The Not-for-Profit New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) is in charge of selecting and sending athletes to participate in the Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games. Tracey Presland, the CFO of the NZOC, is in charge of managing the organisation's finances.
A particular challenge they’re facing at the moment is the pandemic and the change in dates for the Tokyo Olympics. "Postponing the Tokyo games out one year to July/August 2021 has affected our funding and our costs," says Tracey. "I've been doing a lot of financial modelling over the last year, and using Spotlight Reporting to present to the board."
Spotlight and the Olympics
Before working for the NZOC, Tracey was an avid Spotlight user—so much so that she implemented our software as soon as she started in her current role.
“I’d used it in a previous organisation, and I felt it was really good,” she says.
While the NZOC initially used another software program for tracking their financials, Tracey found that those management reports alone were simply not enough, and she needed a way to incorporate financial storytelling in her stakeholder reports.
“Prior to Spotlight Reporting, we may have presented accounts, with an accompanying word commentary document,” says Tracey. “But I find Spotlight Reporting is more professional, and Spotlight Reports are much easier to talk to.”
For Tracey, a key reason Spotlight Reports work so well are the graphs.
“You can tell a story with graphs, using colours to highlight different trends,” she says. “The biggest selling point of Spotlight for me are the graphs.”
Recreating these graphs manually using Excel would take her a few hours, she says, and she has recommended Spotlight Reporting to other Accountants.
“You could easily take a day out of your month-end process using Spotlight, instead of doing it all manually,” says Tracey. Like most CFOs, saving time is everything to her.
If you'd like to hear more about how organisations like the NZOC are using Spotlight Reporting to present to their board, get in touch with our business team.
.jpg)
