This year, Lisa and her team celebrate 20 years in business. It hasn’t always been easy, but it continues to bring Lisa and her GoFi8urines great joy and satisfaction.

GoFi8ure’s journey started back in 2002, with the mission and vision to create valuable accounting solutions for SME businesses. These days we are blessed with online cloud technology and educational resources at the end of our fingertips, but it hasn’t always been like that.

2002 was a year where it took an average of 12.5 minutes to download music or 30 seconds for a web page to load. It was that year that Google released its first Google Search application and the emergence of Amazon Web Services. It was the era before cloud accounting software was released and desktop software was the only semi-automated accounting solution, aside from the good old manual way. It was also the year of the Lord of the Ring series, but that is for another day…

A look at our journey…

Time and time again, Lisa would see business owners distressed and overwhelmed by the day-to-day running of their business accounts. Seeing a gap in the market, and with the guidance of a highly respected business advisor and coach, Lisa set out offering onsite, part-time bookkeeping and financial controller services for small to medium enterprises. By creating a unique, mobile solution, GoFi8ure was born to help business owners overcome the financial stress of inaccurate accounts and out of date ledgers.

Over the years, our services have developed in harmony with the advances of cloud and software technology. We have improved and enhanced our services, particularly in the online accounting and tax space, in response to market trends and needs. Since starting in 2002, Lisa has transformed the business into an award-winning accounting practice, helping SME businesses metamorphose the way they run their business and finances.

Lisa credits much of her hard-earned success to her inability to accept failure as an option and her determination to lift the game when it comes to accounting, tax, and the impact it has for SME businesses. Providing a transformational accounting solution earned GoFi8ure the title of #1 Female Led Accounting Firm in New Zealand by CAANZ and Stuff (2019), becoming a Xero Platinum Partner and a multiple award-winning accounting firm. We have come a long way, and today GoFi8ure is rightly known for our culture of making things happen, our agility, and our passion for unlocking the value in the accounting and software technology space.

Foundations for success

This 20-year milestone gives us a chance to reflect on our past achievements and highlights of our journey. According to Stats NZ, in 2002, there were 375,282 Business Enterprises in New Zealand, employing approximately 1,681,600 employees. In 2022, there are 592,704 Business Enterprises employing over 2,392,500 employees. The business failure rate is almost at 20%. Being in business is tough, especially when it comes to something you are passionate about. With that in mind, we asked Lisa her thoughts on the last two decades of being in business.

“Ever since I started my business in 2002, I have been on a mission to help SME businesses and colleagues in the accounting industry. I saw the difficulties and unnecessary stress businesses were having with their bookkeeping and accounting and knew there had to be a better way. Recognising that number-crunching wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea and armed with a passion for accounting, I set about providing a future-proofed business solution for SME businesses that was focussed on excellence, energy, effectiveness, and efficiency in client service delivery! I believe NZ can do better, and my visionary mindset has influenced sustainable success.

Since then, I have continued to learn and grow along with the business. In 2016 I decided it was time to go back to study so I could share my new-found knowledge with my team and those around me. I completed my Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) in Accounting and Finance in October 2018, all whilst developing and growing my team personally and professionally. I decided to sign up as an NZ Business Mentor, complete an international AML Certificate, join the Board of Directors and extend our service offerings so we could provide more value to business owners. I have been studying for the last 4 years and recently completed my CPA (CPA Australia Associate Program) qualifications. Learning is my happy place. It’s in my blood, in my DNA. If I can learn something that will help someone, I will do it in a heartbeat.

I’m a firm believer that if you give people the right tools, guidance, and solution, they are set up to be efficient, effective, and ready to live their best life and really recognise the value they really bring to businesses and their respective industry. This is WHY we are changing up the accounting industry; it comes naturally to me to be passionate about lifting and upholding our industry standards and really empowering those around us. Over the years, I have joined industry associations and advisory committees so that I can help those around me grow. The biggest wish I have for our community and our clients is to enable future leaders to be the best version of themselves, to be educated and to be able to really add value and understand what their clients and those in the community need.

I love making a difference in people’s lives – when I can enable a fellow business owner, bookkeeper or accountant to be the best version of themselves, to upskill and recognise the value they really bring to businesses and society. When someone tells me I inspired them and that they truly value the skills, resources and support, it makes me feel like all the hard work, study and effort I put in, not just in my own business but in the lives of others, is well worth it. I quite simply love making a difference to not only the core important people doing the accounts work, but to the business owners so they are fully enabled and informed and can make the best business decisions. I have always had the vision and goal to get the importance of accountants and advisors recognised nationwide and to ultimately create #betterschoolsandhospitals.”

Looking Forward

As we commence our 20th year of trading, we look forward to a further 20 years helping our clients and to welcoming many more clients into the GoFi8ure family. We will also continue to respond to the challenges our clients face and continuously uphold and maintain our transformational services and solutions to enable our customers to focus on driving their businesses forward. Our clients are the reason for our existence, and we will continue focusing on providing transformational accounting and advisory solutions for our clients and to offer solutions to help them regain their financial freedom, free time, and peace of mind.

“To celebrate 20 years in business is significant for our practice and we are very proud to have reached this milestone,” says Lisa. “We are incredibly grateful to our talented and hardworking team members who have helped shape our company into what it is today and to all our clients who have trusted us with their most valuable thing in business, their numbers – we are forever thankful to you all.”