Witnessing growth first-hand

Finance is one of the key departments of any organisation and an essential element to ensuring the successful running of a business. Canyon Coal has a team of dedicated finance professionals with a mix of youthfulness and experience that enables proficient control and management of all financial matters.

The team is led by financial managers Nallinie Perumal, Shoraine Naidoo and Suhayl Kholvadia, who was also recently appointed as group logistics manager.

“As a finance manager, I am responsible for ensuring accounting, audit, tax and corporate governance compliance. I also need to be able to provide information that allows stakeholders to make commercial, operational and investment decisions,” Suhayl explains.

His daily responsibilities entail ensuring weekly tasks are managed, while also communicating with team mates to ensure weekly and/or daily objectives are understood and achieved.

Shoraine and Nallinie explain that their responsibilities include the compilation of management reports, VAT returns, fixed asset registers, maintaining the balance sheets, reviewing supplier reconciliations, debtor invoices, updating cash books, drafting annual financial statements, and audit work, amongst others.

Their daily tasks include updating cash books, raising debtor invoices, performance of reconciliation on balance sheet items, loading payments and reviewing of work in order to produce the monthly trial balance which ensures that all entries made into Canyon’s general ledger are correctly balanced.

“Having been at Canyon for over four years now, I have witnessed first-hand how the company has grown in leaps and bounds. It is most notable in the volume of work that we have compared to just a few years back. The team has grown to accommodate the increased workload, as we could no longer handle the amount of work on our own,” notes Shoraine.

The more recent permanent additions to the team are creditors clerks Aisha Lawal, Dimakatso Mphuthi and Emily Segwapa.

“When I meet deadlines, I feel like I have achieved what I had set out to do. It’s like I am making progress which makes me feel happy and learning new things everyday also makes me feel good,” says Emily, who joined Canyon in March 2019.

Dimakatso, who also joined the team in March 2019, says that she enjoys working at Canyon as she is always learning new things as well as learning to master the SAGE accounting system, which is imperative to her performing her tasks efficiently.

Aisha, who started out as an intern at Canyon in 2016 and was then offered a permanent position in the finance department as a creditor in 2017, says she is still “really excited and elated” at the opportunity to be a part of the Canyon Coal family.

“There is a fantastic learning environment at Canyon, where you get opportunities to grow and learn new skills, so you are always gaining something valuable, whether it be knowledge or skills,” she points out.

Importance of Team Work

Early mornings and late nights are often required by the finance team collectively to meet their tight deadlines.

Nallinie explains that team work in finance is extremely important. “We rely on creditor information from our creditor ladies to compile the reports for the cost meetings. They assist us in making sure everything is captured so that our reporting is complete.”

Suhayl concurs, adding that in his view “you are only as good as your team mates.” He remarks that in finance, the reports produced for users are dependent on the performances of multiple players within the department and when members of the team work well with one another, the results will clearly show.

“The beauty of finance is that it is truly a team effort and continuous learning, self-development and relationship building is a critical function of a well-oiled finance department,” Suhayl states.

Nallinie proudly enthuses that “this finance team is one the best teams I have worked with in my entire career and I look forward to working with them for many more years to come as Canyon continues its growth journey”.

Shoraine concludes “ we all have one common goal, which is to see Canyon grow and reach for the stars”.

Aisha, who started out as an intern at Canyon in 2016 and was then offered a permanent position in the finance department as a creditor in 2017, says she is still “really excited and elated” at the opportunity to be a part of the Canyon Coal family.

“There is a fantastic learning environment at Canyon, where you get opportunities to grow and learn new skills, so you are always gaining something valuable, whether it be knowledge or skills,” she points out.