When a bar owner I worked with went from operating at a loss to turning a profit within one year, it wasn’t just about getting the numbers right—it was about understanding what their business needed and building a system that would set them up for success. Bookkeeping is the foundation of the accounting cycle and […]

What is GST? The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a consumption tax charged on most goods and services in New Zealand. The current rate is 15%. GST is added to the price of taxable goods and services, and businesses are responsible for collecting this tax from their customers and paying it to the Inland Revenue [...]

There’s nothing more painful than trying to pin down a receipt for something you bought a long time ago. Searching, sorting, and filing all those bits of paper is tedious and time-consuming. However, as a business owner, you need to keep track of them when buying goods or services. If you want to claim expenses […]

Throughout this article series, I have been expressing the importance of bookkeeping and its technological growth and impact on accounting for millennia. I would now like to discuss the golden opportunity to give your accountant a fresh approach. ARTICLE SERIES: KEEPER OF BOOKS Working with different sized companies that operate inversely from each other is […]

Traditional bookkeeping once involved tedious, manual, data entry, stuck behind the computer. Transactions were typed in one digit at a time, and bank reconciliations typically only happened once the paper statement was received or downloaded from an online banking platform. ARTICLE SERIES: KEEPER OF BOOKS The old… Paperwork needs to be filed and stored for […]

Are you sick and tired of spending hours upon hours, scrolling through your accounts, wondering where all your hard-earned money has disappeared to? Perhaps it was that dress you bought on the company card, or that pesky subscription you never meant to sign up for? Or was it neither? Had you fallen into a fraudulent […]

When the story of your life is being written, you would like it to reflect on what you do every day and how it relates to other aspects of your life. You would like it to be written in a language that you understand. As for business owners, their business is their life story. They […]

ARTICLE SERIES: KEEPER OF BOOKS Recently, a new client came to me to consult about issues with his existing accountant who, after not being able to comprehend the logistics of the business, eventually left. After some initial discussions and reviewing the company’s Xero, I attempted to clean up the mess and provided him with all […]

ARTICLE SERIES: KEEPER OF BOOKS Hiring an accountant is a difficult decision for many; it is strenuous evaluating exactly what financial guidance we seek, and, more often than not, it’s simply a luxury, a situational investment. And I could not have agreed more… at least until I joined Gilligan Sheppard. I began my accounting career […]