SimplBooks OÜ, which offers an accounting software for micro and small businesses, has set the goal for themselves to take accounting activities to the next level in order to offer an easier way to read, interpret and, if necessary, transfer data from one system to another. “The purpose is to make the day-to-day field-specific data management for companies simpler, and through automation save time spent on work. As the accountant’s work hours are worth their weight in gold, it’s high time to hold this in mind when creating the functionality of corresponding software,“ says Jaanus Reismaa, CEO of SimplBooks OÜ.

Forward-looking solutions that really help

SimplBooks, a provider of web-based accounting software, has a vision to make us more open to automating accounting. From the very start, an important aim for the company has been data that is more open. Unfortunately, from time to time we still face a problem: when a company wants to select new software, it’s difficult to transfer data from the existing software. It’s often not possible to extract data from older software, and that might make finding better software alternatives impossible.

Jaanus Reismaa claims that this situation is excluded if SimplBooks software solution is used. „We don’t want to hide data from customers, quite the contrary. Customers can download their data at any time and do whatever they want with it,“ he adds. For more open data, SimplBooks has already taken important steps, for example, SimplBooks participated in the real economy follow-up program to standardize information on accounting transactions, and thus develop a smoother process. Creating a standard alone wouldn’t help, but each software must also have its own endpoint that can output this standardized data, or read and process it. Each software has its own nuances, i.e. each software stores and processes different details and different amounts of data.

Automation – a step towards innovations

As accounting plays a major role in the day-to-day processing of data, it makes sense to automate as much of the work as possible, in order to save time and energy for accountants. “We expect that in the future, the transmission of declarations will become more automatic and simpler. Although declarations can already be submitted directly from the accounting software, some work still needs to be done to make the use of existing processes safer and more convenient,“ says Jaanus Reismaa, but there is still a long way to go. According to him, ideally, when submitting declarations, the human hand should no longer interfere at all with the verification of data. The only problem may be that either the accountant or the company owner hasn’t entered all the necessary documents on time.

At the same time, different bank interfaces play an important role in optimizing the workload. “It can be said that although most of the bank interfaces are free to use, for some reason the interest of companies in them is still relatively low. On the one hand, it’s understandable that there’s a fear of changing existing habits. The ease of use of the software and the intuition of the processes are important – if the user manual is easy to understand, and the implementation needs only a few clicks, more interest will be expressed,” says the CEO.

Right away he can give a good example. “On average, you win about one minute on each sales invoice and bank transaction, and about three minutes on each purchase invoice. For example, if a micro enterprise makes 20 sales invoices and 15 purchase invoices per month, plus bank service fees and data verification, the monthly gain through automation would be more than an hour. And if we take a slightly larger company as a comparison, then, for example, 100 sales invoices, plus service fees and data control, would mean a gain of more than five hours a month,” he claims. However, Jaanus Reismaa is optimistic: he says the situation regarding the technical solutions of banking interfaces is already quite good in Estonia. “On average, it takes 3-5 clicks for the client to activate the interface, and it’s mainly free of charge for the interface to work,” he adds.

Future is in our own hands

As has been said, the average company still has too much data entry work or even duplication of the work, which could save the accountants’ precious time and enable them to do something more important at that time. “Thus, it often takes valuable hours to do what the software can actually do on its own,“ says Jaanus Reismaa, adding that the accounting software could be used by customers, i.e. companies, so that they profit from it for invoicing, for activating banking interfaces, and for other necessary operations, so that the accountants don’t have to adapt to the company’s old-fashioned processes, when, for example, invoices are presented to them on paper at the end of each month.

It’s clear that today is only a step into tomorrow. This means that it makes sense to think about future solutions right now. Business owners and accountants should think about the following things: how much of your work is already automated, and how much room is there for improvement? How can you eliminate bottlenecks and take the content of accountants’ work into the 21st century? The software already has the ability to share various suggestions and point out typing errors, but our vision is that the software itself will be able to analyse more and more data itself, as well as provide notifications and suggestions for better decisions and improvements. “We support forward-looking software, and we are happy to help you make choices,” says Jaanus Reismaa and encourages to contact SimplBooks OÜ for a consultation.