As we have now completed our year end process across the entire Group without having to all dig into the details of our accounts I thought I’d draw your attention to some of the highlights. As a Group Playcentre Aotearoa received Revenue just shy of $20 million! With over $4 million of that through Grants, Donations and Fundraising alone. I would just like to acknowledge the huge effort all our Volunteers put into raising this revenue and the impact it has on our Tamariki every day.

The Groups combined property portfolio is valued at over $40m and we also have as a group some really good cash assets providing Playcentre with a solid foundation into the future.

One thing I have noticed is that less than 30% of our cash assets are being held on term deposit and that many centres are not getting the best interest returns. Passive investment income such as this is an easy way to help subsidise day to day activity and I encourage centres to have these conversations and be proactive about getting the best returns you can.

On that note I am currently twisting the arm of Federations Bank Manager to see if he can’t offer us some solutions to allow centres to best maximise their interest while still having day to day access to their cash.

If your centre gets really excited and wants to start investing outside of a banking arrangement do contact me to work through this and consider it is within Playcentre ethical and risk comfort zones.

Xero upgrade has happened

As many of you will have already noticed all our centres now have access to Xero Business edition, and for those who already paid extra for this you will no longer be billed!

Here are the features this offers:

  • Organise your bills – send bills you receive via email straight into Xero so you never miss a payment, and if you do business with other Xero users, the Xero-to-Xero network allows you to send invoices directly into their Xero account and vice versa
  • Beautiful invoices – convert your quotes into invoices to save on data entry or simply create a new invoice which can be email to your customers
  • Automated invoice reminders – get Xero to do the debtor chasing for you by setting automatic invoice reminders
  • Work on the go – download the mobile app to make working on the go even easier
  • Quick quotes – create simple quotes to email to your parents
  • Save time with bulk payments – pay suppliers in bulk and reduce data entry errors by using the batch payment functionality
  • Fast payments – connect with a payment service such as Stripe, PayPal or GoCardless to collect online payments and get those invoices paid faster
  • Business insights – get real-time insights into how your business is performing by viewing the dashboard and using the customisable reports in Xero

We now have a Grants section on the website!

I have been getting a lot of requests for a copy of our Group accounts, just a reminder these are now on our website in the Finance section here and in the Grants section here. Every centre is listed in Appendix A at the back so just highlight this in your application.

We also have a handy Grants guide and more supporting documents on our website here.

Reminders for Treasurers

In preparation for year end we would like Treasurers to start creating and updating their Fixed Asset Registers, instructions can be found on our website here