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In-House workshops for Accountants

Some of your accounting staff have attended courses which have been presented by David Parmenter. They have proven to be some of the most successful courses that the Institute branches have undertaken with over 500 people having attended in Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch.

Continued professional education is often left to the individual to organise, and this can often lead to a patchy continual development amongst the accounting staff.

The benefits of bringing these courses in-house to your accounting team are as follows:

• providing a tailor-made component to a course so it better fits the culture and needs of your accounting team;

• using courses that are already tried, tested and have received good to very good ratings thus eliminating the risk;

• a time saver as staff do not need to go to an external location for the training;

• creating an opportunity for increased teamwork amongst your accounting staff as you would be gathering them together in one room for the session;

• increasing CPE hours amongst your accounting staff as there are always some members of a team who put their continuing education at the bottom of their to-do list.

See below the schedule of courses that we can deliver to you with details about costs and proposed seminar duration.

To ensure smooth co-ordination please contact us with proposed dates (preferably give 3 options) and the courses you would like. David Parmenter will then contact you to finalise details. It is possible to run two courses together. The agreed fee will be invoiced and payment due in 10 working days.

David would welcome the opportunity to present to your accounting team.

 

Course	Duration and cost
Introduction to winning KPIs This session will suggest some ways to help you identify key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are those indicators which, if tracked and focused upon by management and staff, will direct behaviour alignment in a balanced and co-ordinated way. This session will be useful for participants who have a balanced scorecard or who are operating without one. Content: The difference between a KPI and a result indicator; The characteristics of a KPI; How KRAs and KPI’s fit together; Guidelines of setting up your KPI team; When to dive into metrics and when not to; The need for reporting KPI’s frequently (daily, weekly); The importance of developing a hierarchy of KPIs Rebuilding performance measures for team, business units, the organisation and for the Board  .	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
Decision based month end reporting Many management reports are not a management tool, they are merely memorandums of information. Management reports as a management tool help with the alignment of behaviour in that the reports encourage action to take place, on a timely basis and in the correct direction. In other words, you need to measure and report on those activities the Board, management and staff need to focus on - what gets measured gets done. The seminar also explores how you can support behaviour change through innovative reporting during the month and actions that need to be taken during the month to support behaviour change. Content: Reports that help management improve performance; Formats for P/L, B/S formats, Purchase agreement summary report (one page!); Cashflow; Forecasting; Importance of combining monthly and weekly reporting; Importance of monitoring and reporting on your critical success factors; Showing how reporting can help support behavior change; Actions that need to be taken during the month to support behavior change.	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
Month-end reporting by day three or less This session is designed to help participants to find ways to shorten their month end reporting time frames. Month end reports after day 5 are not a very good decision based tool. The theme of day 1 reporting is important as some leading organisations around the world are achieving this remarkable feat. Whilst day 1 reporting may not be a goal you wish to achieve, day 3 reporting may well be. Attending this workshop will provide an impetus to shortening your month end and is relevant for all Accountants. Content: To look at some case studies on quick month end reporting; To set out the benefits of a quick month end; To analyse the bottlenecks and to discuss better practice procedures to cut time out of: A/P close-off; accruals; budget holders’ variance analysis and commentary; journals; downloading GL reports to Excel, writing the summary commentary; To workshop one organisation’s month end procedures. Agree on an action plan	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
How to achieve a 2 week budget cycle The annual budget process in most organisations is one of the most costly exercises. Typically the budget cycle is categorised by: endless stops and starts in a lapsed period of 2 to 4 months; management conflict; little improvement in the "greater understanding" of the future operations of the business; and with total management time often exceeding $500,000. There has to be a better way, fortunately some companies are managing the process in 2 weeks. While others have included some excellent features to help budget holders get a better understanding of what they are trying to do. The annual budget is effectively only used as a benchmark for 6 months with the year end forecast taking over from that time as the new benchmark. A good budgeting system, leads to a good forecasting system as they should be "one and the same". Attending this workshop will provide an impetus to shortening your annual budgeting process and is relevant for all Accountants and senior management. Content: To look at some case studies on annual budget; To set out the benefits of a quick annual budget; To analyse the bottlenecks and to discuss better practice procedures to cut time out of: budget managers preparation, discussion, and rework; To investigate better practice budgeting and forecasting procedures.	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
50+ ways to improve your accounts payable operations This session will suggest many ways that an accounts payable team can improve the way they function. It is based on the findings of a major survey from the USA along with better practices emerging from over 200 New Zealand organisations. The accounts payable function is the centre of the accounting team. Where the accounts payable team is functioning well the whole accounting team can perform and vice versa. This session will be useful for accounts payable staff and accountants, and there will be an opportunity for accounts payable teams to workshop ideas with each other during this session. Encourage all your accounts payable staff to come, accompanied with the accountant who will be best positioned to support them with better practice changes. Content: Why the accounts payable team is so important ; Better practice stories along with participants’ successes stories; The 50+ ways broken down into administration, A/P staffing, business re-engineering, payments, relationship with budget holders, relationship with suppliers, A/P systems; The importance of harmony between the A/P team and; budget holders, accounting team and suppliers; Suggestions on how to make change happen.	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
How to implement a balanced scorecard in 16 weeks, not 16 months The workshop is based around David’s successful article of the same name, which was published in both the Institutes Journal and Management Magazine. In this workshop David will look at the history of balanced scorecard and will discuss why the Kaplan & Norton work is probably one of the greatest pieces of management philosophy. Certainly not a passing fad, but something that will be with us for generations to come. This course will help participants build a balanced scorecard avoiding many of the pitfalls that have hampered balanced scorecard developments within New Zealand. David will cover practical lessons in the development of scorecards. Attending this seminar will provide an impetus to developing a relevant BSC for your organisation and is relevant for all Accountants and senior and middle managers. Content: Review the 10 lessons learnt (from article); Revisit the Kaplan and Norton work to accommodate triple bottom line; The difference between the 3 types of performance indicators (result indicators, performance indicator and key performance indicators); Difference between governance BSC and a management BSC.	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.
Become an efficient and effective accounting function This seminar will be drawing together the lessons learned from his successful seminar series and will be covering additional material looking at how to improve the accounting team, cost apportionment etc. Creating efficiencies within the accounting team will enable movement of more time out of processing and into advisory which will create more job and customer satisfaction. This course will help participants to increase efficiencies within their accounting function. Attending this seminar will provide an impetus to make change and is relevant for all accountants. Content: To look at better practices emerging from the waymark solutions better practice study (over 200 accounting functions have participated); To summarise better practices in accounts payable, month end reporting, budgeting, forecasting, etc. (this will be a useful reminder to those who have attended the earlier seminars on those topics); To analyse the hurdles and to share ways participants have surmounted them.	7 hrs $5,500-6,000 includes liaison time, preparation of handout, practice, set-up at venue, delivery, meeting with participants after presentation.

Other courses available to non accounting staff: