The Annual Excellence Awards have been a highlight on the Association’s event calendar since 2013.

2021 marks the 9th year of these prestigious awards

The Excellence Awards recognise and celebrate the success of bookkeepers and their businesses, and play an important role in raising awareness of our profession within New Zealand. 

It remains vitally important that we celebrate the success of our fellow bookkeepers and provide them with the recognition they deserve. By recognising the achievements of our peers, we are all contributing to not only building the brand of our successful nominees, but also promoting the professionalism of bookkeeping to the public.

Entries are open early each year with winners announced at the Awards and Gala Dinner evening following #Bookkeepcon.   

Why enter the Excellence Awards?

Entering the Excellence Awards presents a unique opportunity to focus on a bookkeeper’s personal or business strengths and the competitive advantage that makes their services exceptional.

Nominees can benefit from entering the Excellence Awards by:

• Celebrating the journey of the bookkeeper or their business to date.
• Highlighting your success to current and potential clients, suppliers, and staff.
• Motivating and energising your team to continue building your success.
• Positioning the business's strategy for long-term sustainable growth.
• Obtaining an independent acknowledgment of the business’s success.
• Benchmarking your business against competitors.
• Allowing a view of your business from a fresh perspective.

In essence, this provides nominees with the ideal opportunity to step back, review their own operation and take the next step forward.

Entry guidelines

The Excellence Awards are open to individual and business members of ICNZB and there is no charge to enter. 

Nominations for most awards may be submitted by the bookkeeper themselves, their employer, or by another person associated with the business, or employee, in a bookkeeping capacity.   There are several exceptions to this rule – most notably the peer nominated Service to Bookkeeping Award.  We recommend you read the criteria thoroughly prior to submitting an entry to ensure the entry is valid. 

All entries will be checked for validity by the organising team before being accepted. 

Entry confidentiality

For the award process to be effective, there must be unquestionable fairness and objectivity for all concerned.

• All awards entry documentation and entry forms are treated as confidential by the organising team and judges.
• The organising team is comprised of employees of the Association, who are impartial.
• Applicants are not expected to provide or reveal, proprietary information regarding products, processes or services.
• Judges will be asked to declare any conflicts of interest and if necessary alternative judging arrangements will be made.
• Each judge has volunteered their time without compensation and is committed to assist with the success of the awards.
• Judging decisions remain confidential to judges and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the outcome of the awards.

The Judging process and panel

Once the entry period has closed, our judges will receive all award submissions and allocate a score of 1-10 for each question based on two key areas:

• The information provided to the questions
• The relevance of the answer to the award category

The individual judges are responsible for determining the score allocation for each question and returning their scoresheet to the organising team.  The scores for each question from each judge are then totalled by the organising team. The final total will determine the winner and this person will be announced at the Awards and Gala Dinner evening following our annual conference.

Our 2021 judges

David Jenkins, New Zealand Payroll Practioners Association

David Jenkins is the founder and CEO of the New Zealand Payroll Practitioners Association (NZPPA). David Jenkins formed NZPPA in 2007 when he saw there was no recognition or support for the essential work payroll professionals do every day to pay employees correctly and on time.

With more than twenty-five years of consulting experience at a senior level in New Zealand, Australia, and globally, he specialises in payroll and human resource management, employee relations, personnel learning and development, and information technology (payroll and HRIS).

His career path has involved him in work for some of the largest organisations in a wide range of industries in both New Zealand and Australia.

With his previous experience — and since NZPPA was established in 2007 — David has been able to be involved with an extensive range of payroll systems in many types of businesses.

Currently, he develops and delivers all NZPPA training, events, payroll auditing, and NZPPA PayTech AdviceLine services (he is a one-stop shop for payroll!).

Sam Caulton, RE-LEASED

Sam Caulton is the Chief Financial Officer at RE-LEASED - a global B2B SaaS business operating in the Commercial Real Estate vertical.  Their software is mission-critical and provides a "hub" for landlords and property managers to get live and complete oversight of their CRE portfolio, and save them up to 75% in administration time, amongst other operational benefits.   

Tech-savvy Sam has a passion for growing and scaling B2B SaaS businesses globally and firmly believes that technology can be used to solve most business problems, achieve scale, and materially save costs. His mission is to be a thought leader in the B2B software space, help peers and colleagues build more efficient and scalable, long-lasting businesses, and above all else, have a ton of fun while he is doing it.

On a personal level, Sam is a Kiwi with a strong love of the freediving and spearfishing that you can find down under; however, he currently lives and works in London, one of the greatest and ethnically diverse cities in the world, which also provides him with a great deal of joy.

2021 Awards

The ICNZB Excellence Awards for 2021 are open for entries from 12 March 2021.

Entries must be submitted via the official online entry form(s) below no later than 5pm on Friday, 23 April 2021.  The online forms will automatically close at this time and there is no scope for an extension.  All entries will be checked to ensure criteria is met before being accepted.  Any entry that does not meet the criteria will be voided.

Finalists will be announced on or around 31 May 2021, with winners being announced at the Awards and Gala Dinner event being held at the Millenium Hotel in Rotorua on 31 July 2021.

The award categories and entry form links for 2021 are:

• Certified Bookkeeper of the Year
• Bookkeeping Business of the Year
• Bookkeeping Trainer of the Year - Gayle Buchanan Memorial Trophy
• Bookkeeping Community Contributor of the Year
• Emerging Bookkeeper of the Year
• Sustainable Business Award
• Bookkeeper in a Small Practice
• Service to Bookkeeping Award
• Bookkeeping Software Partner of the Year (NEW)
• Payroll Software Partner of the Year (NEW)

To view a full list of all criteria and questions, please click here.

Please note our online entry forms have a limit of 4000 characters (including spaces) for each answer

Acknowledging our previous winners

Congratulations to our previous years award winners on their success.