Kia ora tatou and welcome to the end of year issue of NZBN News. Along with www.nzbn.govt.nz this is our way of letting you know what is happening with the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) programme of work.

The NZBN team has launched the next wave of services designed to help make it easier for businesses to deal with government.

The ultimate goal of the NZBN is that businesses will be able to “tell government once” about their core business information (or primary business data) and will be able to update it at a single point, eliminating the need to advise multiple agencies of changes to this information.

In this latest NZBN release it is now possible to subscribe to a watch list for businesses and receive notification when those businesses make changes to their primary business data.

NZBN customers can also request and receive bulk downloads of business data. And businesses on the NZBN register can update their own primary business data online.

To find out more visit www.nzbn.govt.nz

Over the past year government agencies and the NZBN team have been working to co-design and co-develop the way the NZBN will be implemented across government and the services it will provide.

The NZBN business case was jointly signed off in 2015 by ACC, IR and MBIE. NZBN legislation currently before the House is the culmination of a programme of cross agency work.

The success of the NZBN programme is dependent on agencies across government adopting and integrating the NZBN into their systems.

To drive that adoption it is important that the agencies who talk most to business are on board. Key to that has been intensive work with IR and ACC who between them touch every business operating in New Zealand.

IR and ACC have both included the NZBN in their business transformation programmes. Other agencies like MBIE, Statistics NZ, Callaghan Innovation and NZTE are already using NZBNs in their business.

NZTE and Callaghan are using the NZBN as a business identifier in their CRM systems. MBIE has built it into its procurement system and Statistics NZ is using it as part of the business identification process for surveys.

Alongside this work are several cross agency groups feeding into the NZBN process.

The NZBN Bill is before the house. If enabling legislation is passed in the new year all GST registered sole traders, partnerships, trusts, body corporates, government agencies, other state sector entities and registered entities will receive a NZBN by the end of 2016.

Foodstuffs North Island is a proudly 100% Kiwi owned and operated grocery co-operative. Employing over 22,000 people throughout its network of owner operated stores across the North Island, their retail brands include: PAK’nSAVE, New World, Four Square and Liquorland.

Foodstuffs North Island Technical Architect Simon Dudding says “We’re in the process of aligning our vendors across two ERP systems. Using the NZBN as the unique identifier we will be able to align all the articles they supply and sell for us across all our stores” he said.

“The use of NZBN will make these and future alignments much easier to achieve as we will be able to consolidate reporting and sales between the ERP environments which will save us significant time and energy spent on administration.

In future we imagine we will be able to use key information from the NZBN and match it against our customer data to provide a unique point of sale experience for our customers.

And as sole traders come on board in future the NZBN will allow us to achieve comprehensive sales reporting” added Simon Dudding.

The new R9 Accelerator site. The R9 Accelerator brings the public and private sectors together to work on real problems impacting businesses.

Last month the Minister of Revenue Hon Todd McClay launched the second instalment of policy consultation asking for people’s thoughts on making tax simpler for New Zealanders.

You can see public feedback from the initial consultation earlier this year. This current round is seeking opinions on better administration of PAYE and GST to make it faster and simpler, and modernising the Tax Administration Act - including whether more flexibility or updating the secrecy rule is needed. Consultation is open until 12 February 2016.

Go to makingtaxsimpler.ird.govt.nz to view the consultation and contribute your views.

Other places the NZBN has popped up in recent times include:

• As part of the identification process when registering with the Australian Government’s Document Verification Service (DVS).
• As a validation point in the New Zealand Emissions Unit Register (NZEUR) currently being developed by the Environmental Protection Authority.
• As part of the business processes at LINZ – the organisation now asks for an NZBN rather than a Companies Number from its suppliers.

Do you have a good NZBN story to tell? Do you need to know more? Contact us at any time.