Events

Elevate CA hosts regular events for business owners - including the monthly Business Owners Forum events which alternate between Auckland and Whangarei venues. A big part of the Elevate CA ethos is to share our knowledge and skills with the business community that allows us to thrive.

In line with this ethos, Elevate CA events are always free of charge - and have no strings or sales pitches attached.

Below is a full list of events hosted by Elevate CA, or events where we are involved as sponsors, supporters or presenters.

Managing Cashflow

The September Business Owners’ Forum will cover the topic “Managing Cashflow”. This is the first Business Owners’ Forum to be hosted in Auckland, and will be a repeat of this popular topic which was presented in Whangarei in June. From here on, Business Owners Forums will be held on the third Thursday of every month – and will alternate between Whangarei and Auckland. The September BOF will be in Auckland, October in Whangarei – and so on.

Managing Cashflow is a big topic – there is a lot of content to cover. We have assembled a great panel of three to bring some healthy discussion and alternative viewpoints to the evening. On the panel is Michael Masterson from The Bottom Line Expense Reduction, David Caddie – a Commercial Partner from BNZ and myself – a Director of Elevate CA Limited.

Together we will cover off some practical tips to manage cashflow in your business, the business and tax implications around cashflow issues – and some insights around current thinking from the banks regarding business cashflow issues.

In September, the Business Owners’ Forum will be held at The ICEHOUSE, Level Two, Textile Centre, 117 to 125 St George’s Bay Road, Parnell. This is a great venue – click here for directions. Format is casual over beer, wine and pizza.

September’s event will be on Thursday 17 September 6:00pm to 7:30pm.

The Business Owners’ Forum is supported by Elevate CA Limited, The Bottom Line Expense Reduction Limited, The ICEHOUSE, BNZ and Webb Ross Solicitors. The ethos is to provide a forum for business owners to meet and discuss relevant business issues amongst their peers in a casual environment without a sell from the supporters.

Entry to The Business Owners Forums is by invite – and there is no charge. The target audience is owners of businesses with a turnover of $1 million and above. If you’d like an invite, and you’re not on our list just contact us at forums@businessownersforum.net.nz

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

Spark Challenge

It was an honor to be asked to present to the Spark qualifiers in Auckland this evening. Congratulations to the 12 finalists. All of those involved are affiliated with the University of Auckland in some way. Of the individuals behind the teams, 11 are alumni, 10 staff members, 49 postgraduate students, 77 undergraduate students and 26 others affiliated with the University.

Here is a list of the ventures that will compete for a divvy up of the $100k purse over the next 7 weeks between now and the final Spark Entrepreneurial Challenge prizegiving on 22 October. I’ll be watching this closely and will blog about this competition as it unfolds.

Metabo-link. The New Zealand economy still remains driven by raw material and food production. However, millions of dollars of value are lost during processing and subsequent transport due to fungal spoilage. Current fungicidal agents to combat spoilage are synthetically produced and in most cases are toxic and therefore must be removed before shipping. Natural alternatives have proved only up to half as effective, until now. Mycobane from Metabo-link is safe, odourless, and colourless and leaves almost no residue.

Green Loos. Green Loos designs and hires out eco-friendly portable composting toilets. This new and improved odour-free experience will have you coming back for more, and all waste is recycled into valuable end products to be contributed back into the environment. Innovation in portable toilets – try it before you judge it!

Huka Hurtle. Enjoy the adventure tourism NZ has to offer or wish you were able to? Coming soon is the next level of adrenaline. Hurtle down what centuries of force took to create on what will be the low impact ride of your life.

Team Cube Brick. Points to Change is a business model that operates like a loyalty card within retail outlets. Points earned by buying products and services promoting Points to Change are then credited into a personal online account that the consumer then passes on to charity/ies of their choice. Points that are passed on to charities are then redeemed from the company that then pays the charity, completing the donation cycle.

NTouch networks. t-logic develops software for touch-screens that display content depending on location, and type of person viewing. We specialise in visually appealing surveying, and product selecting solutions for touch-screen and web applications. Our systems have analytic functions that allow administrators to observe customer behaviour, and iterate campaigns to optimise sales, brand awareness, and customer knowledge.

BlindVision. BlindVision is a company that endeavours to help vision impaired people perceive and navigate in a sightless world. The first product for BlindVision is a head unit, which uses camera technology to understand the world around the participant. This information is portrayed to the user as sound and tactile information, so that the person can now be aware of objects that do not usually make noise.

Redlights. Red light running is a real problem. Red light cameras have been shown to reduce red light running by 40% and injury crashes by 29%2. Existing red light cameras require large vandal proof enclosures and are expensive to purchase and to install. The proposed project is to build a smaller and cheaper red light camera using advanced technology which can be deployed more easily.

Nova Eco-Tech Limited. Eco-Vhiper converts existing vehicles to gaseous fuel operation and retain petrol operation capability in less than 8 hours, with no engine modification while achieving superior performance characteristics than those of major market competitor, the sequential Gas injection, SGI.

Buy2gether. We provide an internet based solution to these woes by making shopping of broad range of items cheaper for millions of consumers around NZ.

TwoNeeds. TwoNeeds is an innovative approach to marketplaces and resource management for NGOs. Operating in diverse regions of the world, often with limited financial means, NGOs must manage their tangible and intangible goods wisely. TwoNeeds shortens supply chains for specialized goods and adds value to unused or underutilized resources and skills.

Healthy Green NZ. It doesn’t fly; it doesn’t play songs; it won’t flash pretty pictures at you; it doesn’t require batteries. It’s an ingeniously simple product that can be produced using wonderful products of the highest quality sourced solely here in New Zealand. And guess what? It makes money. Our business is based on a simple product idea that one of New Zealand’s biggest industries has been searching for – for decades: A seafood product which is easily storable and transportable, cheap to make but best of all is highly valued in a country offering an enormous market which is still growing.

Landmarker. Precision agriculture, or precision farming, is a concept involving the use of sensor technology to make better farming decisions. Precision agriculture may be used to improve crop yields, reduce environmental impacts by optimizing fertilizer use, and provide climate warnings or trends and patterns for future planning. Landmarker is a cutting edge system to supply the very latest web technology to precision agriculture industries.

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

Property Development

Tonight a contingent of professionals of different disciplines headed North from Whangarei to Kerikeri to discuss property development. This seminar was organised by Cato Bolam surveyors and held at the Kerikeri Sports Complex. It was a repeat of the successful session held in the Whangarei Cato Bolam offices back in April. The subject matter tonight included the latest issues in resource management, taxation, governance and the latest legal issues surrounding property development.

On the tonight’s panel was Dean Subritzky – Director of Elevate CA Chartered Accountants, Simon Reiher – Principal of Cato Bolam, Alistair Nicholls – valuer from Telfer Young and Roger Bell – Partner from Webb Ross.

Shareholder Current Accounts

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Business Owners Forum this week with Stuart Spicer, Geoff Griggs and myself on the panel. Feedback has been great. There was plenty of quality discussion around shareholder current accounts – and how to make sure they are tax efficient, protected from creditors – and equitable between shareholders.

The Business Owners Forum is a means for business owners to get together for quality discussion around a relevant topic with a panel knowledgeable on the subject. Format is casual over pizza, beer and wine. The supporters are ElevateCA Limited, The Bottom Line Expense Reduction, BNZ, Webb Ross and The ICEHOUSE – and the ethos of the supporters is to keep the forum free from sales.

Business Owners Forums are held monthly – and alternate between Auckland and Whangarei.

The September Business Owners Forum will be held at The ICEHOUSE in the Textile Centre, Parnell, Auckland on 17 September from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. The topic will be “Cashflow”, and the panel of three will consist of Michael Masterson, a senior BNZ banker and myself.

Entry is limited to business owners, and is by invitation. There is no charge.

The October Business Owners Forum will be back to Whangarei in the ElevateCA Limited offices on 15 October from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. The topic will be current employment issues – and an expert panel will be assembled for the session.

The forum is tailored to owners of businesses turning over $1m and upward – so if you fall into that categoty and would like to be included on the invite list, contact me. In a nutshell, the Business Owners Forum is all about quality discussion with no sales.

Oh, and enjoying a beer or wine and pizza with peers.

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

Bill and Phil Show in Whangarei

Elevate CA sponsored the Bill English and Phil Heatley show in Whangarei tonight. Its not that we have a particular political agenda. Actually, if we’re honest it was more about getting our brand out there in front of 100 or so local business people. Chipping in for the beer and nibbles was a small price to pay.

So now that I have that out the way, I can say that Bill and Phil put on a good show in Whangarei tonight at the NZ Institute of Building function. I found myself agreeing with a lot of the stuff Bill English had to say around making it easier for Kiwi businesses to do business internationally.

This is something I have been banging on about for some time: As a country we need to generate wealth internationally if we want to live a first world lifestyle, because funding that lifestyle from borrowing just isn’t sustainable. So it was good to hear Bill English talking about investing in the things that will help kiwi businesses become more competitive internationally. Stuff like improving our roading infrastructure, our electricity generation and distribution, our broadband network – and reducing the pervasive burden of red tape in our business world.

The rhetoric was encouraging.

But the single obvious incentive to encourage Kiwis from “borrowing to spend” towards “saving to invest” was clearly not on Phil and Bill’s political agenda. In this country, a person will almost always do well over the long term by borrowing to invest in residential real estate. The interest and all expenses can be made tax deductible against personal income, while the ultimate capital gains are typically tax free. Nice. Why wouldn’t you do it? Especially with the 24% price increases forecast for Auckland residential property by certain economists over the next three years.

Nice for the individual investor who has the means to borrow hard. But is that productive or beneficial for the country? Hell no. It increases our indebtedness to the rest of the world, and achieves nothing that generates income for the country in the context of the world at large. The wealth generated is not real, so why is our tax system encouraging this behaviour?

How about ending the very generous tax incentives to buy and hold residential real estate in this country, and in turn target those incentives to the parts of the economy that generate real wealth for all of us. Namely entrepreneurial Kiwi businesses that can market innovative, world class products into niches internationally.

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