The Anguilla Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACOCI) organised and hosted its first professional development workshop for 2019. The workshop, entitled ‘Getting Under the Numbers’, focused on helping participants to understand and use their business’s or organisation’s existing QuickBooks data. The workshop was conducted over two half days on March 26th and 27th at the ACOCI Conference Room. The facilitator was Ms. Sabra Richardson, QuickBooks Pro Advisor, who aptly delivered informative and practical sessions over the course of the two days. Participants represented a range of local businesses and were actively engaged in discussions and activities throughout the two-day period.
During the workshop, participants learned the techniques of QuickBooks, how to effectively use the software and how to apply it to their real-world business context. This included creating QuickBooks accounts, creating invoices/vendor purchase orders, creating letters in QuickBooks to communicate with customers, vendors and membership and entering payroll into QuickBooks. The workshop focused on financial issues specific to Anguilla – including how to enter information in QuickBooks to reflect US and EC accounts and generating reports for governmental agencies such as the Anguilla Social Security Board and the Inland Revenue Department. The goal was to ensure that participants understood the importance of record keeping, accurate representation of their business financials and how these real-world numbers help Anguilla to make fiscal decisions.
The workshop was very well received and achieved positive evaluations by the participants. One participant shared that, “Ms. Richardson is an excellent facilitator. The session was very informative and thought-provoking. The knowledge acquired will be very useful for organizing my business financials.” Another attendee expressed that he was very grateful that he attended the session and will apply his newfound knowledge to his business. Overall, participants indicated that the workshop was very insightful and the skills and knowledge gained would be very useful within their respective organisations.
The facilitator, Ms. Sabra Richardson, highlighted the importance of understanding how QuickBooks, a USA based software, can best be applied in other regions and countries, like Anguilla. She stressed the usefulness of such software in helping businesses to grow and generate revenue. Ms. Richardson expressed that it was her hope that participants would take the knowledge learnt, over the two days, and share it with others to ensure capacity building of the business community.
Ms. Richardson further shared a word of advice to the general public which was, ‘Track your resources, track your income and track your expenses. Take notice of what is profitable and what is not, and create logistics within your company that promote business growth. Don’t just put the numbers in – get under the numbers, understand what the numbers represent and what that means for your business.’
The Anguilla Chamber of Commerce continues to offer valuable services such as these types of training for its members. The Chamber would like to thank all who participated in this workshop and invite all members to take advantage of all opportunities to invest in staff.
Looking forward, the Anguilla Chamber of Commerce will continue to offer support and valuable opportunities to its members. The Chamber of Commerce extends an invitation to all businesses and entrepreneurs to become members of ACOCI. Visit the website anguillachamber.com or call the office at 497-2839 for more information.
Written by Sherise Brooks
