Author Archives: Harald Breiding-buss

CCA staff arrived at the office this morning to find a large quantity of water from the weekend’s deluge has found its way in. The carpet is waterlogged throughout all rooms at the office, except one, and there is substantial damage to the ceiling in one room, where the water must have pooled until the ceiling panels collapsed.

Surprisingly, damage to electronic equipment appears small. Staff have been set up to work from home while the office is being repaired (causing much glee amongst their children), and we expect this to cause some small delays in attending to your work.

Some client folders that were sitting on the floor, as well as those on the two desks under the collapsed panels, got soaked, and there will be some permanent loss of hard copy documentation.  We will contact those clients that are affected directly.

Your understanding is much appreciated.

With our staff member Nick Hsu now being a full member of CPA Australia, he has the same legal status in New Zealand as a Chartered Accountant.
This means we can now audit (or review) organisations, whose constitution specifically require a Chartered Accountant.
We have also clarified with the Ministry of Education that they accept CPAs as auditors for early childhood education centres.
We are also in the process of acquiring Registered Auditor status for Nick, specifically for not-for-profit organisations. This would remove our current limitation on the audits of registered Charities, which we can only do at the moment if their operating expenditure is under $500,000.
If you are happy with your current auditor we would not encourage you to change – a good relationship with your auditor is important.

The government has thrown a lifeline to amateur sports, which faced an unprecedented threat from a $120m or so funding hole caused by the closure of gaming machine venues, most of which affects sports groups. $83 million dollars are being made available through the government to cushion this blow, although details are still to come. A further $182m is earmarked for development and capacity of the sector, which will likely benefit predominantly performance sports.

The rest of the not-for-profit sector emerged empty-handed from the budget. During economic recessions, government tends to purchase more services from the not-for-profit sector, however, although this is heavily skewed towards social and youth services. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, for example, government (National-led at the time) established the Community Response Fund in 2009, with $90m per year for three years, providing significant additional funding in a decentralised way.

CCA calculations show that the NFP sector will be facing tough times, as some funding sources will take serious hits from world governments’ responses to the coronavirus outbreak.

The biggest short-term hit is from the closure of gaming machine venues under Level 3 and 4 of the COVID response. Almost $30m are distributed from the profits of those each month, and even after these will be allowed to operate again, gaming machine societies have to claw back their ongoing overheads from the time when there was no revenue. As a conservative estimate there will be $75m missing from funding for the sector in 2020 from these sources alone. Hardest hit by this will be sports clubs.

The former Community Trusts (Rata Foundation, Foundation North, Wellington Community Trust etc) are affected by a sudden reduction in their investment assets, estimated to be at least 15%. This will affect distributions from these Trusts from next year onwards and creates a one-off budget hole of more than $8m for these Trusts. In a low-interest environment, investment returns will dwindle further, resulting in an additional estimated $7.5m annual loss in distributions to community groups from these sources.

Organisations not accessing funding from these sources will nevertheless be affected, as there will be increased competition for the remaining funds.

Income from general donations for NZ-based causes is also expected to be much reduced, as households will have less disposable income, and investment returns of privately run charitable trusts decline. The larger charities are already advertising for donations to help mitigate the effect of COVID 19 in poorer countries, and it is expected that a larger share of donations than usual will go overseas or to frontline relief such as food parcels.

Not-for-profits should review their budgets and assess how these trends are likely to affect them. They should not assume that they can fill funding gaps by simply applying for more from a different funder.

You will see us increasingly use the name Community Capacity Accounting instead of the previous Christchurch Community Accounting. The style of our logo and the acronym CCA stay the same.

As we are taking on more clients from outside Christchurch, we felt we had to drop the ‘Christchurch’ from our name and include other regions more in our focus. In particular, Rata Foundation has encouraged and funded us to start providing services in the Nelson/Tasman/Marlborough region, for which subsidised services are now available.

Secondly, CCA’s main aim is to help not-for-profits to use their admin budgets as efficiently as possible. Providing not-for-profit-specific accounting and assurance services is a big part of this, but we provide a lot of education and advice, both through formal educational opportunities as well as direct support and work with groups. Looking at your accounts always provides us with an opportunity for a conversation with you about your group. This is generally known as ‘Capacity Building’, and we wanted to reflect this in our name.

Yes, ‘capacity building’ sounds a bit like corporate-speak – and it is – but it captures what we are all about quite well. Google it, and you’ll see what we mean.

Christchurch group OPSCO has organised two more online seminars, one on employment law during lockdowns, and one on holding meetings and AGMs. See below:

Employment Law – COVID-19 and your workplace – Understanding your employment obligations

Raukaha! – Connect #3

Thursday April 16^th 11.00am – 12.00pm

Susan Wallace (Canterbury Community Law) and Shauna McClelland (Employer Lawyer) will lead a session that will provide general legal guidance on how COVID-19 rules may be impacting on employment law relationships. 

Please not that while we will endeavour to provide helpful guidance, it will be based on information available at the time and could change with government updates or changes to the law. 

The session is not intended as legal advice for an individual group and we would encourage you to check with your own lawyer, or Shauna McCelland Employment Law, before making any employment decision. 

So we can tailor the session to meet your needs. Please take a moment to fill out the pre-hui questionnaire. 

https://forms.gle/qs8z5JxDKMZE…

Registration closes 5.30pmn on Wed 15th April  You can register here:

https://events.humanitix.com/employment-law-covid-19-and-your-workplace-understanding-your-employment-obligations-raukaha-connect-3

Once you have registered we will send details of the zoom meeting and password.

Meetings and COVID-19 – Legal and Tech tips for holding board meetings and AGM’s assisted by Technology.

Raukaha! -Connect #4

Monday 20^th April 3.00pm – 4.00pm

Many non-profit groups will be required to hold either Board / Committee or Annual General Meetings at a time when NZ is affected by social distancing rules. 

Susan Wallace (Canterbury Community Law) and Henrietta Hall (Infoxchange) will lead us through a sessionon designed to help you identify if your group is likely to be affected, what the legal consequences could be and to discuss potential tech options for your group to consider. 

So we can tailor the session to meet your needs. Please take a moment to fill out the pre-hui questionnaire.

https://forms.gle/DGhFz5cE7bdR…

Registration will close Sat 18th April at 5.30pm. You can register here:

https://events.humanitix.com/meetings-and-covid-19-legal-and-tech-tips-for-holding-board-meetings-and-agm-s-assisted-by-technology-raukaha-connect-4

Once you have registered we will send out details of the zoom meeting and password 

Raukaha! – Connect Team

Otautahi Partnership for Stronger Community Organisations. 

OPSCO, a Christchurch group or organisations for strengthening not-for-profit sector capacity, is hosting a new series of online workshops (hui) to provide information relevant to community groups during the COVID crisis. The first two as below:

Raukaha! –  Connect

An OPSCO initiative.

An opportunity for groups to connect online, hear some useful information which will help during this dynamic time, and connect with each other.   We have created two interactive opportunities to do this next week. This first one is specifically related to the Wage subsidy, and the second a more general connect about what issues are top of mind.

COVID wage subsidy – can you apply?, and what to do when you’ve got it.

Join Harald Breiding-Buss and others who will provide clear and up-to date information on the COVID wage subsidy.

This Connect Hui will last a maximum of 1 hour.

Once you have registered we will send you a link to the zoom meeting.

So we can tailor the Hui to meet your needs please take a moment to tell us the most important thing you need to be answered from the Hui

To support online safety we have a registration process which can be followed by click the link below. Registration will close at 12pm on Tuesday 7^th April You will receive a zoom meeting invite with password once you have registered.

COVID wage subsidy – can you apply, and what to do when you’ve got it. Raukaha! – Connect Hui. An OPSCO initiative., Hosted online, 7th of April | Humanitix

To enable us to tailor the discussion as much as possible please fill out the online survey below for this session

COVID wage subsidy – can you apply, and what to do when you’ve got it.

Community Chat – An opportunity to talk about what’s on top and to identify what questions you need answers to.

Join Liz Hawes (SEWN) and others will provide the opportunity to chat about what’s on top and what questions you need answers to at this time.

This connect Hui will last a maximum of 1 hour.

Once you have registered we will send you a link to the zoom meeting.

So we can tailor the Hui to meet your needs please take a moment to tell us what’s the most important thing you need to be answered from the Hui

To support online safety we have a registration process which can be followed by click the link below. Registration will close at 4.30pm on Wednesday 8^th April . You will receive a zoom meeting invite with password once you have registered.

Community Chat – An opportunity to talk about what’s on top and to identify what questions you need answers to., Hosted online, 9th of April | Humanitix

To enable us to tailor the discussion as much as possible please fill out the online survey below for this session

Community Chat – An opportunity to talk about what’s on top and to identify what questions you need answers to.

We are getting a lot of questions about this subsidy and how to pay workers. Some key points:

• Receiving the subsidy does not change your employment agreement with your staff in any way!
• The subsidy is like a grant for wages: it can’t be used for anything else, but it does not change how you manage your employee.
• This means you cannot cut their hours without consultation and without a business reason.
• You also cannot cut their pay to the subsidy amount only. You must try to pay them at least 80% of their normal wage.
• If the subsidy exceeds what a worker is paid normally, you can use the difference for another worker. If there is no other worker, you can extend the time you are using the subsidy for this worker. You are not meant to increase their pay, as this would change your employment agreement and would likely have to be permanent.
• There is no GST on this subsidy.
• If you are laying off staff for which you receive the subsidy, you have to pay the balance back. You are not prohibited from making people redundant or partially redundant during this time, if you think the work will no longer be there in future. Normal employment law applies.

Some more information can be found here:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/120666823/employers-unilaterally-cutting-pay-are-acting-illegally

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120718939/coronavirus-workers-rights-and-wage-subsidy-questions-answered

Keep it clean out there!

Chances are your operational side will have wound down for the lockdown, and possibly beyond. s

So what better time than looking at those boring accounts!

CCA always deals with a large bulge between July and October leading to 2-3 months waiting time. We are a bit worried that organisations will now delay doing their financial stuff, and this bulge will be even worse this year.

If you do have a bit of time on your hands, all of us are happy to help you with any Xero, MYOPB or spreadsheet-related issues, or anything else financial. This is covered by our funding and the new Capacity Support Fee, and does not cost you anything.

As a non-essential business we had to close the office as of 25 March 2020 for the duration of the NZ lockdown.

We are operating as normal otherwise.

Our phone number (03-260 0509) diverts to Harald’s private number, and is available.

End-of-Year Work

As work will slow down for many people for a while, this may be a good time to look at your accounts and get the end-of-year work with us on the way. We expect that many people will stop working altogether and work will slow down for us somewhat. This will create a huge bulge later in the year, and long waiting times, so “Now’s Good”.

Documents

It would help tremendously if hard-copy documents would be made available electronically, i.e. scanned and/or saved to a facility like Dropbox, Sharepoint, OneDrive or Google Drive.

It may be possible to receive your hard-copy documents during the lockdown, taking certain safety precautions and avoiding personal contact, but government may also impose further restrictions which will make this impossible.

When couriering files, please use this address for the lockdown period only:

CCA

c/- Harald Breiding-Buss

244 Pine Avenue

Christchurch 8062

Other Help

Even without end-of-year stuff you may want to use the time to sort some things out, or tidy them up. We can help remotely via Skype or Teams, or using the old-fashioned phone. In the first place, please always email info@commaccounting.co.nz, and you’ll be directed to someone who’s available to help.

Take care out there.