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

2022 marks the 10th 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 to software providers in their dedicated categories.  There is no charge to enter. 

Nominations for awards are to be submitted by the bookkeeper themselves, with the exception of 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.

The 2022 Judging Panel

2022 Awards

The ICNZB Excellence Awards for 2022 open for entries on 21 March 2022.

Entries must be submitted via the official online entry form(s) below no later than 11:59pm on Sunday, 8 May 2022.  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 6 June 2022, with winners being announced at the Awards and Gala Dinner event being held at the Rydges Latimer Christchurch on 30 July 2022.  To book your event ticket, click here >

The award categories for 2022 are as below.  Entry form links will be added when the awards open.

• Bookkeeper of the Year (enter here >)
• Bookkeeping Business of the Year (enter here >)
• Bookkeeping Trainer of the Year - Gayle Buchanan Memorial Trophy (enter here >)
• Bookkeeping Employee of the Year (enter here >)
• Service to Bookkeeping Award (enter here >)
• Bookkeeping Software Solution of the Year (enter here>)
• Payroll Software Solution of the Year (enter here >)

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.