As a number of our team live and work in Christchurch (their office is adjacent to Christchurch Central Hospital), we’ve seen first hand the devastation caused by these events.

Our thoughts are with all those affected by the recent tragic event.

But, we’ve also seen the incredible power of community, as New Zealanders have banded together to help family, friends, businesses and neighbourhoods in need. A prime example of this is The University of Canterbury Student Volunteer Army. This 15,000 strong group of students has done a remarkable job of providing bulk help to those in some of the worse affected areas.

However, it’s not only local support that has helped Christchurch on the road to recovery quicker, but also the sheer volume of international aid that was offered within hours.

I know for me personally, to wake up on the morning following the earthquake and hear that Australian Search & Rescue teams were already in the country, and that teams from afar abroad as Taiwan, Japan and the USA were on their way was overwhelming. I’m sure many other Christchurch residents feel this way.

As a cloud-based organisation, our staff in New Zealand were able to get back on their feet quickly and continue to work remotely (they are now safely back in their office), keeping all systems running smoothly for our customers.

Unfortunately, not all businesses have got off so lightly, so to help Christchurch businesses not only rebuild, but better prepare themselves for the future, we’re offering Saasu completely free to those affected until 31 March 2012.

12 months of secure, worry-free accounting until 31 March 2012

To take advantage of this offer, simply sign up to our free plan, and contact service (at) saasu.com with your details.

For those businesses requiring additional support, or who are looking for an accountant or bookkeeper nearby to offer sound advice in these trying times, our Accounting Partner listing page is a great place to start.

To pay respect to those who lost their lives in the February 22 earthquake, today the Christchurch community will come together for a day of remembrance, as the New Zealand Government holds a National Christchurch Memorial Service. This newly created regional holiday will provide locals with the chance to take a day off to reflect on the past month.

Image source: twitter.com

I’m sure we’ll learn of more tragedy so people will have to be brave in coming weeks. If anyone can do this, these Crusaders of Christchurch can. As a Director of Acclipse I’ve met many of them and they are a truly special group of people with bigger than normal hearts.

Rhys Taylor, our Saasu Marketing Manager, was in the office at the time the quake struck and captured the footage and told his story to CNN as it unfolded. Reading his twitter feed was a real life sobering account of events.

The team in Christchurch have been going through a continual nervous existence for months now. It hasn’t just been this event. Numerous evacuations, lot’s of uncertainty and ongoing engineers reports to check the building above their heads will hold up. It’s a harrowing daily existence. Even on my last visit there was a tremor in the middle of my presentation to 60 accounting firms in Christchurch. So I imagine that it must start to send you crazy not seeing an end to it. The human toll has been enormous and that should be the only focus for the time being. We’ll announce support plans for affected businesses in the coming week after we get through this period of triage. People first.

Basic review of your transaction listings

As you create transactions they will appear in your transaction list for the date period applicable. The process is usually to Add a new transaction to the List, Save and Close the transaction and then check the transaction for correctness. You cannot check all the detail for transaction but the main items such as Date, Amount and Contact can be verified. This is the most basic and quickest, but least thorough, of checks you can do.

Review of your Transactions by Account report

This is a good report for checking you have used correct tax codes and ensuring you have chosen the correct Account for you transactions. You might scan the report to ensure that (for example) all your sales appearing in an Account for Income: light fittings would have the same tax code. You might also check that there aren’t any stray transactions in this Account that shouldn’t be there.

Use the duplicate function for adding transactions

When you use the Duplicate button on any Add/Edit Transaction screen you are creating an exact copy of the transaction you are viewing with a few fields cleared like the Date for example. This helps produce consistency in your transaction adding over time as you will be using the same Account, Tax Codes and Summary as you are duplicating the information not entering it.

Use Transactions Lists to help in adding transactions

A good example of this is when you have regular periodical payments you make for things such as subscriptions, rent, bank fees that are often the same each month except for the transaction date.

1. Load the Transactions for a Contact and click the plus icon next to the transaction to load a duplicate.
2. Then you can include the date for this new transaction and amend any other differences (eg. Summary..”Jul08 rent” to “Aug08 Rent”) and then save the transaction.

Use the Transaction Lists to help in adding transactions

As in the above example you can create a list of transaction for the previous month (or period). Use the same process to create new transactions for the new month (or period).

Additional

Make sure you have paperwork, invoices, and bank statements to back up you data entry. Just assuming these things will happen each month (or period) doesn’t mean they actually do!

With any business system or procedure it’s a case of what works best for your specific needs. Who are the experts at processing and doing accounts efficiently? Accountants must be on this list. They are not just there for tax advice.

We have a listed a few pro’s and con’s that you might like to consider.

Why does this work?

• Get all your cheques prepared and then signed in one session by the cheque writer or cheque signatory.
• Allows you to use Internet banking templates to process multiple payments on that day.
• It may help to manage you cashflow in a more predictable way. e.g. If you know that the 5th of each month is payment processing day and you have $X dollars to make your payments then cashflow becomes more predictable.
• Doing a task 20 times in one sitting is nearly always more efficient than doing 1 task over 20 sittings.
• When you do everything on one day, filing is a lot easier.
• Your vendors and customers will find your organisation more predictable and professional.
• Your work colleagues and employees will know that its the ‘accounts’ day. You can deal with it on that day rather than interrupting work.
• If you have a bookkeeper or a bookkeeping company to do this work, it will nearly always be cheaper to have them in for one full day, rather than have them in spasmodically over time.
• Your Profit and Loss and Cash Flow reports (and others), may end up cleaner and clearer.

When doesn’t it work?

• When the gaps between ‘accounting days’ are set too far apart your management information may get out of date, your vendors may get impatient and you might hate the idea of spending a whole day just doing ‘accounts’. Select a frequency that suits your business model from a holistic perspective.
• When your customer insists on invoices immediately or very regularly. Note that there are legislated requirements for invoices to be issued within a certain time after services have been provided.
• When vendors insist on getting cash on delivery
• When you forget to pay a vendor then they have to wait until your next ‘accounts day’. This can really upset vendors. Then they might charge you more. Ouch!