This COVID pandemic has proven to be a boom for shoplifters. The current big problem is that it's harder to identify shoplifters as they tend to wear a mask.

Once they have the mask, a CCTV camera often can no longer be used to identify people to the authorities. Nor can camera photos in front of the shop or Facebook posts shame people.

Note: A retailer can ask a person to remove your face mask to confirm their identity. Yet, the person does not have to do it.

The Australian Retail Association has assembled a list of current state government support packages.

There, you will find the link to the relevant state government support packages. 

One objection I am hearing and seeing is that one state government is extremely hesitant to pay the awards owed. People are going to the state ombudsman. So if you are rejected for a grant, I suggest that you make some further enquiries.

Click here for details of the list.

It is worth a quick look to see what you might be qualified to get.

Thinking that you need such a policy to combat majors in your area? 

Consider what price and price match policies you are thinking of matching? 

A person goes to one of my clients, shows an advertisement and asks for a price match on a product. Looking at the advertisement, my client notices, it is in a different state. He then remarked how much is the delivery going to cost from Queensland?

Now should he price match?

After this came up for discussion, I decided to investigate these pricing guarantees. What I found was interesting. It is something that every business person needs to consider for their policy.

As a rule, they only apply:

* To products that their competitors have in stock today. 

* To a specific region

* It often only applies to selected competitors.

Have a chew and let me know what you think your policy should be?

The Australian government ruled out a "no jab, no job" policy, so leaving the decision to employers on whether they required employees to get vaccinated. Few employees were keen to get into this mess.

Now the Victorian government stepped in. Melbourne, Victoria, has earned a dubious distinction of being the most locked-down city under COVID in the world. Compared to the rest of Australia, we have low vaccination rates (49.9% vs 53.8% Australia-wide) and low testing rates with many blaming bad public policy choices e.g. a history of mucked up quarantines, weather or bad luck.

That motivated the Victorian Government in a surprise move. It announced mandatory vaccination for workers who are not working from home with few exceptions. They must have their first COVID-19 vaccine dose by Friday, 15 October. From 26 November 2021, this will increase to having the two doses or a medical exception. Currently, all Victorian businesses will need the employees to show proof of vaccinations by these dates.

Putting aside the legality of this, which will be decided here in the Supreme Court, I really don't know how everyone will be completely vaccinated by the 26 November target, even for those who want to get vaccinated. We are doing 70% more vaccinations than NSW now so the vaccination hubs often need a month before people can get their spot. Between the shots, many will want the recommended six-week gap between shots.

So how can the Victorian government make its deadline? 

Where does it leave us when the deadline comes up? 

I would make plans now, even if I was *NOT* in Victoria!

The big problem is that many are refusing to get vaccinated. What happens if they demand to come to work? Few employees want to be involved in a test case. There are plenty of demonstrations about this in Victoria. Although they all claim they will be non-violent demonstrations at the start, they all get violent. 

So it should be an exciting couple of months on how this goes down, this will keep us busy during the boredom of lock-down here.

Vaccination rates are hitting 70%. Soon they should get close to 80%, which is the least that the politicians in Australia are demanding to open up the country. What is the situation for retailers now? 

Does anyone know?

The fact is that employers are required and responsible for making a safe environment for people to work, shop in and enter! 

So some employers are now publicly starting to demand that people applying must have proof of COVID Vaccination for jobs in their job advertisements. As you can see, these jobs listed here have nothing to do with medical, old age or childminding services which has been the case of so many legal arguments now.

I am not sure that this is legal. My understanding is that it's okay to ask, but someone does not have to tell you whether they have had the jab. Now it's clear that many employers are demanding proof.

What is the situation soon with existing employees?

Also, what is going to happen with customers entering the shop is unclear. 

An official in a shopping centre told me that he expects that everyone entering the shopping centre will soon need to be cleared first. If so, then unvaccinated people without a decent excuse will not be allowed into the centre. So your employee may not be able to come into your shop to work. If so you may be in your rights to dismiss them as they cannot work. That is going to cause a problem guaranteed. 

These issues need to be cleared up.
 

If your store has a Facebook page, please consider the recent High Court ruling. 

Now, if you post or share content on this Facebook page and allow comments, you may be responsible for the statements made even if you do not know of these comments.

One solution is that you can disable comments, but this is not what any of us want to do, so we are introducing on our Facebook page more surveillance in case.

Under the new defamation laws in some states, you must get a "concerns notice", and only then do they have 15 days before they can file a lawsuit. So you get some time to plead your case. You may want to check on this in your state. However, even if this is true in your state, I am unsure what happens if the affected person is in Western Australia and you are in NSW. In which case, you may not be given a grace period. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot answer these questions.

But, if you receive one of these notices, I firmly recommend that you take action.

When anything happens, many so-called experts are arguing on the different sides to any issue. Most will be wrong. Much of this is because these experts have an agenda.

Today, while I was looking at the Powerball figures for today, see above Lotto, it seems pretty good.

Lotto is a product that our system can let the retailer directly scan into. So I then decided to see what people were saying a few years ago about the state-controlled Lotto. This became an excellent example of bad decision making.

The big fear to my clients then, was that Lottoland, if not stopped, it would replace Lotto. However, these experts would help prevent this. But really, why stop it? Then Lottoland and Lotto were fighting it, and politicians claimed that they were concerned for my clients. A better strategy would be for my clients to investigate this as a possible opportunity. Lottoland was making some nice promises to my clients. Lotto also made some much vaguer promises. As it turned out, Lottoland was not stopped. The experts failed. Soon, my clients, I think, were seen as irrelevant, so got nothing. 

Google Trends gave a tremendous and highly accurate tool for doing that free. So looking at Google Trends, was Lottoland the significant threat to my clients? *NO* it was the move to Lotto online that was the threat. Now looking at the data, the answer is still *No*. Interest in Lottoland has gone backwards in five years. 

Nice example. 

I urge you to use the Google Trend tool to see what the public thinks and make better decisions. Using it, you can see what the public wants, use data to base your retail strategy. It lets small businesses get free consumer information instantly. What is invaluable is its ability to search for competing brands. You can then compare products. Then use this information to improve your offerings and so generate more sales.

This all deserves serious consideration.

For a youtube on how to use Google Trend, please click here.

They say that a businessperson has two happy moments—one when they buy and one when they sell. I am not so sure as I have had much good time between.

Here are some further points that you need to consider.

Be prepared.

Often what I see is that a sale is being held up because someone is waiting for figures. Sometimes it cannot be helped as you will be asked for some strange pieces of information. It would be best if you were on hand to answer these questions.

Note how you say it may be more important than what you say, as potential sales can fail for the most trivial reasons.

The business broker is not really on your side. Some are good and some are bad. One point, they all act like they are good.

Then there are two critical people; either can kill the deal.

The buyer's accountant will review your figures. That person is putting his professional career on the line. They sometimes are sued if it does not work out the sale to the new buyer. I have often seen a potential buyer get the figures, go to the accountant, then be told it isn't worth it, and the deal dies. Make sure you give figures they like.

In the bank, there are two people. The first earns a lot of money, and it is their job to get the deal. The second earns even more, and it is their job to make sure no deal goes through. If the buyer cannot get the money, the sale will not happen. The bank is not lending the money till the i's is dotted and the t crossed. So before the deal goes through, you will need to sign a form that everything works and everything is there. For example, there are legal cases over computers that did not work or were there when the buyer looked at the place and are no longer there. Generally, the buyer wins. These arguments often are not trivial. What you think of a working POS System may differ from what a lawyer and/or judge may think.

Keep a paper trail and take plenty of photos of everything, I mean everything.

It is worth checking that if you have a retail or commercial lease over your business in Victoria, the new laws about your lease. Its state government now makes commercial landlords provide rent relief which is linked to their tenants' fall in turnover.

Say your business lease is $1,000/week and say your turnover is 30% lower than before COVID struck. Now your business only needs to pay 70% of the lease or $700. Of that $700, half $350 can be deferred for now. 

Click here for details.

See how you go!

Unfortunately, it does not appear that such schemes are available in the rest of Australia

A lot of people are not very helpful when trying to get them to scan QR codes. Some of my clients were bluntly told, no often with some colourful language added. Here, is a new twist, a man of 70 with Dupuytren’s contracture, which is like Parkinson or arthritis except it affects the hand. This meant that he could not fill use the QR scanning codes on his mobile or fill out the paper form. You can read up on what happened here.

From this, it appears that a bit more diplomacy here would have been in order. 

Still I do not know what to say here, the fine for not getting the details are in Victoria about $9,000.

Note if required, you can fill out the appropriate form on behalf of the customer.

When buying or selling a business, consider the ownership of the computers and/or software.

It is not so simple as the business is likely running the software under a license that grants them the right to use the software, however, they probably do not own it. So they will have conditions attached to their use. Find out what they are! We provide on request the details, a change of ownership form and account details to prospective buyers on request, provided that the old owner agrees. 

 There can be other issues too.

- The new owner may experience problems due to privacy laws, so the software supplier cannot often help the new owner if there are problems until it confirms the new ownership. If the changeover is done at the weekend, this can be a real problem. 

- Is the system under subscription? If so, what the new owner is buying is nothing but a legal obligation to pay. 

I was upset over what a competitor of ours stated in what seems to attack us. 

The background is that in Victoria now, as in most of Australia from the 30th April, in public places, you must use to track people for COVID, an automated system linked into the VIC state medical system. This means that manual and many backyard systems are no longer acceptable. I notified VANA on Friday to advise them that they should tell their members that many of their COVID tracking Forms on their windows in the front need changing. The system which I recommend that their members use is guesttracker. This is because it is approved. In practice, it has proven easy to use. Plus, it is free. It also has a growth path if they want to pay a small fee with some handy functions. However, my competitor immediately released a notification that retailers can take down their COVID tracking notice off the front window because it is not required in Victoria for retailers. I think this advice they gave is probably wrong.

Firstly I want to say here that the enemy is not the State Government, nor the health inspectors but COVID.  We are all in this together. 

Okay, the relevant document they quoted is here which is from the Chief Health Officer of Victoria operating under his emergency power.

In this document, it states bluntly that.

So anyone in your shop for more than 15 minutes except as stated in clause (9) must be recorded. Note where it states customers, and maintenance and delivery workers. {emphasis added}

Now clause (9) states.

So only when there are customers, only where it is not practical to do so {emphasis added} are you exempt under 7. 

A customer in your shop where they rule it is practical to do so must be registered. Also the maintenance and delivery workers above have to be registered. So would say a sales rep from a card company if they came in for 15 minutes to say hello.

Failing to do this, for a person in Victoria, can get you 120 penalty points which is about a $20,000 fine. If you run your shop as a company, you can be up for about $100,000. 

I believe that this situation is similar in the rest of Australia too.  

So our advice is to keep your COVID QR tracking sheets up but make sure you use an approved system for your state.

If you in the Tyro outage and have suffered a financial pact. I urge you to register with Tyro your complaint if you have not done so yet. This is even if you have registered with someone else your claim. 

Tyro is now attempting to rectify the issue.

What you will then need to do first is a guestimate of the damage you have suffered. If you think it's low and most will be low as most of our affected clients got new terminals reasonably quickly then you may want to consider doing a quick settlement. This is a little more than clicking a button and signing a form.

The advantage of doing this is you get finality and fast compensation.

If you think you should get more than this, you will need proof. Then you will need to fill out a bit of documentation. This probably needs an accountant to review your losses and fill out the details.   If so, include in these costs the accountant's fees. 

If you are not happy with either of these solutions and want more options, please let me know.

Business Interruption Insurance pandemic

Many insurance policies now have a business interruption clause. They sell it to cover a business if it has to close because it cannot function, e.g. fire or flood. Many people thought it covered their business over COVID with this clause. Well, it appears that some insurance companies dispute whether COVID is covered here. A meeting was held by newsagents, to which I was invited about the knock backs on claims by insurance companies on their business claim here. This problem, of course, is not only affecting newsagents. I would say almost all retail was affected. 

The situation now is unclear. We had a case on this in the NSW High Court. The insurance company lost, but it was both a narrow claim and it probably will be appealed to the High Court. The problem is that many insurance policies contain several exclusions. In particular, here for infectious diseases and the question of whether COVID is a *quarantinable* disease. This is yet to be finalised in court. Considering the cost to the insurance companies, I am sure they will test every bit of it.

The other issue is that onus on proving the value of your loss will rest with you. I hope you have your financial figures and documents in order.

Still, if you operated a business covered then under business interruption insurance policy, you have a valid claim even if the insurance company has knocked it back.

MOTO payments are EFTPOS transactions where the payment card used is not present. It is often used for payments made over the phone.

For many of my clients, this is a major source of income.

Besides having higher fees than regular credit card transactions, they can also be trouble as yesterday one of my clients found out. As the card was not there when the transaction occurred when the customer complained, it was my client's responsibility to prove that the actual cardholder authorised this transaction, This was impossible to do. A chargeback was done. The transaction cancelled. The goods sent are lost.

The problem is that for many of my clients there is no alternation but to accept MOTO payments

If so here are some tips that the bank sent, that might help by giving you some warning signs, so I thought I would share them here:

1. If the delivery address does not look right
2. Overseas orders
3. Orders from people claiming that they cannot be contacted
4. If a transaction is big or has orders for large quantities of the same item that do not seem to fit.
5. If the same person starts giving you in a short time many orders
6. If the orders are required urgently

What can I say but be careful? Accepting MOTO payments is a business decision.

You may be responsible for people's libellous comments on your shop's Facebook page.  You can be in trouble as it is on your page, the Supreme Court New South Wales has decided here.

Actionable tips

Set up Blocking Words

When people include a word you've blocked in a post or comment on your Page, it won't appear on your Page.

a) To block words:

1. Click Settings at the top of your Page.
2. From General, click Page Moderation.
3. Type the words you want to block, separated by commas. You'll need to add the singular and plural forms of the word you want to block.

You use what I do this list here and import it as a CSV. 

Now Save Changes.

b) Profanity Filter

You can block different degrees of profanity from appearing on your Page. Facebook will then block the many reported offensive words and phrases by its community.

1. Click Settings at the top of your Page.

2. From General, click Profanity Filter.

3. Select Strong.

Now Save Changes.

c) Now if such comments still come on your Facebook, then go into your Facebook page ASAP and delete them. According to the Supreme Court New South Wales, it must be done ASAP.

Here is the ATO requirements for JobKeeper [Link was removed]

For most of you, the big issue is the turnover test. You need to be 30% down on the same period last year. There appears to be no pattern, some of our clients are way over last year's figures, and some are way down.

But if you are eligible, you must set it up in your payroll system. Here are some helpful links from our clients' most popular payroll programs.

MYOB {removed}

QUICKBOOKS

XERO

Currently, like everyone else we are monitoring the situation, from what we understand only schools, aged care homes, pubs, restaurants, cafes, casinos, sporting venues and cinemas will shut down across Australia. All other businesses are not affected only the ones directly listed.

This has already affected many of our clients in:

In one centre, several of our clients were told to close in particular

Fishing and outdoors businesses
Bike shops

Some were allowed to remain open just for trade only.

Garden centres
Plumbers supplies
Produce and farm supply businesses

Some like our client in the same complex in Health Food Shop were allowed to remain open unrestricted.

As far as we are concerned here, we are open for business.

It is a modern business nightmare. You put all this effort and money into your business, and suddenly you find your hard-earned reputation is attacked by some anonymous person online. 

We have had this problem. We were selected in the newsagency industry to do the trials of the new Australian government social security cards. Out of the blue, a whole lot of people suddenly attacked us clearly who were not clients of ours for what we are sure is political purposes.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do here, this was my experience when I complained to google and yahoo on one of our competitors. 

So what do you do if a negative review appears that you consider false and damaging to your business reputation of the business?  

Well my advice is 

1) Is assume that they could be real and answer their complaint and state *nicely* that you do not know that person and you have doubts about the review and that you are more ready than ready to address and fix the problem.  

2) Ask Google to delete it which they probably will not.

There is a third alternative go to court.

Generally, I think it is a long shot as you need to get the actual identity of the reviewer and then you can sue them to get them to take it down and for damages. This I am sure will take a long time, be very expensive and by the time it gets to court who will care about a matter years old anyway.

However this is what one dentist in Northcote in Melbourne did, he took Google to the Federal court to get the name of the anonymous negative reviewer and won (maybe?) 

Google the court ruled has to give him the name of that person but it remains to be seen if Google will or can do this. Today with public WiFi, it may be impossible. Even if he gets what google thinks is the name, it may be impossible to sue the person. A case in Holland, I read about the courts let a person off as although he admited it was his account, what he claimed is that he did not do it and that someone else must have hacked into his account. 

I do believe that this matter needs to be addressed by Australian Law.

I have seen this happen a few times when a big organisation and a small business collide. When the big organisation is the government, they sometimes talk a bit nicer (although not always sometimes they are incredibly rough). If you have not followed the story about "Better mac" what happened is a small burger shop "Burger head." released a burger that they called "Better mac."

It looks like an excellent burger which I am sure is very tasty.

Still, as you can see above, McDonald's did not like the name.

Although it could be argued that the name 'better mac' is different McDonald's burgers name, eg 'big mac'. Also that there is nothing deceptive about the name since I doubt that anyone could be tricked into buying a "better mac" thinking that they were buying a McDonald's burgers, still the burger shop decided in a smart move to cash in on the publicity and comply in changing the name.

I said smart as the amount of money now need for court action is huge and the problem is that in a big organisation, the guy that authorises the legal action does not pay for it. So if you are not careful, you could easily get into court. Once in a court system, it is like medical and doctors bills, it is very hard to get out. 

It is not just the financial hit of litigation that can be very damaging to a small business. There is also the matter of their legal fees if you lose plus there is also the time and energy that it takes off.

The other problem is that if you win, what do you win? Do you like doing business with companies that take people to court? Of course, if you lose, it can harm your business’s reputation too.