By Louise Missen | Head of Member Services, Australian Payroll Association
One of the highlights of my time at the Australian Bookkeepers Network’s The Bookkeeper Event 2026 on the Sunshine Coast was the opportunity to connect with people face to face.
It was lovely to catch up with current APA members, meet some of our new members and spend time with bookkeepers who support their clients with payroll. Putting faces to names and having conversations away from emails and phone calls made it a particularly enjoyable experience.
Alongside those conversations, the speakers offered plenty to consider about change, technology and the value we bring to our work.
Clayton Oates’ session “Change Creates Opportunity” explored how the bookkeeping profession continues to adapt and where new opportunities are emerging. It was a message with clear relevance to payroll professionals, too. In payroll, change often arrives while we are already managing deadlines and competing priorities. It can be difficult to step back and consider what we could do differently.
For me, a key takeaway was the value of using change as a reason to review our approach. Could a process be clearer? Could information be collected earlier? Is there a better way to explain a requirement to a client or colleague? Small improvements can make a meaningful difference to the accuracy of payroll and the confidence of the people managing it.
The conversations between sessions were just as valuable. We heard about the challenges delegates were facing and discussed how APA membership could support them.
For bookkeepers managing several clients, those challenges can vary considerably from one business to the next. For people working alone, there may also be no colleague nearby to discuss an unfamiliar payroll scenario with.
For us at APA, listening to these experiences helps us understand where support is needed and how it can fit into members’ day-to-day work.
My key takeaway from ABN was that opportunity often starts with a conversation asking a question, sharing a challenge or considering a different approach.
Conferences give us the space to do that. They bring people together, introduce fresh perspectives and remind us that others are working through similar issues. The next step is to take something useful back to our desks. That could be one process improvement, a clearer conversation with a client or a new professional connection we keep in touch with.
Thank you to everyone who stopped for a chat. I thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with familiar faces, welcoming new members and hearing about your work. Those connections were the highlight of my time at ABN.