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Year End 2020

It’s almost my favourite time of the year again – year end! And, that’s no joke.  As a numbers geek I get a real thrill from pulling over 400 sets of books together – analysing, adjusting and eliminating to create one masterpiece of numbers and figures that tell us so much about our organisation’s financial health.

This year’s Finance Pack

On the back of what was a very well received and highly successful Finance Pack last year, we are going to follow the same format, with an easy-to-complete online form and mostly the same questions as last year.

If your books have been maintained and reconciled regularly through the year, then hopefully you can – as one member told me last year “complete it in the ad breaks while watching The Batchelor”!  As my main aim is make it easy and keep the admin to a minimum, just input your numbers in Xero and leave all the spreadsheeting to me (because I genuinely love doing it!).

You can find the Finance Pack here.

Please complete the pack by Friday, 25 September.

 

Question

Answer

1

Please select your Centre’s name from the list

n/a

2

Have you fully reconciled Xero to 31 August 2020

Before you start, please reconcile all transactions up to the end of the financial year, at this point also load all Accounts payable.

3

Please confirm the bank balances in Xero agree to the bank statement at 31 August 2020

This turned out to be the hardest question last year, so one that might be worth getting sorted pre year end  – we have some specific instructions to help – https://www.playcentre.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Balancing-the-bank-to-Xero-003.pdf

4

Have you completed the fixed asset registration per the “fixed asset guide for treasurers” document

https://www.playcentre.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Fixed-Asset-Guide-for-Treasurers.pdf

5

Have you “run depreciation” for the year to 31 August 2020

Again, refer to the guide above – but this one was also considered a bit tricky; I think because it was so simple, it seemed like it couldn’t be right. But just pop into the Fixed asset part of Xero – click “run depreciation” – set the date for 31 August 2020 – hit “confirm” and you are done!

6

Are you aware of any fraud, litigation (including matters settled) or significant safety breaches that have or could impact your Centre?

 

This is a standard audit question, if you do have any concerns you would like to discuss confidentially, please do feel free to contact me – Marina: [email protected]

7

Is your Centre running any bi-cultural or Te Reo Māori sessions?

 

8

Is your Centre running any other cultural or bi-lingual sessions?

This refers to non-Maori sessions, e.g. you may do a Korean language morning or sign language session.

9

Does your Centre host (or lease to) any home based ECE playgroups e.g. Porse

This is fairly self-explanatory, but we are really keen to know how many of our centres are being used as a place to offer socialisation for home-based care.

10

Does your Centre host (or lease to) any other non-Playcentre community Playgroups

This is similar to the above question, but just asking if you host other Playgroups or ECE providers

11

Does your Centre host (or lease to) any other community groups e.g. toy library, music groups, birthday parties?

This one is anything non-ECE.

Why are we collecting this data?

We would like to promote Playcentres larger role in the community.

12

If your Centre has received any Grants or large donations (eg over $200) that you would like acknowledged in our Annual Report, please fill in the full name of the provider.

We would really like to acknowledge all our wonderful supporters whom we couldn’t do without. Please include anyone you feel deserves a mention, including all grantors, the local supermarket that donated the sausages for fundraisers or the builders who offered to fix your fence for free.

 

And just like that you’re all done

I want to finish by saying a huge thank you in advance to all our Treasurers who help make our Centres run as well as they do and for your help with the year end process. Last year we achieved a bit of a record in terms of our mass consolidation for a charitable entity. It was done ahead of time, despite the added complexity of the Amalgamation of the 32 Associations, something of an accountant’s nightmare!  The audit report was as clean as they come and the Centres’ figures were able to be reconciled back to the parent and Ministry of Education, which is an incredible achievement and proves to me that every one of our Treasurers stepped up to the challenge and together we nailed it.

So – let’s see if we can do it again this year and prove it wasn’t just a fluke!

Ngā mihi nui

Marina