The Good News Blog

New Zealand businesses are paying their bills nearly a week faster than at the height of the financial crisis, according to a new report by Dun & Bradstreet.

In the last three months of 2009, businesses averaged payment terms of 44.6 days, compared with more than 50 at the height of the global economic crunch.

All of which will be good news for many local businesses.

Dun & Bradstreet New Zealand general manager John Scott said the overall trend was for speedier payment. Businesses needed to encourage and monitor this for their own wellbeing, he said.

For an Openside take on the same subject, be sure to check out the coming issue of Her Magazine, in which our own Debbie Haddon looks at smart new ways for companies to find cash during commercially quieter times.

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Technical Issues:

• Sales
• Client/customer work

Management Issues:

• Planning
• Controlling operations
• Administration
• Staff leadership
• Developing new products and services
• Training and development

• Conferences 

So how do you better manage your time?  Here are some ideas:

• Establish daily and weekly priority goals/to do list.  Mark off the task when it is completed and periodically prepare a log sheet of the amount of time you have spent on various tasks
• Control the telephone.  Do not allow it to control you.  Perhaps you should have messages taken during the day and have very specific return telephone time allocations – one in the morning, the other in the afternoon
• Have a ‘quiet period’ each day so that you can use the ‘quality time’ to plan your business 
• Consider and analyse those persons or tasks that cause you to waste time.  Can you change your management style to overcome these time wasters?  For example, it might be better if you visited someone else’s office or business premises rather than have them come to yours.  The visitor can close the interview or meeting and basically leave 
• All meetings should have an agenda and a time limit and you should start and finish on time 
• At meetings, make sure someone takes minutes, distributes the minutes and follow these up at the next meeting.  If this type of activity continues at all meetings it will speed up the meeting process 

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The world economy is still fragile but the recovery from the financial crisis has been significantly faster than the International Monetary Fund expected, the head of the institution said last week.

What’s more, according to the IMF’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF plans to unveil more upbeat growth forecasts later this month.

Although Strauss-Kahn remains concerned about the global employment situation, the thrust of his comments certainly qualifies as some good news for the weeks and months ahead.

And while we’re on the subject of good things, the British Guardian also has a fun piece on a subject close to Openside’s heart — the joys of being an accountant, and why you shouldn’t always believe those who think this is a profession for sad sacks.

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Check out this recent article entitles “Woman played pokies as Colleagues Laid Off” on YahooXtra News.

This story is a great reminder to review one of the most commonly overlooked internal controls being “Separation of duties”.

Is your business exposed to cash leakage in any manner?

Are your employees unfairly exposed to doubt of their integrity?

In an ideal world the employee responsible for sending or receiving invoices (and general debtor and creditor relations) should not also be responsible for paying or receiving the cash.

This is also the same with the IRD interaction. The employee preparing PAYE, GST, FBT, RWT etc returns should not be the same person responsible for making the physical payment to IRD. Not only do these separations ensure that the employee is secure they also give your staff the security of no doubt ever being placed on their integrity.

However in saying this practicality and convenience do not need to be jeopardised to ensure bulletproof internal control systems. As most start ups and SME often only have one or two administration staff and separation of duties is not achievable the owner/employer needs to pay their role to ensure this potential risk is adequately mitigated.

To ensure all creditors are being paid, build relationships with your creditors where they can contact you directly should they not be paid in a timely manner.

To ensure all IRD payments are made engage a proactive accountant who via using their IRD online lookup tool, (which most accountants use regularly) should be able to tell you if IRD arrears are accruing.

So review your systems now!!! If you are large enough to separate your duties ensure it is done. If you are smaller then ensure that owner participating controls such as the ones explained above are performed.

If you don’t take control you will only have yourself to blame.

If you would like your internal controls reviewed by Chartered Account\/Business Owner’s contact us here at Openside.

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Is it just us or are there really fewer predictions for the business year ahead appearing in the media than this time last year? Hmm. Could this have anything to do with the fact that many of the country’s best pundits a year ago were a little prematurely predicting the dawning of another Great Depression?

One business pundit who hasn’t been shy in stepping up to the plate this month has been Cameron Watson, a private wealth research director with Craigs Investment Partners, who is nothing if not madly optimistic in at least one of his top 10  “surprises for 2010 — that New Zealand could win the World Football Cup.

Among Watson’s more serious predictions: the equity markets will deliver a positive but single-digit, return; the kiwi falls and the greenback stabilises; and, thanks to a friendlier market environment and shored-up balance sheets, a surge in corporate activity, IPOs and mergers and acquisitions.

Interesting.

Also of amusing note has been business writer David Chaplin’s wry list of the 10 things businesspeople learnt during the past 12 months.  Typical item: “You can't trust anyone with your money, especially yourself. Why not spend it all on tacky presents for the ones you love?” Indeed.

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