Archives for February 2010

Shareholders’ Current Accounts

The topic for the 18 March Business Owners Forum will be “Shareholders’ Current Accounts”, featuring an informative (and entertaining!) panel discussion on issues and pitfalls around financing your company through the shareholders current account – and protecting that investment.

This event will be hosted at “The Conference Centre”, 585 Great South Road, Penrose on 18 March 2010 – from 5:30pm (sharp) to 7:00pm. A map and full directions are here >>>.
As always with BOF events, discussion will be driven by those who attend on the night – and the panelists will keep things moving along quickly. We have three great panelists, and here’s what you can expect to be covered over the hour and a half:

Fraser Hurrell – Director of Elevate CA Chartered Accountants. Fraser sees the results of a lack of forethought with regards shareholders current accounts every day, and has some useful and pragmatic insights into avoiding these issues up front. Issues often arise over time such as one shareholder having much more at stake in a company than others through their current accounts – or shareholders having significant personal borrowing that is not tax efficient where there may be an opportunity to refinance this into the company. There are often ways to prevent issues such as these from arising – or possibilities to fix them once they have arisen. More on Fraser Hurrell here >>>.

Damien Grant – Liquidator at Waterstone Insolvency. Damien is intimately involved with unravelling the affairs of companies in liquidation when things go wrong. Often this involves some unpleasant issues for shareholders who may find their advances to the company are unsecured – or that amounts repaid to shareholders may be recoverable by the liquidator. Damien has a wealth of knowledge and some sobering war stories, and plenty of useful techniques for keeping your investment in your company as secure as possible. More on Damien Grant here >>>.

Ben Langdon, a Solicitor and Partner with Claymore. Ben will discuss some of the practical strategies for protecting your investment in your company – and for maintaining equity between multiple shareholders. Simple tools such as General Security Agreements and proper shareholders’ agreements can pay dividends when the going gets rough, and these will be discussed from the point of view of shareholders. More on Ben Langdon here >>>.

This event will be chaired by Michael Masterson, director and founder of The Bottom Line Expense Reduction. More on Michael Masterson here >>>.

If you have advanced funds to your company – or if you have multiple shareholders with unequal current accounts – or if one shareholder has a current account and personal guarantees independent of the company, then this event is tailored for you.

Format is casual over pizza, beer and wine – and Business Owners Forums are always lively events! These events are targeted to owners of businesses with $1 million turnover and more.

This Business Owners Forum is supported by ElevateCA Limited and The Bottom Line Expense Reduction. The ethos of the Business Owners’ Forum supporters is to give back to the business communities which support us. In line with this ethos, Business Owners’ Forum events are always free of charge. Find out more here >>>.

If you would like to be invited to this event, please contact ElevateCA.

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Ideas for BOF Topics in 2010

Business Owners Forums have been running monthly since June 2009 – with topics chosen by popular choice. Last time we canvassed for topic suggestions was back in June, and we have now exhausted those which were put forward. So the time has now come to ask for a fresh batch of topic suggestions so we can go about assembling panels for the rest of the year.
Just to provide a bit of inspiration, here are the topics we have presented so far in Whangarei and Auckland.

Property Development

Managing Cashflow

Protecting Shareholder Current Accounts

Employment Issues

The Art of Networking

Monitoring your Business Performance

So if you have any thoughts on topics which you would like to see discussed over the remainder of this year, just add them in the comments box below. The only criteria is that the topic is relevant to the group – owners of businesses turning over $1 million or more per year.

And if you have any suggestions for panelists, we’d like to hear those too!

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Monitoring Business Performance

Last night’s Business Owners Forum was a success – thank you to all who came along to the new BNZ Partners Centre in Whangarei and contributed to the discussions. The topic was “monitoring your business performance”, and the three panelists did a great job of presenting different views of the subject.

Roger Taylor, an owner of Pacific Motor Group in Whangarei, discussed the strategies to monitor daily performance used by a large player in a volatile industry. Issues such as large inventory holdings, high fixed costs, slim margins and long lead times on inventory purchases mean that excellence in day to day performance measurement is a real competitive advantage in this industry. Roger shared with us some of the ways that Pacific Ford succeeds in this area – in particular his model for measuring “working days to break-even” each month – and the art and science he and his team apply when striving to improve this number.

Dean Subritzky, a director of Elevate CA Limited, illustrated that the key performance indicators for every business will be different – and where businesses in one industry may find it necessary to focus on issues such as stock turnover, others may be more interested in gross profit on each job – or debtors levels, or gross sales or perhaps retention of key skilled staff. Dean discussed the need to first identify which key performance indicators are critical for your business – and then to set about devising systems to measure those in real time, and to continue to review, improve and simplify the method of gathering and measuring this key information. One size definitely does not fit all when monitoring business performance.

Geoff Grigg, business partner at BNZ Whangarei, gave the group some valuable insights into how the banks measure the performance of their business customers. He explained which measures the bank finds most important, how they use the information they gather for making risk and pricing decisions – and how the banks benchmark their business customers’ performances against industry norms. As always, Geoff’s frank discussions around the decision making processes within the bank were useful to any business owner interested in reducing their risk profile with their bank – and in the process improving the pricing of their financing.

A great session – as usual in a casual format over pizza, beer and wine – and with a good varied selection of local business owners in attendance.

Business Owners Forums are targeted to owners of businesses turning over at least $1m per annum – they are hosted monthly alternating between Auckland and Whangarei on the third Thursday of the month.

If you would like an invite – or to be included on the regular email list, just contact Fraser Hurrell. And if you have ideas for future BOF topics, we’d really like to hear them – just click here and use the comments box at the bottom of the post >>>.

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Monitoring your Business Performance

How do you keep your finger on the pulse monitoring the financial health of your business in real time rather than waiting for historic financial statements?

If you need to know the answer to this question, this Whangarei event is for you! The 18 February Business Owners Forum event will be an information-rich panel discussion delivering some practical techniques for monitoring your business’ financial health in real time.

This event will be hosted at the newly opened BNZ Function Centre on the corner of Bank Street and Rust Ave, Whangarei on 18 February 2010 from 5:30pm (sharp) to 7:00pm.

This is a Business Owners Forum event, so as usual discussion will be driven by those who attend on the night – and the panelists will keep things moving along quickly. Panelists will include:

Dean Subritzky – a director of Elevate CA Limited

Geoff Grigg – Partner at BNZ Whangarei

Roger Taylor – owner of Pacific Motor Group, Whangarei – who will give some practical tips on these issues from the coal-face.

The panel will be chaired by Michael Masterson, director of The Bottom Line Expense Reduction Limited.

Format is casual over pizza, beer and wine. Business Owners Forums are always lively events – and are targeted to owners of businesses with $1 million turnover and more. There is never a “sell” – these events are hosted as a forum for business owners to discuss issues of relevance with peers – and without having to fend off advances from people in the room seeking to push agendas, products or services.

Business Owners Forums are supported by ElevateCA Limited, BNZ, The Bottom Line Expense Reduction and Webb Ross Lawyers. The ethos of the Business Owners’ Forum supporters is to give back to the business communities which support us. In line with this ethos, Business Owners’ Forum events are always free of charge.

If you would like to be invited to this event, please contact ElevateCA.

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.

The Art of Networking

A big thank you to the 40 or so guests who participated in the Business Owners Forum event at the new BNZ facility on Queen Street on 4 February. There was plenty of quality discussion around the topic “The Art of Networking”. And judging by the show of hands at the end of the evening, everyone walked away with at least one useful connection or action-plan item.The panelists yesterday were:

Michael Masterson adopted a pragmatic view, and discussed ways to make use of tools like Linked-in, OutLook and Plaxo to make life easier rather than harder. Michael is a great fan of “eliminating the noise” – and stressed the point that networking tools can often create complexity and unnecessary distraction rather than increasing productivity and connectivity as they are intended to do. He conveyed some great tips to make sure these tools work for you rather than against you! Michael can be contacted here >>> for anyone who would like to continue the discussion with him in person.

Sarah Lochead-MacMillan discussed some practical techniques for getting face to face and cultivating a mutually beneficial network. Sarah advocates “connecting” rather than “networking” – and not only does she walk the talk, but she has also written a book on the subject entitled “The Naked Networker” which is available on her website here >>>. Sarah is an advocate of working your network not so much for your own overt benefit but to connect people within the network to each other for the long term benefit of everyone involved.

Myself – Fraser Hurrell. I opened the session discussing my own experiences in using social media tools such as twitter and facebook to drive leads and sales to two businesses – Brightmind LABS >>>, which sells a product online – and ElevateCA, which sells services. Whilst I am by no means an expert in this area, I have had some successes and failures in using social media tools – and this was the basis of my discussion. A summary of my presentation is available right here >>>.

A big thank you to Brian Watt, Alexis D’Orsi and Fiona Bendall from BNZ for their kind hospitality – this event was held at the newly opened BNZ function facility on 80 Queen Street, and it was a great venue

The next Business Owners Forum is in Whangarei on 18 February, and that event will be a practical and information-rich session on monitoring your business financials featuring Dean Subritzky (Elevate CA Director) and Geoff Grigg (Partner at BNZ Whangarei) on the panel along with a yet-to-be-announced client giving a coal-face view of this topic.

And the following Business Owners Forum will be back in Auckland on 18 March discussing shareholder current accounts and some of the tips, traps and tricks available to protect these, make them equitable between shareholders – and tax efficient. Our guest panelist for that event will be Damien Grant, a liquidator from Waterstone Insolvency, who will no doubt alarm the room with tales of how bad things can get for shareholders when they go wrong. But the focus on the night will be steps to prevent these horror stories from unfolding.

Contact me if you’d like an invite to either of these events and are not on the regular e-mail list.

Fraser Hurrell is one of three directors of Elevate CA Limited, Chartered Accountants & Business Advisors in Whangarei, New Zealand.