The New Zealand Government has developed a Wage Subsidy Scheme to help employers and their staff maintain an employment connection and ensure an income for affected employees, even if the employee is unable to actually work any hours.
Remember, although your business is closed during this time, as long as your staff remain employed and you’re making every effort to pay them at least 80% of their wages, then you may be eligible to apply for the subsidy.
To learn more about the subsidy and how it works, you can visit the Employment New Zealand website.
How Kitomba can help
Kitomba Reporting can help you apply for the wage subsidy, so we’ve put together a quick step by step guide so you can get started.
How to apply for the wage subsidy
Determine your future income
To be eligible for the wage subsidy, businesses must declare that they have or will experience a minimum 30% decrease in revenue over the period of a month, when compared to the same month last year, that’s directly attributable to COVID-19. The details of the declaration you’re making when you apply for the subsidy can be found here. For the New Zealand hair and beauty industry, it’s a given that revenue will have declined more than this, however we recommend you complete the following steps so you have data on hand should you be audited in the future.
For this example we’re using the month of April.
- Run the Business Summary report in Kitomba 1 for April 2019.
- Run the Appointments Value report in Kitomba 1 for April 2020 using the following selections:
- Check to see whether you’ll experience a 30% decline in revenue. i.e. April 2019 sales minus April 2020 projection will give you the difference. Divide that amount by the April 2019 sales, then multiply by 100 to get the percentage decline.
- We also recommend that you download these reports and save them somewhere (or you can re-run them at a later date) in case you’re audited and need to prove that you were eligible for the wage subsidy.
If you need help finding this information in Kitomba 1, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team, they’re here to help!
Collect consent from your staff to apply for the subsidy
In order to apply for the wage subsidy, you’re required to provide your staff’s personal details. It is therefore required that you obtain their consent before you do this.
To do this, you can:
- Provide them with a link to this document which explains what they’re agreeing to.
- Record their consent somewhere. We’ve created this Excel template to make it super easy for you to do this remotely.
- Save the completed template somewhere safe in case you’re audited in the future.
Tip! We recommend you save this template as a Google Sheet. That way you can send it to your entire team and they can view and complete it at the same time. This also gives you the ability to view the version history which can show you exactly when and who edited the spreadsheet which is perfect should you be audited.
Fill in the application form
Now is the simple task of filling in the application form. For this you’ll have to provide the following information.
If you’re a sole trader:
- IRD number
- business name
- business address
If you have people working for you:
- your business IRD number
- your New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) if you have one
- your business name, address and contact details
- your employee details (include full-time and part-time employees in the same application) including names, date of birth, IRD numbers and employment type (whether they are full-time or part-time).
Visit this link to fill in the application.
What happens next
Work and Income New Zealand have put together a cool infographic so you can see how your application will be processed.
Other ways you and your team can get help
We’ve put together a document of other options you and your team could look at for obtaining assistance for your business at this time.
For more advice, assistance and tools that can help you at this time, visit our COVID-19 Resource Centre.
