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Accumulus Newsletter - November 2020 |
WORKING PATTERNS & STAFF TRAINING As with many businesses Covid and the lockdowns has resulted in changes in the way Accumulus works. The move to cloud based software some four years ago proved its worth when the lockdown occurred as staff were easily able to work from home. The saving in travel time and the ability to work peacefully at home was a broadly positive experience. Accumulus is still committed to a physical "retail" presence to service our clients, but decided that staff could work from home if they wished for a couple of days of their normal working week (except for the reception staff sorry Jodie and Carey!) This has the somewhat disconcerting consequence that the office is on occasions relatively unpopulated and very quiet, however if staff are not in the office they are contactable at home by reception staff to call you back (on any of their normal working days). We have decided to introduce monthly meetings where everyone attends to facilitate training and administration (and so we don't forget each other).
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Accumulus will be closed tomorrow morning Tue 17 November 2020 until 10.30 am, so all staff can attend a training and administration session. The front door will be closed and the phones will be for messages only until 10.30. These training sessions will be held at the same time on the third Tuesday of each month. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but the aim is to ensure that overall we provide a better service to our clients. |
MONEY FOR NOTHING The Dire Straits hit song only needs a small adaptation to its chorus lyrics to have a new relevance in the Covid age: "Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it You play the keyboard at the GVT (government) The blisters are from pressing the "Create Money" button on the Reserve Bank Computer keyboard rather than plucking the guitar strings. The reserve bank Monetary Policy Committee has decided to continue with its Large Scale Asset Purchase (borrowing/money creation) Program of up to $100 billion* and to keep the official cash rate "OCR" at 0.25% with the possibility of a negative OCR next year.
*With a NZ population of 5 million this equates to $20,000 borrowed/created for every adult and child in NZ.
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FUNDING FOR LENDING PROGRAM "FLP" The Reserve Bank FLP is targeted to commence in December and consists of providing $28 billion of loans to banks in NZ (part of the $100 billion mentioned above) at the OCR interest rate. The idea is to depress interest rates and encourage banks to lend. If you are a depositor life is presumably going to get worse! What bank will want to bother with the administrative hassle of small deposits from retail investors for their funding if they can borrow huge dollops of $ billions from the government at almost no cost? |
SMALL BUSINESS CASHFLOW LOAN The Government has announced some changes to the scheme, (which has so far loaned $1.6 billion with an average loan of $17,000):
Otherwise eligibility for the loan and the terms of the loan are unchanged, as described in our May Newsletter available on the Accumulus website. |
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XERO STARTER PLAN Xero has for a long time had a Starter Plan (at $27.50 per month plus GST) version of its Standard ($60 per month plus GST) package which has invoicing and debtors features. However the failing was that the number of invoices and the number of bank transactions you were allowed to process each month was so small that it made the Starter Plan unworkable for all except a very limited number of businesses. Xero have acknowledged this failing and have upgraded the Starter plan so that it now allows processing unlimited bank transactions each month and up to 20 invoices per month. This is a much more realistic proposition for smaller businesses. We understand that a feature that is still missing is Cash Coding, which allows simpler bulk coding of bank transactions, but this is probably of little consequence to most clients routinely using Xero software. These changes provide two opportunities:
The ease of issuing invoices and following the debtors in Xero is excellent so for many small businesses issuing small numbers of invoices this additional cost will be well worthwhile. We will follow up with clients where either situation looks applicable but please don't hesitate to contact us beforehand if you believe a change would be of benefit to you. |