Seminar on finance planning popular

Press, 18 May 1982, Page 25

Seminar on finance planning popular

Christchurch was the venue for the first of a series of seminars on the subject of budgeting and financial planning models that will be held throughout the country this month. The seminars are part of the continuing education course of the New Zealand Society of Accountants. They are being run nationally by Professor Bevan Clarke and Mr Graeme McNally, from the accountancy department of the University of Canter bury. The Christchurch seminars last week were attended by 120 local businessmen, proving that financial planning is a topical subject. Mr McNally attributed the popularity of the seminars to the realisation of the high

risk of making a wrong decision in today’s business environment. He said that such factors as uncertainty in the economy and the rate of inflation made financial planning systems useful tools. Attending the seminar was only a start. “There is a lot of work to be done to develop a model and then to get management to use it,”, said Mr McNally. In New Zealand, said Mr McNally, financial planning systems were used principally to help prepare the annual budget. Overseas they were used more for true management decision making. he said. During the seminars practical exercises were run on terminals connected to CBL

Canterbury’s time-sharing service bureau. The lecturers had created a production feasibility model and a general budgeting model on the computer. These models were described to those attending the seminar, who were then able to observe the effects of making changes to the parameters input to the . models. CBL uses a financial modelling package called MAPS on its bureau computers.. .Mr Bryce Hodgson, the new marketing manager for CBL Canterbury, observed that a number of their clients are regularly using MAPS, including Command Services Corporation and International Harvester.