A year of firsts

HOLY SHIT. I promised myself as part of 2023 being a year of firsts not to mention the "C" word so I won't but there have been massive consequences for the outsourcing world. It's not surprising that if you can't hire staff locally you go international and we have been enjoying phenomenal growth, in the last 18 months.

We have handled this growth incredibly well due to the fantastic efforts of team India and locally we have beefed up our technical team with accounting experts, so that we can deal with day to day technical and outsource processes.

Meet Marion and Angelina - below we have a brief profile on them both.

A recent thank you email from a client was a good reminder of the power you have as a client of Connect. You have a team of 1000 behind you so your firm can handle urgent work, take on as many clients as you want, without increasing office space or staff! Here is an extract from the email:

"During the Christmas break one of our clients was forced to refinance debt, after the loan was called up for payment on 26 December 2022.We were advised on 2 January 2023 that 2022 draft financial statements, 2023 actual + budget and 2024 budgeted cashflows were required by the bank. The 2022 drafts (prepared by Connect) were in pretty good condition, with only a few minor changes required. We were able to review these with the client and send the draft versions off to the bank. As you can imagine our clients were under quite a bit of stress with the uncertainty of how they were going to finance the debt repayment. However, as a result of the remote team's input for 2022 drafts (alongside the 2023-2024 budgeted cashflows) our clients were able to obtain the majority of the required finance. We wanted to pass on our thanks for coming through for us last month!"

Marion is a fully qualified accountant who worked with Inland Revenue before joining Gilligan Shepherd in 2006 and became a director with them in 2017 before moving on to work with us in 2022.

She brings with her a broad and deep understanding of taxation, financial and management accounting, estate planning, restructuring and solvent liquidations. Marion was member of the CPA Public Practice Committee from 2017 to 2021.

Marion loves working closely with clients to ensure their outsourcing experience is positive, efficient, and provides the foundation for them to grow. Outside of work Marion loves walking, catching a NRL game and enjoying a quality bottle of wine with friends and family.

Angelina is a qualified accountant who has worked in the industry for 20 years in numerous roles which includes working for BankLink for 3 years implementing their Workflow system into accounting firms. After this she became the General Manager for the SBA group.

Angelina has a huge passion for sustainability, ensuring her family leave a healthy planet for generations to come.

This is something she and her husband are working on constantly, knowing that each step in the right direction makes a difference. For example, working from home means fewer cars on the road each day giving them both more flexibility and time to spend with their young family and animals in the sunny Bay of Plenty.

Well this summer may have started as the wrong kind of wet dream for many, but that is no excuse for having a bad year.
The passing of my father at the end of last year followed by the first real break for 8 years where I did nothing but chill for 2 weeks taught me 2 things:

This year we are going to look into some fascinating metrics for CA firms and explore subjects like “How Much Profit Should I be Making If Outsourcing?” The results will astonish many and receive affirmations from those that are doing that now.

Are you Below Average, Average, or Above Average?

Accordingly to actual data collated by Link Reporting from CA firms across NZ:

Our Indian branch (known as KFT), is led by Shiv Kumar who is the General Manager.

Shiv is a qualified accountant with a master's degree in accounting from Chandigarh University and has worked in the accounting and auditing fields for 21 years, the last 13 of which have been at Connect.

Shiv is dedicated to helping clients at all levels and is the key to arranging IT access, managing the teams, and facilitating NZ team to remote team video communications and overall workflow. Shiv oversees in-house training for all the remote teams and works closely with Sunny our CEO and founding director.