Testimonials

Below you will find a list of testimonials from Davids books and his speaking around the world.

Hi David,

We attended the CPA training sessions you presented in Townsville a couple of weeks ago. Just wanted to let you know that we decided to implement the quick month-end by day three reporting process. We delivered the February month end reports by mid-day on day two!! We normally deliver by day 10 to 12.

We have now set a precedent which we intend to continue to deliver. Next step is the streamlining of the reports.

Cheers,

Colin Barnes | Chief Financial Officer | GS1 Australia

Dear David,

Greetings!!

I wanted to convey my utmost appreciation for your Learnings published in “Leadership Excellence”, a Journal of Leadership Development (India Edition) on “Crisis Leadership”.

Honestly it did touch the chords of my mind. I feel really proud to see you at this height of this thinking. It is now established that genuine determination and tenacity are the right weapons to reach your target through such writings. I truly appreciate your dedication and hard work, in the valuable role you played to write such a wonderful article for next generation leaders.

I have also gone through your website www.davidparmenter.com and let me tell you it is fabulous. I love to know more about your book “Key Performance Indicators” and “Pareto’s 80/20 Rule for Corporate Accountants”.

Deepak Bhatt
Intellectual Thinker

Managing Director & CEO,
Learning Lab (India) Private Limited,

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) India

Hello David,

May I introduce myself – my name is Emily Coltman, I’m a Chartered Accountant and have not long made the move from practice to industry (Finance and Operations Manager for a small company).

That means making sure I learn about areas such as the Balanced Scorecard and KPIs.

I finished reading your book “Key Performance Indicators” today and I have found it very helpful indeed. It explains the distinction between KRIs and KPIs clearly, is written in plain English, and has given me a great deal of food for thought on how to identify our organisation’s CSFs and track KRIs for the board and KPIs for internal management. I shall go back to the office tomorrow with a head full of ideas!

Many thanks for writing such a great book and if you have any recommendations for further reading material apart from the ones you mention in your book, I would be very glad to hear them.

Kind regards,

Emily

–
Emily Coltman ACA
Finance and Operations Manager
FreeAgent Central Ltd
Quartermile Two, 2 Lister Square, Edinburgh, EH3 9GL
Registered in Scotland SC316774

Hi David

I attended your seminar in Christchurch on May 20 and have had great success in implementing changes to my reporting to the CEO and Board.

I was providing the Board with a monthly finance report 7 working days after month close down but after viewing your video online have reduced that to 5 and am working toward 3. We have also completely changed the format of our report, using more summarised information and graphs than we did before. Our Board were blown away and find the report so much easier to understand and use.

Archer runs a 55 bed rest home, and 2 retirement villages. I am looking at the rolling forecast now although that really is a challenge to my conservative accounting brain! Its like being told to try writing left handed! But, my boss wants me to look at it so that’s what we are doing.

The thing that made the difference from all you said was giving me permission to kill a few sacred cows, for example, I remember you asking us why do we have to make a month closedown as accurate as a yearly close down? I had never thought about that but of course you don’t, and that has allowed me to shorten up my end of month procedure times significantly.

I have bought 2 of your books and am finding them excellent reading.

Thanks very much for your help, its been great!

Kind regards,

ANTONY NIHONIHO ACA
OPERATIONS MANAGER

Hello David,

I just wanted to thank you for yesterday’s course in Wellington.
I thought your presentation was brilliant and I look forward to applying some of your methodologies in the future.

Thanks again.
Kind regards,

Nikki Johnston
Assistant Accountant

Helicopters NZ Ltd
Private Bag 9,
Nelson, New Zealand

Implementing a quick month-end at a finance company

We were a finance team which had been through so much change and fire fighting that we were struggling to maintain order and priorities around the month-end process, and as a result we were the textbook case of 2 weeks + to get any reporting out, and the board pack was the classic “insert this month’s numbers into last month’s text”.

Post the course, which we thoroughly enjoyed, we immediately began to implement: booking the post-it note workshop within a few days. We sought and got complete buy-in from our CFO and, through her, our CEO. Our CFO also attended the opener of the post-it note workshop. We did the post-it note exactly as prescribed, as in my judgement it would not work unless implemented as an entire package. I’ve previously done a fair bit of course writing, change management, instructing and facilitating, and think that it is a really well thought out approach.

We made 3 days on the first month-end (inc. “no spring cleaning” mantra). The second month end was quicker again, as we’d re-engineered the board pack and created a flash-report, very similar to your template. CEO loves it. We get the flash out on day 1, 5pm ideally, and the whole board within 3 days if we’re fully staffed. We’ve benefited from the extra time in the month, and month-end is far from a drama. Post-it note re-engineering worked a dream, and I’ll carry it with me from now on; not just for finance month-ends, but any reworking of processes.

Jonathan Ayres
Head of Finance

Hi David
I recently attended your “Quick month-End Reporting” through CIMA and although somewhat skeptical on the day, I thought you would be interested in some feed back on what was achieved in month one.

Our reporting timetable was somewhat flexible and figures tended to be prepared for BPG (Business Planning Group) 3rd Wednesday of the Month and Board last Wednesday of the month.

We currently do not have a Purchase Ordering system so a degree of accuracy has had to be sacrificed, but the first month after your session we produced figured for day1. Today (day2) final accruals has been completed and I’m in the process of writing the Board report.

Regards

Sue Ambrose

Financial Accountant

W. Jordan (Cereals) Ltd

Good Morning David

Dominic and I thought we would let you know that we achieved our month end in less than 3 days! Following our attendance at your inspiring two days of presentations we went away convinced we could achieve it here at Blenheim Palace.

We told our team on Monday 28th April and closed the ledgers on Wednesday 30th, quite a tight deadline for the team but they rose to the challenge and succeeded!

Management accounts were finalised on Friday 2nd with the CEO reports being completed the same day. We feel very proud to have produced accurate accounts in this time frame and it really has inspired and motivated us to make many of the improvements you have suggested. We look forward to improving our processes and making further efficiencies within our Finance team.

Many thanks for your inspiration, we now have the library of all your books so I am sure there are more new challenges ahead for us.

CFO Blenheim Place.

David,

Just a quick note to let you know we have finalised our accounts & board report in four days.

In the past this has taken any thing between 13 to 15 days, due to my complete lack of urgency & complacency.

Thanks for the wakeup call & demystifying the process.

Kind regards,

Peter

Peter Walters

Chief Financial Officer

Broome International Airport Pty Ltd

Hi David,
I attended your Pareto 80-20 course (now called top twenty mistakes corporate accountants make) with CPA Australia on 9th August and returned to the office with a “we could do that” perspective in regard to closing in 3 or 4 days of the end of month. After putting together a “how could this happen” email, senior management agreed to the changes.

September month end was the first opportunity to try it out. Result: Figures finalised 1:30pm day 4. This compares to a good result previously being in the 10 day area. Thanks for the insights. FYI, we are a SME with 30 employees and turnover of about $16m.

Bryce Armstrong

David,

Thank you for your excellent presentations in our two day in-house conference.

All of the teams gained some invaluable insight (including our economists) to the various topics.

The troops are primed, share the vision and we are planning our changes.

An outstanding success.

Regards,

John Knox
Chief Finance Officer
ActewAGL and TransACT

Hi David, thanks again for the course on Thursday afternoon regarding quarterly rolling forecasts, which has given me an insight not just about forecasting but also re constantly questioning what I’m currently doing and re-engineering a number of processes I currently undertake.

As I said, ‘This course was the most practical session I have ever attended’.

Cheers and I look forward to catching more of your sessions,

Greg Forck
Budget Director
Department for Victorian Communities

Decision Based Reporting
Very passionate about topic – great presentation skills
Great examples given – very practical session
Victoria Hubbard

Decision Based Reporting
Very inspiring & motivating speaker who offers some revolutionary ideas
Could not believe how relevant the content was.
Sam Faulkner