Saturday 14 July 2018

Putting the cart before the horse

Instead of working on my DFP assessment tasks, yesterday I compared various business bank accounts that might be suitable for a small start-up. I found that most banks are charging $10 per month for their basic business account, and most have very limited features (for example, the St George one provide a debit card). In the end I decided to apply for a business account with BankWest, as I already have a CC account with them so I didn't need to provide any additional 100-pt identification information. I just logged in using my normal ID and password, and had to provide my ABN then pick which of the business names I was opening this account for. I also selected the option to get a debit Mastercard on the account, and a 'token' so I will be able to authenticate and transfer transaction data into an accounting package (Xero and MYOB are supported). The account has no minimum opening balance or monthly fee, and the debit card and security token should arrive in 5-10 business days. The next step will be to confirm if the data export is compatible with the basic admin module in Midwinter (the Financial Planner software package required by the AFSL that I intend to become an authorised representative of).

I also looked up options available for accepting client payments - it looks like the cheapest option initially will be to setup a Paypal merchant account (free) and just pay the 2.6%+$0.30 fee per online transaction initially. If my business succeeds at some stage it will be worth getting a 'pay here' card reader (A$99) and benefit from a lower (1.95%) transaction processing fee. Again, I'll have to check if the Midwinter admin module works with the Paypal invoicing option and so forth.

This morning I spend a bit of time fiddling with DNS settings to get the domain name I had registered a few years ago with Dotster to 'point' to a test index.html page on my hosting account with GoDaddy. And then wasted a bit more time looking up 'best financial planning website designs'. Quite enjoyable, but not getting my DFP assignments done ;)

Oh well, back to the textbook...

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