The new financial year is always a great excuse to implement some money-saving strategies and get the ball rolling for the year ahead. Here are six tips to help you get started:

Set Up a Savings Plan

Budgeting doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply review your spending: What areas of your spending are unnecessary and what things can’t you live without? Whether your priority is a new car or a daily coffee, encourage good habits with your spending. Make a budget that you understand and is realistic for you to follow.

Shift Money to Repay Debt

There’s no avoiding some form of debt these days. Set yourself a timeframe and add repayment of debt to your budget. Credit card debt in particular has the potential to incur high interest and fees on top of your debt, which will extend the amount of time required to pay it off. There’s nothing more relieving than removing the debt cloud over your head. If possible, shift any spare cash from savings and transactional accounts to reduce outstanding loans.

Take Out Private Health Insurance

Individuals and families on incomes above the Medicare levy surcharge (MLS) thresholds are liable to pay a surcharge for any period during the year that they do not have a private patient hospital cover. To avoid this extra cost, seek private health insurance with an approved health care fund for the next financial year.

Salary Sacrificing

Seek financial advice to identify the potential benefits of reducing taxable income, by allocating a certain amount of your pre-tax salary to be paid directly into your superfund. This financial year, you can put up to $25, 000 (for under 50s) of your pre-tax earnings into super under a concessional tax rate.

Keep Track of your Tax Deductions

Keep yourself organised and avoid the last minute paperwork by keeping track of your tax deductions. If you have expenses that can be paid before the end of the financial year, pre-pay these and reduce your tax total.

Join Gobbill and Save Time

An increasing number of people are working from home. If you work from a home office, then you have the potential to claim tax deductions on your home utility bills, landline and mobile phone bills, home and mortgage insurance, as well as internet. Rather than making home business payments manually, sign up to Gobbill and automate your payment process. Bill payment information can be easily exported for tax time, just with an easy click of a button.

Do you search for your bills and receipts in a shoebox? Make tax time easier by using Gobbill to pay and store all your bills.

Watch our video to see how simple it is in Gobbill.

When calculating your tax deductions, login to Gobbill and simply navigate to the “All Bills” screen from the main menu.

Then click the “Export to CSV” button. A list of all your bills details and payment history is there for your tax deduction claims.

Our team of software robots love paying bills. Humans have better things to do like watch Netflix and cat videos online. They can even go on holidays, spend time with their family…and much more. Why not flick ’em to Gobbill. Bills gone. Watch Life Hack Tip #1.

Gobbill is free to use. Sign up today

GloBird Energy features Gobbill for email bill payments. Some Globird customers already use Gobbill to pay their bills received via email on-time every month.

Read more.

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The Australian Taxation Office has ruled that technology start-up company Gobbill satisfies the requirements to be an Early Stage Innovation Company (ESIC). “The ESIC rules, whilst offering major incentives to start-ups and investors alike are complex.” says EY’s R&D and Technology Incentives Partner Mark Chan. Read more…

About Australian FinTech

The Australian FinTech site is Australia’s only online space dedicated to promoting and discussing all things FinTech. Whether it be for Personal Finance, Payment Platforms, Apps, Venture Capital, Accelerators or Incubators, Australian FinTech has it covered. See australianfintech.com.au

Gobbill was featured in Crowdfund Insider. The article covered the ATO ruling that Gobbill is an ESIC affording its investors Australian tax incentives such as Tax offset of 20% of the value of their investments and capital gains tax exemptions.

This is great news for Gobbill as it will provide another reason for investors to support the company. Read more..

About Crowdfund Insider

Crowdfund Insider is the leading news and information web site covering the emerging global industry of disruptive finance including crowdfunding, peer-to-peer / marketplace lending and other forms of Fintech. Our site provides extensive coverage, and industry leading perspective, from a team of staff writers and leading industry expert contributors from around the world.

Crowdfund Insider was envisioned and created by dedicated industry professionals and is supported by an independent group of investors.

Energy watchdog (Vic) calls out electricity and gas retailers luring households with discounts of up to 40 per cent, then to increase prices.

The article warned that “households are being lured into deals with the promise of large discounts unaware that companies can ratchet up prices at any time. …discounts of up to 40 per cent offered by electricity and gas retailers are rarely locked in, and called for a dramatic rethink to make power bills fairer for consumers.” Source: The Age 15th April 2017

Gobbill has been calculating the actual % discount amount received for our users and many have found that are not getting what they expected.

This has prompted them to quickly switch service providers.

Keeping on top of bills in your email inbox can be a pain. That’s why co-founders Shendon Ewans and Quentin Marsh developed Gobbill, to ease the burden of making online bill payments and remove the need to keep track of multiple bill due dates.

With over 1 year of user testing and product improvements, the innovative app is now available to the public!

How does it work?

Gobbill offers an effective, automated system that makes bills payments for you within one day of the due-date. To add your bill for payment through the system, simply forward your email bill to your Gobbill email address.

Each bill is easily accessible in your online account, which can be categorised by biller or date depending on your requirements. The highly personalised platform can help you keep track of spending, store a record of your payments in preparation for tax time, eliminate the potential for late fees and remove the difficulty associated with notifying billers if you happen to lose a credit or debit card.

How do I sign up?

Simply visit Gobbill.com and sign up by adding your email address, phone number and card details.

What does it cost?

It’s free to create an account and start using Gobbill! On the free Gobbill plan, you’ll be able to pay 5 bills through the online service a month and link 3 credit or debit cards to your account.

As Gobbill pays bills one day before the due date you’ll avoid late fees and get your pay-on-time discounts, which can be worth hundreds of dollar each year to an average household.

Want to know more?
Check out the easy-to-follow steps in the video below or sign up here.

There is nothing more frustrating than finding out that you are paying more than someone else for the same service or receiving a late fee.  Save your households hundreds dollars each year, just by following these 4 simple money-saving tips.

Monitor your bill amounts. Take back financial power and avoid any unwanted surprises by monitoring your bills. Billers can get it wrong, so it’s best to avoid direct debits and have a quick look over your bills before allowing a payment to be made. Gobbill has been analysing bills from a wide range of billers over the last year, finding numerous billing errors for our customers.

Shop around. Allocate just ten minutes every few months to research and see if there are better plans, services and payment options available to you. Ensure you visit non-biased comparison websites such as privatehealth.gov.au and Victorian Energy Compare. Avoid commercial comparison websites that receive commissions from telco companies, energy providers and banks.

Protect your cyber self. According to The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Australians lost over $229 million in 2015 through scams. With email phishing becoming increasingly personalised, the need for security is on the rise. Protect yourself by avoiding links in emails. Fake email bills can often look legitimate, but they will link to unfamiliar payment sites to capture your credit card details.

Pay your bills through an automated payments platform. A busy lifestyle can often mean that we don’t have time to waste on admin and bill payments. Our email accounts are typically cluttered with bills, being easily lost and forgotten due to an overwhelming amount of content. Get yourself organised with a bill payment platform like Gobbill, a convenient alternative to manual bill payment. Gobbill’s automated system offers direct bill payment from a nominated credit or debit card within one day of the due date, giving you the ability to review upcoming bills, reduce time spent on managing payments and earn those pay-on-time discounts. Gobbill also has the ability to decipher bill legitimacy to protect you from potential bill scams, while maintaining your online privacy and personal control over payments. Simply let Gobbill check your bill and pay it on time for you.

Sign up and use Gobbill for free here.