The work of accountants has changed a lot in the last few decades. Yes, debits and credits still have to match, but whereas accountants used to spend most of their working day entering invoices, this style of working has been forgotten in progressive accounting firms. “The data entry clerk’s job disappears, the accountant stays,” says.
Kaie Moisa, owner and manager of accounting firm FMJ . FMJ celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. It’s a company that’s all about digital, and does its utmost to educate its clients to say goodbye to PDF sheets, paper files and manual data entry. “It’s natural for us to always strive to make work easier and more interesting,” says Kaie. “The manual data entry is not interesting, but the accounting side of things and dealing with clients certainly is.” According to Kaie, the digital revolution in the world of accounting is going incredibly slowly. There are a lot of companies where things are done in much the same way as they were decades ago. This is despite the fact that in the last five years there have been revolutionary changes in this area – paper invoices are disappearing or have disappeared, invoices are moving from the email inbox directly into the business software, and different programs communicate and exchange data.
Businesses could make more use of e-invoicing
E-invoices were first talked about years ago, and in 2019 they became mandatory for the public sector. However, there is no obligation for private companies to accept e-invoices and there are still a large number of businesses who consider e-invoices to be PDF files sent as attachments to emails. “There are large private companies that accept e-invoices, but a very large number of small businesses do not want to deal with this issue. They are afraid of the complexity or they have an accountant who is not progressive. Slowly e-invoicing is taking root, but we think these changes could happen much faster. Especially as, in general, people in Estonia are very open to all kinds of e-services,” Kaie discusses. Maybe it’s the old-school accountants who are afraid that the digital tiger will take their jobs? “We don’t need that many data entry specialists any more, but accountants are not going anywhere. Nowadays, an accountant is not just the person who puts together the annual accounts, but is an adviser, a financial partner to the business. Their role is much broader than just entering data,” says Kaie. She adds that there is also a degree of innovation among clients. Some come in with ideas and want to digitise accounting so that processes become simpler, faster and actually cheaper. For some, Kaie tries to sell the idea of taking advantage of the benefits of automation. It could also be that the CEO is keen to automate processes, but his staff are not yet ready to let go of old habits.
Accountant Tiina Timmotalo adds that you can’t immediately tell a new client to forget all the paperwork. That might scare people too much. “I’ll just do the annual report the old-fashioned way and give them advice on how to avoid paperwork in the future. You can come in with a paper trail, but I hope that next time there will be at least half as many paper invoices,” he grins. “A very big problem is missing paper invoices. But if you pull up the app on your phone and take a picture of the bill straight away, you can’t lose the bill. It’s always the case that when the original change opponent gets a grip, they are very grateful because automation in accounting makes life so much easier.”
Large clients from different sectors
FMJ has offices in Jõhvi and Tartu. The company employs eight accountants in two offices and has about 80 monthly clients. Of course, there are also those who come once a year with a big bundle of invoices and just want to put together an annual report. There are a lot of accounting firms in Estonia, but Kaie says that what sets FMJ apart from its competitors is that it has a lot of big clients. They come from different walks of life – hospitality, manufacturing – and that also adds colour to the accountant’s work. Debit and credit can really make your eyes shine, and you can feel that when you talk to Kaie and Tiina. The two women are passionate about modernising accounting, with the most fierce project so far being the complete automation of the accounting at hookusbookus.com (formerly hotelveeb.ee). In the past, it was business as usual – invoices were checked, entered, forwarded manually thousands of times every month. All that has been forgotten for a while, because Hotelweb OÜ, in cooperation with the accounting company FMJ and the programming company BitWeb, wanted a fully automated accounting solution. Standard Books business software was chosen as the accounting software. As a result of all these upgrades, the Estonian
the most automated accounting system.
Standard Books’ convenience and customer support is praised
Tiina has been working with Standard Books for 3 years, Kaie longer. Praise comes from both users. Kaie praises the program’s capabilities and well-functioning interfaces, while Tiina stresses the strength of Excellent’s customer support. “It’s one of the best online support tools I’ve used. When I have a problem, I look for the answer on Excellent’s web and often find it. Finding the solution to a problem by yourself is much better than calling and doing exactly the same things you are taught on the other end of the phone,” says Tiina. “The solution to a problem doesn’t stick in your mind when you are told what to do. Then you just automatically follow the instructions and don’t learn.” Another thing Tiina likes is that the staff are the same all the time, rather than constantly changing. “You can see that the employees stay and want to work in the company. For me as a customer, it’s very good to have the same staff, rather than a new person every time who has to be explained things from the beginning,” she says.
ATM works well in Standard Books and I don’t want to be without it.
The banking interface works well in both directions. It is very convenient to send payments from the program to the bank, and the other way round, a bank statement comes into the program, and it is easy to impose rules on the unprocessed entries. This way, for example, you can leave the bank service entry to the program. All in all, both accountants encourage you to take advantage of all the positives the digital world has to offer. “Consider that you actually get a lot more for the money you spend on this accounting service – you’re not just paying for data entry, you’re getting employment law, regulatory and financial advice.”
Source: https://www.excellent.ee/fmj-udini-digiusku-raamatupidamisfirma/ ( 16.11.2022)
