Lawler Partners Hospitality

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IS YOUR CLUB ACHIEVING OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE?

Clubs have been impacted by various legislative issues which have eroded traditional profitability of Clubs.

Achieving the best result from your operation is more important than ever before. Lawler Partners Hospitality regularly undertakes Operational Reviews for Clubs for the following reasons:

• To identify areas of underperformance and develop a Business Improvement Plan for the Club.
• To provide the Directors and management with a level of confidence that the Club can afford to fund capital works programs on a sustainable basis over the period of a loan. 
• To ensure Directors comply with the respective legislative requirements under the Corporations Law in regard to committing a club to large liabilities.

To arrange an independent review of your Club’s operations to ensure your Club is positioned to meet the challenges facing the industry, call Margaret Carew on 0409 999 909 or Peter McLean on 0425 266 120

 Lawler Partners Hospitality

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COMPLIANCE WITH ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING LEGISLATION

As you are aware, legislation was introduced into Australia by the Federal Government under the administration of Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) to fight AML/CTF in this Australia.

Any venue that has a poker machine or a TAB is required to adhere to the legislation which involves implementing various procedures and training at the venue and mandatory reporting to AUSTRAC.

During the first 15 months of the legislation AUSTRAC has not enforced the penalties for noncompliance, which could involve fines of up to $11 million for companies and $2.2million for individuals, but that period of grace has now expired.

Clubs Being Audited

AUSTRAC is now taking action and is stepping up its visits to businesses including Clubs, pubs, TAB agencies, casinos and bookmakers to ensure they are complying with the law.  A number of Clubs have now been subject to AUSTRAC Audits.  Those who have implemented the Lawler Partners package have received no further communication from AUSTRAC.

Please take time to read the attached article from AUSTRAC which highlights that organizations large and small are expected to comply with the legislation and those who don't may incur substantial penalty.

Lawler Partners has developed an AML Compliance package specifically tailored for the Club industry. For information on how Lawler Partners can assist your venue comply with the AML Legislation please contact Margaret Carew on 0409 999 909 or Peter Mc Lean on 0425 266 120.

 Lawler Partners Hospitality

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IS YOUR VENUE COMPLIANT WITH THE NEW FAIR WORK REQUIREMENTS?

While many venues have been struggling to address the new Fair Work requirements for the first payroll in January, a number of venues have opted to move directly to Enterprise Agreements to provide the necessary flexibility and as an easier method of ensuring compliance.

While we have been preparing Enterprise Agreements for venues for over 18 months we are now seeing draft Enterprise Agreements that have been put together without any appropriate financial modelling/taxation review to ascertain the impact of the terms of the agreement on the venue. For example, we have seen some EA's where that are likely to create increases in operating costs and increased FBT liabilities/compliance. 

 Lawler Partners Hospitality

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NEW ACCOUNTING STANDARD - Customer Loyalty Programmmes

Over recent years many venues have redesigned their loyalty programs to include complex whole of venue programs and tiered based loyalty systems. The introduction of these complex loyalty programs has been facilitated by gaming machine and system suppliers (Konami, IGT, Aristocrat, ebet, etc) developing quite sophisticated gaming/loyalty systems.

From 30 June 2009, a new accounting standard became operable that defines how venues are required to record the liability in respect of loyalty programs. As accounting standards have the force of law, it is incumbent on venues to adopt this new accounting standard.

Lawler Partners Hospitality

GOODS & SERVICES TAX (GST) - Are you paying too much?

The taxation of Registered & Licensed Clubs is very complex and often not well understood especially in relation to GST and mutuality.

We are completing tax reviews for registered clubs and those reviews where income tax has not been treated correctly has resulted in tax refunds of many hundreds of thousands of dollars and even well in excess of $1million for larger venues.