changes to this PIC (Productivity and Innovation Credit) Scheme .  Know them and you'll be able to take advantage of them.   If you are ignorant, you will lose out at least $375,000 .  The 7 Key Changes are: PIC is now extended to 2017 (originally to end in 2014).  This means that companies have more time to plan and take full advantage of this very general and generous scheme; Cap for Tax Deduction claims are now increased from $400,000 to $600,000 a year, effective for years 2013 to 2017.  This new scheme is called PIC + .  For cash payout, the cap remains at $100,000 per year; Website design and creation, including the registration of domain names, now qualify for IT claims, also effective for years 2013 to 2017.  Note that Search Engine Optimization (SEOs) will also qualify for this if SEOs are done as part and parcel of website creation . This m...

Whenever I ask business owners the question, 'What is the purpose of a business?' I often get the following response: 'To make a profit!’ That answer pinpoints why so many businesses struggle to survive, let alone grow. That answer is centred on the desires of the business owner, not on the needs and desires of their customers. Imagine walking up to a potential customer and saying, 'Hello. My purpose is to make a nice, big profit from you today!'   That would be what we call a 'repelling' action, not an 'attracting' action.  Here's a much more powerful and profitable definition of the purpose of a business: To attract and serve the needs of as many customers as possible at an acceptable profit. Did you notice where the profit came in? Not at the beginning where most people put it, but at the end. Profit is the 'result' of how well you serve your customers needs. Focus on serving your customers better than your competition --...