As the financial markets take another dive, the focus is once again on how to make sure your business is working as smartly and as efficiently as possible. Motivation could be the key.

This is the first of two blogs where we look at how motivation must start from the top, and the impact this has on your employees …

For your company to achieve sustainable growth, workplace engagement is essential. However, according to Gallup, only 13% of employers worldwide are engaged at work. Only one in eight workers are psychologically committed to their jobs and are likely to make positive contributions to their organisations. Now, here in Australia and New Zealand, we are doing ok. We have the second-highest proportion of engaged workers globally at 24%. Yet that still leaves three-quarters of our workforce who are not engaged or worse still, actively disengaged.

This is really going to affect your business potential in 2021. 

Choosing a unique and personalised Christmas gift to show your staff appreciation can be challenging enough. Throw Covid into the mix and it’s another kettle of fish. Christmas is all about togetherness and fun. And in these times of social distancing and when many people are still working from home, now more than ever it is important to look after our employees, support our customers, and aid our communities.

We’ve put together a list of personalised gift pack ideas you could arrange to be delivered to your amazing staff’s door to say a very special thanks this Covid Christmas.

We all know time is money, so what if I told you your business could be missing out on over 30% of possible revenue every year without any increase in your business costs?* That's one heck of a pile of cash you're missing out on. And it would go straight to the bottom line.

But more importantly, what can you do about it?
The answer – unleash the benefits of a quality job management software package.

Everybody knows where you’re most likely to be told “Say ahhhhh”. For a routine medical check-up you go to the doctor. They’ll use tools to measure your temperature, check blood pressure, listen to your heart and check your lungs. The big ice-cream stick comes out and you’ll be told “Say ahhhhh”. Doctors always start by properly checking out our body’s vital signs. Everything else depends on them working properly.


They actively go through a standard series of measurements and observations. Only then can they give feedback and advise on any actions that need to be taken.

Businesses are in need of routine check-ups just as people are. It’s part of business management. And whatever the scale of your business, getting the right stuff, the stuff your business needs to have working properly, comes down to one thing, understanding the current condition.

This means business information systems to help you measure, and thus manage, the business. So what to measure.

Abtrac Integrating With Xero: A Xero Users Success Story with Abtrac

As part of our research for this article, we called several of our Xero users in New Zealand and Australia. Many gave us both a verbal response and followed up with a more thoughtful email.

One was from Janine at a professional services firm of some 30 staff in Wellington, New Zealand. It really covered all the things every one of our respondents had raised. We print it here with her permission.

 Abtrac CEO Edward O’Leary gives his thoughts on How to Manage Business Advisors

Someone called into my office to see me the other day. She was quite frustrated. She knew I’d worked for an accounting firm in my past. She’s been a user of Abtrac for a long time. And she was in the neighbourhood. She’d had problems with some of the balances in her accounting system. She went to see her local accountant for help to sort things out.