In today’s fast-changing world, accountants need to be proactive, adaptable, ready to learn all the time, think for themselves and provide solutions. Only an accountant like this can help an entrepreneur do business.
The role of accountancy firms has changed a lot in recent years. Whereas in the past, smaller firms tended to use the services of an accounting firm and larger companies hired their own accountants, the situation has now changed. For many businesses, it has become clear that working well with an accountancy firm can be much more productive than “owning” an accountant on a contract basis. Also, the size of the company no longer plays a major role in the decision to outsource accounting services. Rather, accountants working in an accountancy firm have had to adapt and prove that they are not only accountants for micro-enterprises, but also very good financial partners for SMEs. The change of role has divided accountancy firms into different categories. Unfortunately, firms with just a few employees are not able to compete with larger firms in terms of quality. The time, financial and also time-related competences of a tiny office are simply many times smaller. An important advantage of a larger office is, for example, that it is always in the loop on important issues – information on legislative changes, the market and client situation, the interests of legislators and regulators, etc. reaches the office organically. In addition, staff must constantly have the time and motivation to update themselves and, of course, to communicate with clients and partners. I believe that this is where offices that are neither too small nor too large have an advantage. From my own experience, an accountancy office with 7-10 employees allows for a flexible approach even for large clients, taking into account the client’s needs and possibilities. Good and constructive teamwork within the office, where everyone can objectively assess their own strengths and weaknesses and knows the strengths of the other staff, is also crucial for smooth working. The change of role has led to a preference for providing mainly the services of a chief accountant – a competence for which we can charge a fair price. Invoice entry is the assistant’s responsibility, and he is assisted by the invoice digitisation capability we have. The time taken to enter transactions into accounting programmes has been reduced by a factor of several times, and the need for accounting assistants has therefore been significantly reduced. It is much more efficient if the assistant to the accountant general is instead a client employee (a ‘field person’) who collects and enters the information on the economic transactions into the programme. Our role is to use this information to produce the necessary reports. These changes have allowed us to build a professional team that can be paid a competitive salary. Accountants’ salaries can be increased by increasing their capacity, efficiency and responsibility. An accountant who is not digitally literate is a brake on business. Businesses have called on us to help their accountants adopt e-invoicing, bank shortcuts and interfaces between programs. The harsh reality is that creating these capabilities for an accountant who hasn’t yet mastered it on their own won’t help them by creating the capability to accept e-invoices, it will require a major paradigm shift in accounting. This is because e-invoicing in accounting is only a small tip of the iceberg of a big reality.
Today, digital solutions in accounting are no longer a miracle or a thing of the future, but an elementary and everyday reality. Using these possibilities does not require any special IT skills. There are detailed guides and the programmes’ customer support is very cooperative, so any smart accountant will be able to handle the activation of e-invoices, direct bank connections, etc. It’s not hard to see why. In today’s ever-changing world, accountants need to be proactive, adaptable, ready to learn, think and provide solutions all the time. Only such an accountant will help an entrepreneur to do business. The need for a proactive accountant has been exacerbated by the crises of recent years. The corona crisis was a real jolt in every sense of the word, allowing everyone to look at everyday situations from a distance and from a different angle. It was an opportunity for accountancy firms to show their strengths and to reassure clients that the firm has their back in difficult times and that business is not between firms but between people. Difficulties bring people closer together, and if they have been successfully overcome together in a way that allows the firm to demonstrate its credibility and capability, then there is no shortage of clients. All kinds of applications for grants, changes to employees’ contracts, employee benefits, providing clients with available information, etc., provided a good opportunity to help and be there for the client, even in the corona crisis. The economy moves in waves, and before the corona many were doing very well, business was booming. Only one of our clients went out of business during the corona crisis, a company that was already in quite bad shape before the corona. All the others have survived despite the difficulties. The subsidies from the state have been a great help, but new sales opportunities have also been found, products and services have been improved. Today, our customers could certainly cope even better with the crisis than before. It is a question of whether, and how, it is possible to prepare for a crisis and to predict what kind of crisis lies ahead. Our clients are entrepreneurs who can withstand difficulties and often turn them into opportunities. I believe that we will soon see a time when almost everyone will have their own limited company, because we will all need to invoice from time to time. Society is moving in a direction where it is not convenient or sensible to run your own affairs as a wage earner. One thing is clear, the need for accountancy firms is not going away. I am very pleased that the issue of the inconsistency in the quality of accountancy services has been taken up very vocally. It is true that the state’s levers for controlling accounting quality are almost non-existent today. The client, whose only accounting need is for timely declarations, is generally unable to judge for himself whether the accountant’s work is correct and of high quality. Similarly, as an accounting expert, I am not in a position to judge very accurately whether our IT guy or marketing specialist is doing a proper job. The old adage that you can’t get a good deal for cheap money is also increasingly coming home to the accounting client. As accountants, we need to be confident and have the courage to ask for a fair price for our services. Estonia is a small country and you cannot discount the quality of service, it must always be good!
One big mistake can be the death knell of an agency, but good, quality work brings in new clients.
