Help with the paperwork

Growth can creep up on companies, so their accounting system becomes a problem rather than a solution.

That is what faced Lake Taupo Forest Trust, a mid-sized Maori authority which administers the land interests of 20,000 owners of 60,000ha of volcanic plateau forest.

Accountant Sherry Tecofsky said the trust turns over about $12 million a year. It pays $2.6 million a year in dividends, based on the size of owners' shares in the 130 blocks under the forest, and a further $500,000 in education, kaumatua, marae and sports grants.

It has doubled in size over the past two years by providing outsourced administration services for several other Maori trusts in the region.

"The trust deals not only with its own issues but also runs the Lake Rotoaira Forest Trust, which is slightly smaller but has almost the same ownership," Tecofsky said.

"It set up subsidiaries to manage things, like a forest management company for operations and an investment company, because we are generating income we would like to set aside.

"With nine separate companies and trusts to manage, the consolidations at the end of the year were getting complicated."

The trust had been using Mind Your Own Business, running Excel spreadsheets to make up for the program's inflexibility and limited reporting capability.

After an extensive search of mid-tier accounting packages, it picked Accpac Advantage, which is now part of the British vendor Sage's software portfolio, over the New Zealand-designed exo-net.

Tecofsky said the choice came down to getting more than one number at the end.

"Unlike with other systems, Accpac's consolidation report still provides a by-organisation breakdown, which is valuable for auditing purposes."

She said the system was saving at least 10 hours a week in transaction processing, and cutting days out of the year-end administration.

It is also web-enabled, allowing Wellington-based subsidiaries to feed directly into the system.

The trust has some complicated juggling to do. The forest land was originally all leased to the Crown. When the crop is harvested, the Crown and the trust share the stumpage, and the trust resumes the lease and replants the block.

All the land will be back in trust hands by 2025, at which time the first blocks in the second rotation are due for harvest.

"We have worked out how much it would cost if there was some disaster like forest fire or disease. We would still have to pay distributions to owners, so we need to keep a close eye on how much cash is needed."

With help from a Hamilton-based systems integrator, Business Enabling Systems (BES), the trust is implementing Accpac's asset management module to administer its fixed assets.

Accounting for it

* The trust needed a system to administer turnover of about $12 million a year.

* The system needed to be able to manage accounts of subsidiaries.

* Accpac was chosen because it can report by-organisation results.

* The system has cut time spent on administration by 10 hours a week.