Struggling Reckon closes NZ financial portal

By ADAM GIFFORD

Listed Australian company Reckon has closed its New Zealand financial portal, which is built around the Quicken personal accounting software it distributes.

Reckon Online New Zealand chief executive Russell Hutchinson and two developers have been made redundant. The company will maintain a small staff here to push sales of boxed copies of Quicken, which is distributed by Total Interactive and sold retail or through accountants and financial planners.

"Reckon started the year looking to build up its online business. It's still very much committed to that segment, but at this time it has issues to deal with elsewhere," Mr Hutchinson said.

In October the company told the Australian Stock Exchange that trading since July had fallen significantly short of expectations, with high levels of returns from retailers and distributors, low post-GST sales, and severe demand on its customer support desk.

"Reckon had a very bad year," Mr Hutchinson said.

The quicken.co.nz site "was making its numbers" but "circumstances change and Reckon can't fund the online business for the three years it needs before it would make a profit."

The site was rated by ACNielsen as the 11th most popular of 54 New Zealand finance sites, with about 4000 unique visitors a week.

It made about 80 per cent of its revenue from advertising and the rest from sales of software and services such as share trading.

The site incorporated feeds from other sites, including New Zealand and Australian share prices, travel, mortgage and deposit rates and foreign exchange. Mr Hutchinson said the site would continue to be maintained out of Australia for Quicken software updates and support.