2016 – It’s A Wrap

As 2016 comes to a close, I want to wish you a safe and happy holiday season and take this opportunity to wrap up our 2016.

It has been another great year for PTAM. 2016 has been my third year in business and it has delivered further growth as well as its share of challenges and opportunities. We have achieved plenty this year and surpassed many milestones. Some of which have been achieved for the first time in my career.

 

The year kicked off with Team PTAM receiving First Aid Training and Kelly being appointed as our First Aid Officer. Not one to shy away from danger, she was also appointed as our resident Fire Warden. Random evacuation drills have now become a common event in the office. Be alert but not alarmed!

 

 

2016 was a great success for PTAM client and staff events. On 8 February we hosted our second Super Bowl event and saw the Denver Broncos win 24 – 10 over the Carolina Panthers. Our inaugural Go Cart Day saw Team PTAM take on the boys from RAD Constructions. Outnumbered, it wasn’t our day but I am reminded of our internal placings. Yes, that means that Kelly won and I did not.

At our Winter Function, there were a few surprises to see NSW finally beat Queensland 18 – 14. The Mattara Hotel take care of us and with plenty of food, drinks, and cake nobody seemed to mind too much that NSW lost the series. We’ll get them next year.

There were plenty of winners at our Melbourne Cup function this year but the trophy went to Kelly and Jo who both celebrated in style. Me, not so much I just looked like a horse.

 

 

In May, Xerogami Chickens overran us. These little critters became part of the team, multiplying daily. Kelly even held  Xerogami Chicken training, I am sure this was the first and only Xerogami Chicken training ever held in Australia. It was a complete success, but quite messy.

 

 

 

One chicken, #XGAndre was lucky enough to represent Team PTAM on the world stage. #XGAndre lived it up in style at the Hard Rock Hotel in Bali for two weeks but thanks to the cloud, still managed to stay on top of all the reconciling that needed to be done.

 

In July our office was again overrun. This time by Pokémon. Zubats in particular love to congregate outside and infiltrate their way into the office for team meetings. We are confident that we were able to capture at least 432 of them! Still no Pikachu.

In September, we attended Xerocon South, in Brisbane. This year’s event welcomed 2369 delegates from Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Way to go #Xeroconsouth, that was a bigger turnout than the Microsoft APC conference with approximately 1500 delegates. As was the case last year, we were impressed with the inspiring content and the work of many of our industry leaders in the field of accounting and software development. Team PTAM love new and shiny things and there was plenty of this on show over the 3 days. We saw the latest developments for our software and were especially impressed with the teams from Practice Ignition, Tanda, Receipt Bank and Change GPS. We even learnt about Stefan and the rainbow.

This year we continued our sponsorship of The Business Growth Centre and Uniting Bookkeepers. I was invited to complete a presentation on Asset Ledgers and Depreciation Schedules for UB and Kelly and I greatly enjoyed our networking events sponsored by both organisations. We look forward to expanding our involvement with these wonderful groups in 2017.

We continued our proud sponsorship of Hamilton Olympic in 2016 and were thrilled to see the club perform so well. All eyes are on the Under 7’s star of the future Kosta Tsiaousis! (We are not biased).

 

Our clients had a big year as well. Sangerz being voted #1 Fast Food Takeaway in the Hunter, Terrace Meats winning the award for the State’s best chilli cheese cabana.

Our clients so far, this year have amassed an impressive 103 rental properties. How many houses are in your street?

 

 

Social Media has continued to be a key part of how we keep in touch with our clients and the world. In addition to her Emergency duties Kelly has continued to do an amazing job with our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. 306 Facebook posts and counting so far, this year!

We have introduced our spin on inspirational quotes we call #ConsiderThis. We have developed a series called #CheckYoSelf where we provide breaking news and alerts to our followers and we have introduced a series of interviews with our clients and industry partners called #StreetTalk. 2017 will bring more stories, interviews, news, and current affairs.

2016 was also a big year of change. We watched with interest from PTAM HQ the Turnbull Government’s first budget and provided live updates via Twitter during the night. We watched BREXIT and the election of Donald Trump unfold all while delivering our clients a whopping $444,423.94 in refunds since 1 July 2016. For other interesting stats check them out here – “PTAM by the numbers”.

As a business owner, I know very well that things don’t always go according to plan, and although the line-up has changed, I am very proud of my employees as they continue to help make PTAM what it is.

I’ve been lucky enough to know Kelly Eke for 12 years and couldn’t be more proud of what she has achieved in the last 2.5 years at PTAM. She keeps the show on the road and keeps the glue supply right where it needs to be.

At PTAM we have always believed that there is no other way than “telling it like it is”. We don’t sugarcoat our advice and believe that one of our biggest strengths is engaging our clients in conversation. We have operated under this philosophy from the start so what better way to capture this in our new branding than with the tagline…”Join the Conversation…”.

We are extremely excited to have released a sneak peak of our new branding before full roll out in 2017. The bubbles symbolise the modern communication of smartphones and tablets that we are all familiar with and our colours are more vibrant, showcasing our vibrant, direct communication style.

 

 

We will continue the fight to recover Katrina’s super. A fight now into its 12^th year, we have enlisted the support of some heavy weights, with the Inspector General of Taxation and the Federal Parliament now on her side. Now that this issue has been brought to light in mainstream media we are far from done!

 

 

It has been another big year, and with only a few more sleeps until Santa comes, we are all looking forward to some downtime. We will be taking a break starting Wednesday 21st December and will be back on Monday 9th January 2017 all set for what I am sure will be another great year.

2017 will kick off with a presentation for Uniting Bookkeepers on Superannuation as well as the Xero Roadshow and our third Super bowl event in early February (fingers crossed it will be our New England Patriots v Dallas Cowboys). Either way we are sure to be off to a great start. We hope to have more growth, which will in turn lead to more staff and I look forward to the new stories, articles, and news we can bring you.

If you are feeling festive, we welcome you to write a review on Facebook or give us a recommendation on LinkedIn.

 

Happy Holidays from Team PTAM.