Chartered accountants play a central role in advising small businesses on their cash flow, profitability and meeting their tax obligations to ensure they can survive and grow.

“Chartered accountants are fantastic at helping small business,” says Susan Franks CA, Australian leader – tax, superannuation and financial advice at CA ANZ. “Small businesses often treat their accountant as their CFO, and look to them for advice to help sustain and grow their businesses.”

Small businesses owe large amounts of tax. In Australia, the total debt is more than A$45 billion, while IR’s 2024–25 annual report shows total tax debt has reached NZ$9.3 billion in New Zealand.

CAs can help small businesses organise their finances, so they can meet their tax debts.

“Our members can help with small business cash flow. For example, members can help small businesses consider what costs they can decrease, whether they can increase the prices, whether they can take advantage of credit terms and whether they're carrying the right amount of stock,” Franks says.

In Australia it has become even more important that small businesses stay on top of their tax debts because the government has legislated that the general interest charge – interest the ATO charges on late tax payments – is no longer tax deductible. This essentially increases the cost of ‘borrowing’ from the ATO. Accountants have an important role in encouraging their clients to explore better cash flow management practices and potentially cheaper alternative sources of funding.

eInvoicing supports faster payment times

Accountants can also help small businesses improve their cash flow with the introduction of eInvoicing.

eInvoicing involves a direct exchange of information between buyers and sellers via the secure Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) network.

“It eliminates the need for paper or email PDF invoices and it reduces manual data entry. It improves accuracy, security and processing,” says Lydia Tsen CA, CA ANZ’s New Zealand government affairs leader and acting business reform leader.

“The idea is that eInvoicing is meant to reduce friction and cost for business, so that means you can have faster payment outcomes,” Tsen says.

Governments in Australia and New Zealand are trying to encourage large businesses to pay small businesses faster because payment times from large businesses are a significant drag on SME cash flow. Consequently, they are encouraging these businesses to adopt eInvoicing to speed up payment times.

For example, New Zealand government agencies have signed up for eInvoicing to help incentivise the businesses that engage with them to sign up too.

Accountants should be confident they understand how eInvoicing works, so they can help their clients adopt it, Tsen says. Cloud accounting systems such as MYOB and Xero already support eInvoicing.

Alongside an eInvoicing regime, Australia has a mandated payment times reporting regime. eInvoicing can play an important role in payment times reporting because the data is ready and available.

Policy reform and practical SME support

Another way CAs can assist their SME clients is with CA ANZ’s Australian small business – profitability and risk benchmarks report.

Released in 2024, the report is a valuable tool for CAs wanting to advise their small business clients on their profitability and cash flow. “It’s that strategic lens on the particular risks for this particular size business and this particular sector,” Tsen says.

Small businesses can compare themselves with similar SMEs and see if there are areas where they could improve.

“Let's say the organisation or the client is not performing as well relative to those in their sector, or relative to those of a similar size,” Tsen says. “I would expect that would prompt a CA to think about things like: what is driving that profitability? What is driving their cash flow? Could eInvoicing, as an example, be something that they could adopt to support more efficient and transparent cash flow?”

CA ANZ is currently working on a new version of the report which will be released later in 2026.

Meanwhile, in Australia, CA ANZ is lobbying the government to make the one-off A$20,000 instant asset write-off permanent, so SMEs won’t have to manage depreciation schedules and the associated paperwork.

Taken together, these efforts reflect a broader focus: combining practical tools with policy reform to ease compliance burdens and strengthen SME performance. With small businesses forming the backbone of Australia and New Zealand’s economies, it is essential that the profession continues to support this sector’s resilience and long-term profitability.