Ascern Advisers

Ascern Advisers is Australia's premier provider of part-time CFOs for small to medium sized enterprises. 

Our trusted CFOs help business owners and operators grow faster, generate value, and achieve their business and personal goals.

Commercially experienced CFOs | Zero recruitment fees | ready for action

Founder | Fractional CFO

Dads Group

Dads Group is about changing the culture of fatherhood for the better. We promote positive parenting for men and give new Dads the support and connection they need.

Non Executive Director

Department of Employment, Small Business and Training

Business Mentor, Mentoring for Growth Program

Queensland Cradle Care

Queensland Cradle Care supports mothers and families in the critical time after mum and baby return home after birth.

Director

Dutch Chamber of Commerce Queensland

Dutch Chamber of Commerce Queensland is a business platform supporting the commercial interests of The Netherlands and Queensland.

Board Secretary

Blue Mountain Co

Blue Mountain Co is offering products that deliver an effective rain harvesting system for homes and businesses.

Chief Financial Officer

INSELEC

Inselec is a Specialty Electrical Workforce provider supplying electrical workers to Commercial, Infrastructure, Solar, and other projects across Australia.

IntoWork Australia

IntoWork Australia is a Not-For-Profit group specialising in recruitment, employment, training, and Disability community and employment services. MRAEL merged into the Group in 2016.

Group Chief Financial Officer

MRAEL is a Not-For-Profit business specialising in recruitment, employment, training, and employment services. The Group operates throughout Queensland with its Group Training Organisation, Registered Training Organisation, Australian Apprentice Support Network and Senior Secondary School Trade College.

Chief Financial Officer, MRAEL

GM Finance, MRAEL

Energex

Energex is a top 100 Australian company with more than $7 billion in total assets. EsiTrain is Energex’s Registered Training Organisation responsible for technical training of field staff to work on the network. Electricity Distribution.

EsiTrain Business Manager

Li & Fung Limited

Finance Manager/Controller - Promocean

Providing Part-time CFOs to grow your business | Founder at Ascern

🌟 Who I Am

Greetings! I'm David, a seasoned Chief Financial Officer with a wealth of over 25 years of commercial experience spanning across both Australia and Europe. My journey is marked by a dedicated partnership with business owners and management teams, steering them towards unlocking growth and enhancing value through strategic foresight and meticulous execution.

💡 My Mission

My passion extends beyond mere numbers and strategies. I am on a mission to support business owners and management teams in realising their professional aspirations and personal dreams. Through offering advice on strategic planning & growth, performance optimisation, effective cash flow management, and navigating mergers and acquisitions, I am here to be your trusted adviser.

Beyond the boardroom, I apply my insights into psychology and education to mentor and coach leaders and teams, nurturing environments where positive cultural values flourish. My commitment to fostering a culture of supportive parenting is evident in my roles as a non-executive director with Queensland Cradle Care and Dads Group, where I advocate for positive parenting practices.

🚀 What I Offer

My expertise lies in navigating the complexities of business growth and profitability. I specialise in:

- Crafting and implementing strategies for growth and profitability, coupled with setting financial targets and operational measures.

- Conducting thorough due diligence for business acquisitions.

- Guiding business sale processes from planning to execution.

- Enhancing process efficiency and system integrations across corporate services teams of all sizes.

- Training, coaching, and mentoring finance professionals to foster their development and success.

🌱 Ascern: Empowering Growth

At Ascern, we pride ourselves on being a premium provider of CFOs, offering strategic financial leadership on a Part-time / Fractional basis to businesses poised for growth. Our mission is to be the catalyst that propels your business forward, turning potential into achievement.

🤝Let's Connect

I'm keen to connect with like-minded professionals and businesses seeking to elevate their financial and strategic capabilities. Whether you're looking for advice to scale your business, strategic financial planning, or simply wish to exchange insights on leadership and positive workplace cultures, I'd love to hear from you.

What can go wrong integrating an acquisition into your business? Here’s what can happen when the finance side of the integration fails:

My client had acquired a new subsidiary 9 months prior as part of a vertical integration strategy to feed clients into their existing business. It was a cheap purchase because the subsidiary had been struggling financially for a couple of years, but the parent company had a clear strategy to use its existing expertise and capacity to turn it around.

Problem was, cash was declining at an alarming rate at this stage in the turnaround but nobody knew why, so they called me in. 

My brief from the CEO and Board was to find out why cash was tight across the Group after 9 months, even though the subsidiary’s numbers had shown solid improvement … so of course I have many questions.

- Turnaround plan for the subsidiary vs actual operational performance? Good plan with the right key metrics in place. Operational turnaround is definitely on track.

- Cash forecast vs actual? No cash forecast for the subsidiary, the parent, or the group - ok then, show me the cashflow statements? No, we don’t prepare them for the monthly board meetings, it’s not possible.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: When a finance team is telling the CEO that they can’t generate cashflow statements from their existing management reports there’s an alert that goes off in the back of a CFOs mind that screams “DIG HERE”!)

- Let’s check out those management reports then. Oh wait this is a consolidated Profit & Loss statement, but why does that Balance Sheet look like it’s for the parent company only?

Turns out the finance team didn’t know how to generate a Balance Sheet for the subsidiary, so simply didn’t do it … and didn’t tell anyone.

And that’s where the fun began! Turns out the subsidiary had a VERY different cash cycle than the parent: 90% of it’s income was received half-yearly. 

In the meantime the internal finance department had been simply transferring money from parent to subsidiary to pay expenses without flagging that the cash burn meant the group would run out of cash about 3 months before the next subsidiary income was received. So here’s what I did:

- Implement 3-way reporting to the Board (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cashflow).
3-way forecast for the following 3 years to calculate the cash burn and timeframe for recovery.

- Helped the CEO Identify cost-reduction targets that wouldn’t delay the subsidiary turnaround too much.
- Negotiate with the bank to increase existing bank facilities to bridge the cash gap.

It was a pretty hairy ride, but it worked. The client received enough funding to finalise the subsidiary turnaround and the group survived, and thrived.

Businesses that are growing by acquisition (like this client) or organically can really benefit from a commercially-oriented CFO. For many businesses the ideal way to access this expertise is via a Fractional CFO, like me.

If your business is growing and you don’t have a CFO - drop me a line!

David Harreveld

Fractional CFOs to grow your business | Ascern

The future is streaming: movies, music, and now … wages.

Payday lending has been around for a very long time, but has recently joined the digital age. “Stream your Wages” is an actual slogan used by a “wages on demand” provider. 

Wages on demand is the Greensill supply chain financing equivalent for salary & wage earners: if you’re owed money but want to access it earlier than payday, click here! 

If that makes you uneasy, you’re definitely going to feel worse knowing this:

In Australia you can “access” (borrow) up to $2,000, secured against your next pay, for a fee of around 5%. With no credit check too, so quick and easy to lock in.

This sounds attractive to a lot of people, especially when cost of living pressures are high. When you’re under pressure, you can easily rationalise a single-digit % fee. 

But for a full-time worker that will mean working almost one whole hour, JUST to access a single week’s pay, 1 week early. 

There’s no way this won’t cause problems for people who don’t need more of them.

Confidence through Clarity: Fractional CFOs to grow your business | Ascern

AI is an energy hungry beast. All those computations don’t just require powerful Nvidia chips, they also require a lot of electricity.

This is concerning for a world that is struggling to decarbonise: how do we transition while technological advances often require more and more energy?

Turns out there are already several AI data centres powered by 100% renewable energy. 

1. Opera's AI Cluster in Iceland: Opera has deployed an AI cluster in Iceland powered entirely by renewable energy, leveraging the country's abundant hydroelectric and geothermal resources to support its operations sustainably, Opera browser’s new AI cluster in Iceland, powered by 100% renewable energy, showcases another example of the shift to energy efficient data center ops.

2. Kao Data: The company has opened a second (10MW) data centre in Harlow, UK, which is fully powered by renewable energy. This facility is designed for high-performance computing and AI workloads, emphasizing sustainability with low carbon emissions and energy efficiency.

3. CyrusOne: All of CyrusOne's European data centres are now running on 100% renewable energy.

4. EdgeConneX: EdgeConneX operates global data centres powered by 100% renewable energy, aiming to achieve carbon-neutral, water-neutral, and waste-neutral operations by 2030.

These examples show the growing trend and commitment within the industry to sustainable energy solutions, reflecting a broader push towards reducing the environmental impact of data-intensive AI operations.

This weeks new supply-chain disruption caused by the war in Ukraine:

Tenex, Russia’s state-owned uranium supplier, issued a force majeure notice to its U.S. customers. This happened because of a new U.S. law that bans imports of Russian nuclear fuel, meeting the technical definition of force majeure because:

	1.	Government Action: The U.S. law banning imports is a government action, which is a common element in force majeure clauses.
	2.	Unforeseeable and Uncontrollable Event: The imposition of the law was likely unforeseeable and is beyond the control of Tenex, affecting their ability to fulfill contractual obligations.

So who will be affected by this?

Some of America’s largest U.S. nuclear plant operators, because Russia is its largest supplier of nuclear fuel, providing about a quarter of all uranium used in US nuclear reactors.

If the nuclear plants can obtain an exemption to the law within 60 days they’ll receive their uranium as planned. Any later than that and they go to the back of the queue, and these shipments are complex - taking up to 4 months.

That makes it likely that this supply chain disruption will directly impact US electricity supplies and prices.

To complicate things further, even if US utilities can obtain an exemption there is a chance that Russia retaliates by blocking uranium shipments. Nuclear fuel market research firm UxC estimates this could push up spot prices as much as 20%.

This is a significant finding. It's crucial we delve into it:

“Confidence through Clarity”

Last week I went to a networking event and was challenged to come up with a short over sentence explanation of what I do.

Naturally my first attempt was pretty lame, but after some encouragement ended up with the above slogan, which I’d describe as “positive, yet vaguely enticing”.

Does it work? Find out by asking me what I do at the next networking event!

The Reserve Bank doesn’t just decide interest rates. It’s also responsible for Australia’s electronic payments system. 

Here’s a quick overview of how it works, with a trigger warning: this explanation contains a large number of acronyms!

The Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System (RTIS) is the central platform for settling transactions in our interbank payment systems. This provides Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) services, ensuring:
- Real-Time Settlement
- Liquidity Management (for banks)
- Security
- Integration (Australian financial market infrastructure, including the New Payments Platform (NPP).

So, what’s the NPP? The New Payments Platform is infrastructure for instant payments. It launched in February 2018 and includes the Fast Settlement Service (FSS), which does exactly what it’s name suggests - Real-Time Payments between accounts at different financial institutions, with immediate settlement.

If you’re thinking “but why aren’t all of my payments processed immediately?” here’s why:

For many bank payments we still use a system developed in the 1970s - the Bulk Electronic Clearing System (BECS). BECS was designed to run on the mainframe and mid-range systems that were common in the banking sector during the late 1970s and 1980s. This included hardware from manufacturers like IBM, which dominated the market with their mainframes and mid-range AS/400 systems.

(Side note: if you know an accountant or bookkeeper who performed data entry on AS/400 systems - telling them GUIs are better is a great way to start an argument)

BECS was created to move payment systems from manual paper-based systems that were slow and prone to error, like cheques. This is roughly what the cheque process looked like:
- Cheque Issued: The payer wrote a cheque and gave it to the payee.
- Cheque Deposited: The payee deposited the cheque into their bank account.
- Bank Processing: The payee's bank physically transported the cheque to the payer's bank, usually through a clearinghouse.
- Clearing: The payer's bank verified the cheque details, checked for sufficient funds, and processed the payment.
- Settlement: Funds were transferred from the payer's account to the payee's account.
- Notification: Both banks updated their respective customers' account balances.

Despite its age, BECS still handles a substantial volume of transactions - on average about 5.5 million transactions DAILY. It’s still critical infrastructure! The RBA has a target to decommission BECS by June 2030, at which point that 2+ billion annual transactions will move over to the NPP. As you can imagine, this is a mammoth project, and the consequences of failure would be … not ideal.

The RBA publishes updates every two years. The most recent review was released on 12 June, and the project and associated risk management seems to be going well, thank goodness.

People achieve their best when they’re supported, motivated, and empowered to grow, but sometimes they need more than their line manager can provide.

As a young commercial accountant I learnt a lot from my direct manager. They taught me how to apply my technical knowledge to our business.

But when I ended up on a project with a senior manager from a different team, he took me under his wing and coached me in things I wouldn’t have been exposed to in my regular job, that helped me enormously in my future roles. Without that mentor it would have taken me much longer to move ahead with my career - and I’ve never forgot the lessons I learnt from them.

Since then I've picked up additional skills & training in how to properly coach & mentor (in addition to my teaching/training quals). 

So now I also offer that as a service for clients: coaching and mentoring for CFOs, Controllers, Managers, and Finance teams to help them achieve their best.

More great Brisbane news!

Brisbane- based biotech company Gelomics has recently raised $2.2 million to further its 3D tissue culture technology. This advancement aims to reduce the need for animal testing by offering a more ethical and efficient solution for research and development.

The company’s LunaGel 3D tissue culture is already used by leading scientific research institutions 22 countries. This technology eliminates the need for animal testing in pharmaceutical drug development.

The $2.2m pre-seed funding round was led by early-stage investor Jelix Ventures alongside the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) and Angelloop, and is expected to generate more than 70 jobs over the next 5 years.

Some businesses pay their staff early, just in case things go wrong. It’s a great idea, but …

When you don’t let your staff know they’re being paid a day early, they forget when the real payday is.

And because payrun delays are actually pretty rare, people plan their lives around when pay their pay typically arrives.

I have learnt this lesson the hard way many years ago. 

That’s how I know that telling staff their *actual* payday is two days later doesn’t solve the problem that they timed their mortgage or rent payments to be paid on the earlier date.

So please, for your own sake, if you’re going to pay your payroll early every time - make sure you communicate with your staff.

If your supply chain involves importing or exporting - you need to know this:

International shipping is yet again experiencing bottlenecks and delays, putting upward pressure on inflation.

Problem 1:  worst delays since the Covid-19 pandemic began with the continued attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Ships travelling between Asia and Europe are diverting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 2 weeks travel time to each trip plus additional fuel costs.

Problem 2: Donald Trump has announced he’ll impose tariffs of “at least” 60% on Chinese imports, so many businesses have increased production and shipping of goods in advance of the US election.

Problem 3:  shipping delays cause “vessel bunching”, best imagined as a squeezed accordion: ports can only fit a fixed number of vessels at one time so the rest simply have to wait their turn.

Problem 4: other port-specific delays. Remember the bridge that collapsed after being hit by a container ship in March this year, blocking traffic at the Port of Baltimore? The port has only reopened yesterday. Other ports in Germany, France, Canada and the United States have been impacted by labour disputes. 

All of those problems are causing large delays at other ports worldwide, such as Singapore which has had over 4 weeks delay in processing shipments.

And where there are delays, there are costs. Shipping companies are the first to feel the pain - Maersk’s first quarter earnings are down by over US$2b year on year.

Then comes the more direct/quick impact on consumer prices - container shipping rates have jumped almost 300% in the past year.

If you’re part of this supply chain, get those contingency plans up and running.

Here’s something you learn in big businesses that becomes a super power in small to medium businesses: Standard Costing.

What is it and why is it so powerful?

It’s the ability to say “this thing that I make or buy SHOULD cost this much”.
Once you know how much it SHOULD cost, you can start discovering why it DOESN’T cost that much, and fix those so it DOES cost what it SHOULD.

It makes you focus: once you gain the super power you start seeing variances to be reduced where previously you just saw changing costs. You seek Control instead of accepting differences.

Eventually you level up and achieve the power of Predictability, at which point your growth journey becomes a whole lot easier. You’re already in control of the variances that can otherwise chew up cash as your business grows.

Last year we kicked off Ascernment with an analysis of Australia's favourite Baby goods retailer - Baby Bunting, because its share price had dropped 24% on release of its FY23 financial results.

FY24 has not been kind to Australian retailers, including Baby Bunting. In fact, it's share price has been kicked around a lot over the past 9 months.

But last week its new CEO reaffirmed BB's FY24 profit guidance, so it's a good time to revisit last year's analysis to answer the question:

Is Baby Bunting's Big Punt paying off?

Welcome to Ascern Advisers: Ascernment - Analysis to stimulate you to find the Growth Potential in your business. Baby Bunting is Australia’s Australi

Open article: Baby Bunting Revisited: how is its Big Punt going? by David Harreveld • 5 min read

David Harreveld on LinkedIn • 5 min read

Baby Bunting Revisited: how is its Big Punt going?

We have now reached peak mobile screen size.

What’s next?

Unpopular opinion: the best way to value your services should be based on both time AND value.

Case in point: Australia’s most expensive lawyer, Mark Robertson KC, charges up to $50,000 per day ($6,250 per hour).

One of the benefits of having worked in a  range of industries, companies, and places is learning the ability to manage new problems and quickly develop solutions that will function acceptably.

Mostly these relate to finance & business, but occasionally they turn out to be actual life hacks, like the time I learnt that in a pinch you can jam a European laptop charger plug into a UK power point if you do it quickly and aggressively, and don’t care about causing damage. 

(Thanks go to the IT manager who taught me this, if he remembers)

Would you work for an abusive boss? Almost everybody would answer No, right?

Abusive behaviour in the workplace is terrible for long-term outcomes - both for the staff personally and also for the business.

So if we won’t work for them, why do they still exist? How do they get away with it?

A recent study from Ohio State University has identified one reason: when a leader is seen as a high performer, employees are more likely to label abuse as just "tough love”.

The results showed that when employees rated their managers as high on having abusive behaviours, their overall perception of the manager depended on the managers’ performance. High performing managers were more likely to be labelled:
- a “tough love” boss
- “stern but caring”
- “insensitive but nurturing”
- “rough but well-meaning”

The researchers also found that this positive perception by employees of their abusive managers could happen quite quickly. But they also noted that this isn’t a causal relationship - the abusive behaviour is not causing high performance … in fact other research shows that those types of “tough love” high performing bosses would actually get even better if they “used more accepted management techniques” (ie stop being abusive).

The Renewable energy transition has a lot of sexy stuff going on.

Solar farms? Warm and sexy.

Geothermal power? Sexy like a jacuzzi.

Hydro power? Mostly humorous when Florence regularly gets stuck drilling tunnels, and also a tiny bit sexy.

You know what’s not sexy? Generating all this renewable energy but not being able to get it to where you need it.

That’s where Transmission lines come in. They’re vital to the transition, but apart from some arguments about small Nuclear power stations, many of us may not realise that these vital components of the transition are being built already, at scale, all over the globe.

Welcome to Ascern Advisers: Ascernment - Analysis to stimulate you to find the Growth Potential in your business. The world’s transition away from fos

Open article: Unsexy but Vital: Transmission lines by David Harreveld • 7 min read

David Harreveld on LinkedIn • 7 min read

The first Australian Bitcoin ETF was released last week.

It was launched by VanEck (who also brought the first American Bitcoin ETF to market). This marks a significant step in integrating digital assets into Australia’s mainstream financial sector.

Who’s going to buy it?

News about inflation, cost of living, interest rates, and property values often make people think about how the Australian tax system could be modified to change investor demand.

Here’s an example from The Netherlands, where negative gearing on personal investment in rental properties is not a thing (This is of course not tax advice):

The net value of your assets minus your liabilities as of 1 January each year are taxed. This does not include your primary place of residence, but does include:

- Savings accounts
- Investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds)
- Real estate not used as a primary residence (e.g., second homes, rental properties)
- Certain other assets like valuable collections

The Dutch tax system assumes a notional return on your assets, which varies depending on the total MARKET VALUE of your assets less loan values as of 1 January each year.

Rental income? Ignored.

Expenses such as maintenance for investment properties? Ignored. There are however some exemptions and credits, but aside from these the Dutch tax system assumes a notional return on your net asset values. This notional return is then taxed at a fixed rate. The return percentages are divided into three brackets as follows:

1. Bracket 1: Assets up to €73,071 are assumed to have a notional return of 0.36%.
2. Bracket 2: Assets between €73,071 and €1,002,074 are assumed to have a notional return of 4.37%.
3. Bracket 3: Assets above €1,002,074 are assumed to have a notional return of 5.69%.

The total notional return is taxed at a flat rate of 32%.

How would our property prices look if this type of taxation was brought in here?

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