Kia ora tatou and welcome to this update from the New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) team. To find out more about our work and the services we offer please visit www.nzbn.govt.nz.

We now have a New Zealand Business Number Act 2016. The New Zealand Business Number Bill was passed by Parliament on the 12th April.

The passage of the NZBN legislation means that by the end of this year, NZBNs will be able to be allocated to other kinds of businesses such as sole traders, partnerships and trading trusts.

Companies registered in New Zealand have had NZBNs since 2013.

“The NZBN Programme has been in the establishment phase up until now”, says Manager NZBN, Karla Flood.

“The passage of the Bill means that the programme now moves into the implementation phase.”

“This phase includes the allocation of NZBNs to businesses by the end of 2016, supporting continued implementation by the public and private sector and identifying opportunities for joined up government services.”

The private sector has already started adopting the NZBN. Early adopters include organisations such as Air New Zealand with its business airpoints scheme. The NZBN will work across the private sector in the same way as it will for the public sector, enabling identification of a business and the updating of primary business data. 

Ms Flood says the implementation of the NZBN will take a few years to complete and for full benefits to be realised by businesses in New Zealand. This has been the experience in other countries who have adopted a unique business identifier such as Australia, Denmark and Norway.

To achieve the benefits of the NZBN, a whole of government approach to using the NZBN is critical, and government agencies need clear direction about what they need to do, and by when. To facilitate this, the government has issued a Whole of Government Direction describing how the NZBN will be used by government agencies.

Government agencies that are part of the Result 9 – Better for Business work stream (core business facing agencies like MBIE, ACC and IR) are required to recognise businesses by their NZBN by the end of 2017 and to incorporate the NZBN into their finance/procurement systems by the end of 2018. 

Other (non-result 9) government agencies with businesses as customers (including vendors and suppliers) will be required to recognise NZBNs by the end of 2018. By the end of 2020 R9 agencies are expected to have implemented the ability to “tell government once”.

All government agencies will be required to report in their annual reports on progress made on the implementation of NZBN.

Connectworks is a New Zealand software firm that develops and sells cloud-based software for improving the compliance and management of trusts and estates (Trustworks) and streamlining corporate secretarial and governance tasks for companies (Companyworks).

Both products target professional firms, bringing the people involved in these multi-party entities and all of their information together.

“The initial setup of a New Zealand company in Companyworks was already easy” says Connectworks CEO Dr Jeremy Buckley. “Users can import all the publicly available information from the Companies Office in seconds”.

“However, some professional firms are bringing on board hundreds and even thousands of client companies.

“To speed up the process we identified the NZBN as a unique and accurate identifier of their clients.

“Professional firms can now provide the NZBN for all clients they wish to use Companyworks for, plus add proprietary information such as the partner and manager involved, business unit, the client’s IR and GST number, who files annual returns, plus AGM and balance dates.

“This enables us to instantly setup all their client companies in Companyworks, plus overlay their proprietary information with that imported from the Companies Office.”

Warehouse Stationery has just launched The Meeting Room, a new website aimed at helping small businesses in New Zealand to enhance their workplace, fulfil their ambitions and improve their work-life balance by providing rewarding ideas, advice and tools. It includes contributions from business.govt.nz and features information about the NZBN, among other useful tips and tricks for business.

Do you support or interact with small businesses? We need your help!

With NZBNs set to be allocated to small businesses by the end of 2016, we need your help to make SMEs aware of the NZBN and how it will make it easier for them to do business. You can help by simply letting them know about the NZBN and that no action is needed until late this year.