In previous blogs I have written, I have from time to time mentioned something called Fringe Benefits. Some of you who have attended Curtin University in Perth might know Fringe Benefits as the hair salon on campus, however in the accounting world, I am referring to Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT). With the current market of finding good employees and providing benefits for them to stay or benefits made to business owners under a Company or Trust, the topic of FBT isn’t considered more frequently than it should and sometimes business owners are caught paying additional taxes before they realise it. As the FBT year has now finished for the year, I wanted to give a general overview and explore if you may have a tax obligation with the ATO that needs to be actioned now and/or what you can do to plan for the next FBT year.

There are the necessities of bank funding and compliance, using the equity in your pharmacy to remove debt securities from your family home, determining a value for selling, partnership equity changes, sometimes for tax reasons, and sometimes unfortunately for Family Court reasons. Now some pharmacy owners will take a valuation report, go straight to the $value and ignore everything in between. Some will aggressively try to persuade me to change my opinion. Others think they know valuation theory more than me (some do by the way). Some will go through the valuation with a fine-tooth comb and focus on each word and sentence but are so respectful and balanced with it (yes, you know who you are).

When it comes to pharmacists and marketing, I often come across this common assumption that it's all a bit wishy-washy and tough to keep tabs on. Sure I get it – from the outside it might seem like all we do in marketing is whip up snappy captions for videos and scroll through social media. But you know what? What I get excited about in marketing is the data. Call me biased, but surrounded by accountants as I am, I believe that good data is the key to making solid decisions. So, today, I'm excited to dive into some analytics through different avenues that I think are crucial to track in a pharmacy setting from a marketing perspective. Let's get into it!

Over six months have passed since the implementation of sixty-day dispensing (60 DD). In a recent LinkedIn video, John noted that he now has over six months of post-policy data for pharmacy valuations. He mentioned that the impact hasn't been as significant as initially anticipated, emphasising that it's still early days and the pharmacy landscape is ever evolving.

It's been a while since community pharmacies in sunny WA started offering UTI prescribing. As a strong advocate for the full scope of practice, I welcomed this stride in providing accessible healthcare for our community. However, recently, I've observed a lack of awareness among the public regarding pharmacists and UTIs. Many are still unaware that this service is available at their local pharmacy. I've had more than three conversations with family members and friends who were surprised to learn about this offering.