PodcastsMay 7, 2020

Why PaySauce is offering a free payroll solution for businesses disrupted by Covid-19

Business is Boring host

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Asantha Wijeyeratne from PaySauce.

Recently, local employment solutions provider PaySauce announced it had raised more than $5 million in a recent rights offer to allow it to grow its offering here and around the world.

Its CEO, Asantha Wijeyeratne, has built multiple million-dollar businesses in this space since coming to New Zealand in 1988 as a young accountant. Wijeyeratne saw that the payroll system could be done better and launched an early technology solution in 1995 called SmartBooks. Later know as SmartPayroll it grew to process a good portion of New Zealand business payrolls before eventually being sold to local tech giant Datacom in 2013.

But there was still an itch to innovate in the space again with a mobile-first offering that took advantage of emerging tech. So in 2014, PaySauce was born.

PaySauce has been in the news lately with its offer of a free “essentials” payroll solution, PaySimple, for New Zealand businesses affected by Covid-19. Its successful rights issue brought on board its first institutional investor.

To talk about the journey, what this disrupted world means for business, and how his work in the community helped lead to a Queen’s Service Medal, Wijeyeratne joined us by Zoom from Sri Lanka where he was visiting family at the beginning of lockdown.

Either download this episode, have a listen below or via Spotify, subscribe through iTunes (RSS feed).

BooksMay 2, 2020

Papercuts quarantine pod #2: The hysteria sets in

Papercuts Podcast

Guest writer

Welcome back to Papercuts, our monthly books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass.

Book news

Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist – the prize’s 25th year. The shortlist was announced on the Women’s Prize for Fiction social channels:
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Hamnet by Maggie O’ Farrell
Weather by Jenny Offill

#BookshopsAreBack!!
Newsroom has a list of retailers around the country.

Ockhams Out Loud
The 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards was to be the first event of festival week and will now be broadcast via the The Ockhams YouTube channel.

In the lead-up over the next few weeks, you can listen to each of the finalists reading from their shortlisted work, with one added each day until the winners are announced at the online ceremony on the evening of Tuesday May 12. Take a look, and subscribe for updates.

Auckland Writers Festival 2020 winter online series
Includes Bernardine Evaristo, Lisa Taddeo, Amy McDaid, Anthony Byrt and more.

9am on May 3 and running live once a week for 13 weeks.
Three writers including at least two from the 2020 programme will chat with series host Paula Morris, read from their work and answer audience questions.
Watch via live the festival’s YouTube and Facebook channels, and then on its website.

BookBound 2020
An “antiviral” online literary festival, already in progress until May 3, 2020.

Includes a number of New Zealand authors, including Freya Daly Sadgrove, Pip Adam, Becky Manawatu and Renée, who join literary talent such as Max Porter and Emma Glass from around the world.

The festival is raising money for a number of charities, and events are free on the BookBound 2020 YouTube channel.

Verb Community
Verb Community members will ensure artists are paid for their work, help create content and experiences and lots of other good stuff. In return, they’ll get access to the Verb Community hui where you can feed your ideas into what they do, discounts on ticketed events and festival sessions, and again lots of other good stuff!

They launch alongside three new pieces of writing by Sinead Overbye (a reading list on love in isolation), Victor Rodger (love and quite a bit of sex), and essa may ranapiri (gender and language).

Book reviews

KD: White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer

LK: Torpor by Chris Kraus

JT: Auē by Becky Manawatu

Not books

KD: Record shops!

LK: Home Cooking: a podcast from Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway to help you figure out what to cook (and keep you company) during the quarantine. Thanks to Papercuts listener David for the recommendation!

Circus of Books on Netflix – the charming and sometimes heartbreaking story of a middle-class Jewish family who ran a hardcore gay porn bookstore from the 80s up until the time of filming.

JT: Brideshead Revisited (1981 TV series)

The TBR pile

KD: In the Fold and The Temporary by Rachel Cusk, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing

LK: You’ll enjoy it when you get there: the stories of Elizabeth Taylor, I’m working on a building by Pip Adam, Screen Tests by Kate Zambreno, Fake Baby by Amy McDaid (out June)

JT: Ripiro Beach by Caroline Barron (Bateman), Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (4th Estate). Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey (DD)