Why did you first approach LCA?

Before bringing in Paul as CEO, Techtonics wasn’t in a strong position financially and needed expert support. So the Board Chair was working with Avril and the LCA team to fill in the gap left from a vacant CEO role and help get the company back on track. In 2016, Paul was appointed as CEO. Impressed by LCA’s service and approach, we have continued to use LCA’s services where we need support. They are exactly what we look for in an accountant, and the ongoing relationship we have developed with LCA is very positive. Techtonics has gone from strength to strength, and we now have a revenue of around $5 million per annum.

What has LCA helped you with?

LCA always responds to whatever we need at any particular time. Their most substantial support area has been in staff augmentation. With LCA’s expert insights and advice, we made the fantastic decision to employ Belinda (a Chartered Accountant herself) as our in-house financial accountant. While Belinda takes care of most of our accounting requirements and does the heavy lifting, LCA is a big part of our budgeting cycles, provides external review on our reporting, and carries out regular cash flow analyses and forecasts.

They also provide support with other management accounting functions. Avril continues to act as a Virtual CFO, so she sits in our Board meetings and offers high-level oversight. They also regularly provide general accounting advice and bi-annual internal control review. The internal control review involves assessing various parts of the business and producing a traffic light report and recommendations, which we can then present to the Board with clarity.

The LCA team has also provided personal mentoring and upskilling to our staff working in the financial space. As people have come and gone, LCA has always been there to step in and provide one of their staff members as a virtual finance person and sometimes work on-site with us, which our team has appreciated. Belinda has also spent time working in their office, which is a really positive and welcoming environment.

How has LCA impacted your business?

We see LCA as a trusted long-term partner to our business. They have supported us in the business change we’ve been driving ourselves. It’s clear that they want to empower us rather than upselling their services and trying to gain as much work as they can. After supporting us to employ Belinda, LCA actively encouraged us to take on more and more of the work we were contracting them to do, such as Xero and Spotlight Reporting management. To us, that just shows their integrity and how their priority is seeing you succeed. At the same time, they’re always there for us as a sounding board for anything that comes up, and we have the utmost confidence in everything we’re doing because we know the checks and balances are in place. Their staff are very approachable, so we never second-guess asking a question we’re unsure about, and they present information in a way everyone can understand.

They’ve also provided advice as Paul and Graham (Techtonics’ Professional Services Manager) undertake a company buyout. LCA is knowledgeable about the financing options available so that we can make prudent decisions based on interest and tax implications.

What would you say to other businesses about LCA?

The LCA team is accessible, personable, and dependable. And, importantly, they’re always providing quality outcomes. We’ve all noticed how they make you feel valued as a client as well. One way they do that is through their culture of supporting the businesses they work with, by either using your services themselves (we’re an example of that) or promoting their clients’ products and services within their wider business network.

All of the staff at LCA have been great to work with. They’re not just a group of accountants. You can see that caring about the success of every client is part of their ethos. They provide a service that goes beyond the numbers, and want to support the business as a whole.