INTHEBLACK April/May 2024 - Magazine - Page 14
MEMBER PROFILE
Sarah Petty CPA joined Buzz
as CFO in July 2023 and was
previously head of financial
control at Target Australia.
Buzz is a Melbourne-based,
family-owned business that
makes products for the
global travel industry.
Buzz's post-pandemic growth
has helped shape Petty's role
into something far more than
traditional number crunching.
MEET THE CFO
World of
opportunity
As CFO of travel product design company Buzz, Sarah Petty CPA
navigates the organisation's fast growth and keeps compliance
and governance in check.
Words Adam Courtenay
Photography Alex Zemtsov
MY ROLE
Growth and complexity
This role, which I started in July 2023,
is my first foray outside the “large corporate”
world, and the job so far has been about
much more than traditional financial
reporting duties.
I have a team of 10, but we will need to
add more team members as the business
grows. Demand from our airline and hotel
clients has grown substantially, as business
and leisure travel have been increasing
rapidly since the pandemic. This means
Buzz has experienced dramatic growth.
One of the most complex aspects of my
role is the work we do with overseas markets.
I determine the tax implications, custom
duties, pricing, currency exposure, credit
checks and invoicing process for each new
market. For example, in the US, each state
has its own sales tax rules, reporting and
14 INTHEBLACK April/May 2024
compliance regulations. The requirements
can be complicated, so I also work with
external advisers.
Planning and inventory management
can be complicated. We mostly make
products to order for our airline clients,
but we hold inventory for our hotel clients
for when they need to restock. For our
larger hotel clients, we manage their
accounts, but we also have an ecommerce
store for smaller boutique or individual
hotels to access.
GAME CHANGERS
Different perspectives
In Singapore in 2015, I became commercial
financial manager at Kellogg Company,
looking after emerging markets in Asia
and Africa. I naively assumed that things
would operate in much the same way as in
Australia – I was wrong.
