The ancient Greeks believed that chaos reigned before the creation of the world, but when a higher power brought order to it, the world as we know it came into being. The accounting service company sees similarities with its profession and business Numbers co-owner and manager Lilita Beķere. This company works not only for itself, but also to make the client’s accounting a clear benchmark against the chaos.
Your company has a dual name – does it have anything to do with the Bible?
A little bit. God, or perhaps a higher power, first created the world and then introduced a certain order into it. The fourth book of the Old Testament is the book of Numbers, or Numbers – Book of numbers. You can say that Numbers the order of all things is determined. We accountants are also the ones who bring order. Business is constantly creating some kind of value, product, and Numbers are accounting service providers that introduce conditional order into the whole process. We are the ones who work with the client’s finances and in the end we can tell the client what is happening and what his finances look like in a language the client can understand.
Latvian Numbers the parent company is located in Estonia. How did it end up in Latvia, and how did you become a co-owner?
My story with Numbers has been associated for many years. True, I have not been with this company from the beginning. At first I had my own company – Exchange of accounts. I was a small business providing accounting services.
Numbers started in Estonia, but in 2001 Numeri was established in Latvia, only then it had a different name. Things went differently for them here, because there was a lack of a local person to orientate here, but they continued to grow, and in 2012, a company that was already working with the Numeri brand approached me.
At that time, my one-man company had already grown so far that I had four employees, and I was fully occupied with daily work. It could no longer continue – it was necessary to hire another person or start a new line of business, develop a new service. I am also thinking about the possibility of teaming up with someone in order to further develop the business. Numbers came at the right time, because I had always wanted to work at an international level, which would allow me to grow and develop. And I did not consider this offer for a long time – I was already ripe for such a step. Like any small business, mine also found itself in a position where something had to change and it couldn’t handle everything. You cannot work for a long time without holidays.
I saw the merger with Numbers as a very big perspective. I met with a shareholder from Estonia. It was very important to me that our values as shareholders are similar, because otherwise, when you start working together, but the values do not match, then nothing good can be expected. I joined in 2012 Numbers. I sold my business in return for a minority stake Numbers. I own 20% here, but at the same time I have gained huge opportunities. I run this company and now we have 43 people, very soon we will be fifty. I myself have grown with the company, changed myself to be able to be a leader and motivate my team.
I assume you are a career accountant with relevant education…
Yes, I have a master’s degree in economics, I have also studied business management at RTU and I have completed a short course in strategic management at a Swedish university. I am also a mediator and integral mind coach. Nowadays, it is necessary to constantly learn and develop oneself in order to be able to accept everything new that enters our everyday life with enormous power.
There are a lot of small companies in Latvia, which are basically not companies. There is one person who is a company, but that person works there alone. This is not a business in the classical sense. He supports himself with a job, maybe he has a couple of people, but in reality that person works as an accountant. I started my journey exactly like that, but at one point you understand – if you want to develop a company, you cannot work as an accountant yourself, because you get lost in details. If you want a business, you have to be able to plan, think strategically, and then the team, customers are already gathered, and you go forward. You have to start thinking in other categories.
Why should entrepreneurs outsource rather than hire their own accountant?
I will say this – nothing is just black and white. Not everyone needs to outsource, and not everyone needs their own accountant. I have been in this business for 18 years and the perception has changed a lot in that time. In the beginning, exactly such questions were asked very often. Didn’t trust. If you chose an outsourcing service, you often thought it would be cheaper. I bought the price, not the service itself. But now the perception is changing, as companies focus more on their core businesses, leaving financial accounting in the hands of professionals.
Often, companies do not need a full-time accountant who works directly in the company, but there are those who do. There are companies that retain their financial director, but outsource all accounting and financial records. In this way, it does not have to worry about the workplace, about programs, it does not have to think about vacations and illnesses of accountants; it’s all thought of by an outsourcing service. Moreover, it is currently the case that – similar to many other industries – it is very difficult to find a good accountant.
The accountant in the company often sits by the boss’s hand, also tends to bring him coffee, maybe do some other tasks that are not basically the responsibility of the accountant. From the point of view of resource consumption, a good accountant is quite expensive. Requirements for accountants are also increasing – both from the state and from clients. And if that accountant is burdened with data entry, doing some simple things that another type of professional can do, is that a wise use of resources?
Outsourcing offers exactly this knowledge of professional accounting, tax and financial management, and not, as it was once thought, that the accountant in the company will do everything, including writing orders, entering data, issuing invoices and something else that no one else is ready to undertake. It just comes out expensive. It is cheaper to hire a specialist who specializes in exactly what the company needs, financial or management reports, and hire a lower-skilled person who simply enters data or prepares accounting documents.
You said that there are problems with finding employees. People are not learning because the industry does not offer good salaries, or has the profession, so to speak, lost its appeal?
Salaries for qualified accountants are currently very high. I think that enough students graduate from the Faculty of Economics and Management, but somehow they don’t want to work in accounting. Does not meet the requirement level. They go elsewhere.
In fact, accounting should be learned in close connection with some programming skills, because an accountant now has to navigate a lot of things that were not there before. Technologies are rapidly entering the market, company processes are being automated. The accountant must be able to navigate these processes and be able to offer the client solutions for automating financial accounting processes. I have been in the industry for 18 years and the requirements for accountants have changed very significantly in that time, they are being given a huge amount of responsibility. We are being asked incomparably more than ever before.
Therefore, many accountants choose the position, who needs it? Perhaps it is also a question of salary, maybe smaller companies are really not ready to pay an adequate salary to an accountant, and that is why young specialists do not enter the industry.
The other thing… As one person I know who owns a construction company said: “I have enough engineers and managers, but I don’t really have anyone working on the construction site.” Here we also have enough managers who want to be chief accountants right away, but don’t want to start with the very basics to understand things at all.
What industry do entrepreneurs prefer to choose? Numbers and outsourcing at all?
Different. There is no such distinct industry. Latvia is a very small market. If in America or elsewhere you can focus on one industry in which you are a specialist, then we work with almost all industries. We have companies from various industries.
Perhaps thanks to higher forces or something else, in 2008, when the first crisis happened, I, like everyone else, was anxiously watching what was happening. However, my business was not disrupted because I did not have any builders in my portfolio, so I did not experience a drop in turnover or profit.
When covid started, we didn’t have any caterers in our portfolio. There were two tour operators, but relatively small. We also had one sports center that reduced its activities, but they were not so strongly felt against the general background.
In addition, we had the advantage that we were already ready for remote work. To us Numbers that possibility has always been there. When covid started, we packed our suitcases and left to work from home.
Why choose directly from all accounting outsourcing providers for entrepreneurs Numbers?
Because we are the best! The big plus is that we have been on the Latvian market for 22 years and we have a very good, knowledgeable team. We have different categories of accountants who also work with, for example, consolidations and IFRS. The second and no less important factor is that we are very focused on the implementation of the new. We can help businesses. If we see that something can be done differently or more simply, then we inform the customer about it.
Thirdly, we are in all Baltic countries. As I said, Latvia is a very small market, so we really like to cooperate with companies that work in all three Baltic countries. We work with large companies that operate all over the world, and the Baltics are one of the regions where we either calculate salaries for them, or do accounting, or report consolidated accounts.
We also use the latest technologies, we provide automated reports. We study regularly. This is what is different – we look to the future, we are partners to our clients, we advise them to make improvements in financial accounting so that certain processes in the company become faster and simpler.
Latvia is often compared with Lithuania and Estonia, where labor productivity is said to be significantly higher. I was not lazy and counted the data available on your website. Turns out, Numbers The Latvian office has the highest coffee consumption per person. What would you say about this?
If the employee is satisfied, the customer is also satisfied. It’s not like we have to sell 100% of the time. There must be time in the company so that we can communicate, so that we can meet with clients in an informal atmosphere.
And Numbers is a very person-friendly workplace. We take care of our employees, because a person is the most important thing in any business. Behind every business is a person. We have free coffee for the staff, we have a snack table on Thursdays where we all get together and discuss things. There are also various events. We try to color our everyday life, to live in such a way that it is good to come to the office and meet colleagues. Every month we have a bigger event where we welcome all the anniversaries.
As for Estonia, I think they mostly work from home, remotely. We are in the office more though.
Life is not just work. You can also find time and a way to make your employee’s everyday life more colorful in the company.
2023-08-22 03:33:45
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