Our latest Spotlight is on Gilligan Shepherd, an accountancy practice based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Managing Partner Richard Ashby answers our questions.

In your opinion, what is the future for your profession?
My thinking for some time now is that as the tools to assist clients in attending to their compliance obligations continue to become more advanced, accountants will have to move away from just being compliance accountants to becoming business advisers to their clients. Financial data is becoming more real-time, enabling accountants to sit alongside their clients and guide them today in the decisions they need to make for their business based on today’s data, not yesterday’s.

What is your growth strategy?
To develop more into becoming a boutique advisory practice for our clients while developing an international reputation via our network of trusted referrers.

Where do you see your firm 5 years from now?
Size wise we like our present position and have little desire to grow much larger. However, by upskilling the team and becoming more client focus, we strive to become the centre of our clients’ world, where they think of us first as their trusted advisor when any need arises in their business. We would like to have moved more into the advisory space and to embrace the technology available, to provide a high-value service to our clients.

 What is your biggest challenge?
At present, team resourcing as today’s employees has certainly changed from yesterday’s employees, particularly in a post-pandemic phase, during which a lot of self-reflection occurred. Employees are definitely more mobile and less sticky, so our challenge is to become an employer of choice for the available talent pool.

What percentage of your work is international?
Probably 10-15%

What business advisory services do you offer?
We have a specialist tax team experienced in both domestic and cross-border taxation and business structuring. Alongside our general business services team, we have a specialist advisory team who performs various tasks, including business valuations, capital raising, buy/sell due diligence assistance, litigation support and expert witness, corporate governance advisory and family office support services.

What was your main driver for being part of BOKS International?
The opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals all over the world and to create a portal where we can assist other members’ clients who have any New Zealand advisory/compliance requirements while at the same time being able to provide our own clients connections to trusted offshore professional advisors whenever the need arises.

Where do you see BOKS International 5 years from now?
I see BOKS as a relatively young global organisation, which will change over the coming years relatively quickly, if they maintain their present due diligence processes to ensure the quality of new members coming on board.

How would you describe your typical client?
We focus purely on the SME market in NZ, but with no limits on the type of clients within that market which we will service – we are not industry specific or focused in other words.

Tell us about a recent international assignment
We have assisted a number of multi-national clients recently in the set-up of their New Zealand operations, engagements which commence with advising on the recommended operational structure, attending to registrations with the relevant NZ regulatory authorities and Inland Revenue, assisting with opening NZ bank accounts, and then providing bookkeeping services to manage the NZ payroll and GST return filings. We then prepare the annual financial statements and income tax returns and continue to provide advisory services as required.

How do you target clients who are looking for international services?
We endeavour to become their NZ one-stop-shop by offering a lower-cost bookkeeping service which can take care of their daily accounting needs on a cost-effective basis while at the same time being able to provide a high-quality advisory service when required, being able to recommend other NZ professionals to attend to any service areas which we do not provide and to ensure all annual compliance and reporting obligations are kept up to date.

Do you specialise in a particular sector or service?
No, we do not focus on any particular sector or service – we are confident that we have a team of professionals who can adapt quickly and service most needs of our clients – whatever sector those clients may be in. And if we can’t do it, we’ve certainly be around long enough and have the connections, to ensure that somebody can.