Podcast "Rules of the Game": accounting subtleties for technological (and other) business
Hi, Habr! Today I decided to share with you a transcript of the first issue of the podcast “Rules of the Game”, in which I communicate with lawyers and tax experts.
/ photo by Alan Cleaver CC
In our introductory release, you will find a story in which Sergey Yashin, the founder and head of the outsourcing accounting service provider Yashin and Partners , shares his experience with myths and delusions in bookkeeping.
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Alina: Sergey is sitting in front of me. He is a man with a beard, in tattoos, in a skirt shirt [who is interested, you can check out his Facebook profile ], and at the same time he is involved in bookkeeping! How did you decide to do this particular service?
In my opinion, the biggest misconception about accounting, accountants and everything related to this is that accounting is women in years, retrogrades. Nothing fashionable, modern, interesting accounting can not offer.
This is something very boring and very scary.
Sergey: Hello everyone! Most of our fellow citizens and entrepreneurs have the same opinion. And it is quite reasonable, either fortunately, or unfortunately.
The story is quite interesting. Once destiny has abandoned me to work in an accounting company. She was small, rather "sovkovaya." The idea of what the guys wanted to offer was in the air, but I didn’t like the implementation. Then I didn’t have a relationship with these guys: they were too conservative.
Further, realizing that this is already a trend, I went to work in a fairly large audit and consulting structure and took up the process of building such a service and at the same time studying its market and opportunities. In the process, several interesting things emerged. I met a large number of colleagues from other audit and outsourcing companies. I saw some stereotypes, which for some reason people follow.
So historically, all the auditors are strict men in ties, they sit at black tables, communicate with incomprehensible phrases, the official status of them is rushing, and it is impossible to speak with them in a normal language. Auditing, as well as tax, verification is always some kind of stress. An accountant is a person with whom it is impossible to communicate without a translator.
And when we began to work and transfer different clients to “our” format, it turned out that there were ordinary businessmen at that end of the line. It could be a small family-owned company or a rather large holding, but people are the same everywhere. And, like all people, it is much easier for them to communicate with friends, acquaintances in ordinary simple language. “Ponts” complicate the process, they make the already complicated sphere, which is associated with the constant change of laws in the regulatory framework, in practice.
A classic audit firm is a big bureaucratic machine. She is guided by her own made-up plan, and not by what the market and the entrepreneur want. I am very sociable person. With all the clients I tried to communicate and find out in what form they want to see the service. I got the feeling that what is happening in this company [in which I worked] is not what the entrepreneur wants.
By that time, we broke up with the shareholders in some rather serious management issues. A year ago, my wife and I decided that it was time for us to act. We have accumulated a great deal of expertise - in addition to the professional component. The expertise was in building processes, understanding what works and what doesn't.
We decided that we want this approach [to the work of the accounting department], which was tested from beginning to end, to provide normal entrepreneurs, like us. At first, we didn’t believe in success that we didn’t believe ... When we just rented an office, we didn’t even have a legal entity registration.
The office was removed for their money, they signed a letter of guarantee on a piece of paper, because the legal entity was still registered and they didn’t want to miss the premises. I went to the office and thought: “Will it work? Will not work? The whole market works differently. And we decided to stand out and go our own way. " Then doubts quickly disappeared due to the large number of tasks and routine.
Now almost a year has passed. I turn around and think: the vector is correct and the trend is correct. Everything that we do is close to modern entrepreneurs - recently, both the business and the approach [to its management] have changed quite seriously. 10-15 years ago, the main business was construction: the sale of building materials, something serious, conservative, just as retrograde as an accountant in rings and a dark-violet blouse.
Now the format of entrepreneurs is different. One of our clients is the managing partner of the group of companies. He is 26 years old.
People work with the Viber headquarters in Tel Aviv, they have a telecommunications agency. The guys are very young. They are dressed very simply: in stretched T-shirts, in shorts. The guys are not soared about this and do quite a big business.
Alina: Cool!
Sergey: We are focused on this direction.
Alina: Tell me, please, considering that accounting is a conservative area, were there any problems in order to show the first customers that it might be interesting, convenient, described by human language? Maybe people came and said: "No, guys, you are too fashionable, I'm afraid of you."
Sergey: I still have the feeling when I arrive at a meeting in a t-shirt and torn jeans. I think if I did not overdo it, I do not know who is there. Maybe a man sits in a tie - and we work in different worlds.
There is such a thing, I call it “gravity,” when something similar is attracted to such a thing. Yes, we have rather conservative clients. A client in a jacket looked at me in a red T-shirt very embarrassed, he was expecting another. But it was sufficiently substantive to talk with a person for half an hour, and he realized that we understand the question. All the rest does not matter.
Someone understood this and accepted it after some time. And someone did not accept it, so we are not on the way. There are still classic audit companies with a classical approach, where it is comfortable for someone to communicate at the level of formalism. And to us attracts people who understand that all this is a facade, a cover, and it is not so important.
/ photo by Zach Copley CC
Alina: I emphasize once again for our listeners that Yashin & Partners does accounting and auditing and helps small and large companies build their business so that they do what they like and handle some of the issues related to accounting and various formal things beyond your day. Please tell me why such a service is really needed and to whom, in your opinion, is it particularly important?
Sergey: If we go from the general to the particular, the general vector of the entire movement in the field of accounting services or bookkeeping in general is the format of outsourcing. In Europe and America, 99% of entrepreneurs work with accounting offices and services. There is no concept of "personal accountant". He may be personal in the family, as a tax consultant, but not as an accountant in a company.
In some countries there are legal requirements: at the time of registering a company, within 10 days, bring a contract for servicing or for an audit with an auditing company. This is a guarantee that the entrepreneur will not stumble, will really follow the right path in terms of finance.
Russia is still lagging behind other countries in this direction. In the mid-90s, people changed their skills, listened to 1C courses, accountants, and lawyers. It was very fashionable to be a lawyer, but now there are few good lawyers. There are many of them in the courts, they are ready to work for free. Also with accountants. The market in Moscow is oversaturated, in regions, depending on the distance, not so.
The problem remains - there are a lot of accountants, few are good ones. Good specialists go to large companies, where there are entire accounting departments, where you can receive advanced training at the expense of the employer, where you can sit in the office not with builders, but with accountants. Professional communication of people in this regard pulls.
Either the main part of adequate accountants goes to audit companies for the same reasons. In a small business there is little work. The entrepreneur considers, if the work is a little, it should cost a bit too. Gives an announcement about the vacancy of the chief accountant with a salary of 30 or 50 thousand rubles.
50 thousand rubles - the salary of an average specialist in Moscow. But a normal accountant for 50 thousand rubles, unfortunately, is not found. This is an overpriced figure. A good salary starts from 85 thousand rubles.
At the same time, it is clear that in many companies for money there is nothing to do. The entrepreneur understands this perfectly and is looking for an accountant for some part of the work. Responding to these proposals are not the professionals who are needed, but those who understand that they will probably not be taken anywhere else for 50 thousand rubles. And there are quite a few such people.
At the exit, it turns out that in the small business companies, 5-6 chief accountants change over the year. Every accountant trains to some degree and goes to a cooler company. Nothing can be done with this, except for how to outsource such services. We give the entrepreneur a very cool accountant, and he only pays for the amount of work. And this is a trick!
Alina: Yes, and at the same time, a cool accountant may give the client 20% of his time, and the rest of the time he will deal with other issues, because there are few operations on small business.
Sergey: Yes. Many students will say that the accountant who comes once a week does the same. But the accountant arrives on the day on which he needs to be on schedule, and not on the day when something might happen to the client. We work 365 days a year.
We do not have such that we work with one client on Mondays, with another - on Tuesdays. We do not stop work, it goes from morning to evening. We inside the company understand the tasks and can delegate them within the accounting group. We distribute tasks, it turns out that an accountant can simultaneously conduct several companies without loss of quality, because there is a team.
Alina: Do you think outsourcing accounting services are preferable for small companies, or can medium and large businesses also work on such a basis?
Sergey: Large business works on the principle of insourcing. This is the creation of its own outsourcing company, which is part of the holding, but taken out of the state. Many companies, for example, Rosatom, have switched to this.
Alina: In fact, they create spin-offs.
Sergey: They do it themselves, because for big business there are no such contractors that they could attract for such services. If we take the number one outsourcing company in Russia in terms of turnover, then it would hardly have served Rosatom, while maintaining quality for the rest of the clients.
There are a lot of peculiar requirements for this accounting department besides filing reports. In big business it does not take root. Small business - yes, firstly, because of the cost, secondly, because of the competence. In an average business, motivation for outsourcing can be a reluctance to bother, delve into, take a staff of accountants, financial directors, control everything: I want to give and forget, even if it will be more expensive. In a small business, I would be happy to pay, but there is no budget for one or two good accountants.
And most importantly, if in a large company you can hire financial inspectors to verify your own accounting, then in a small business the director controls the accountant. He picks it up, but whom he took is not clear. How this person works is also not clear. It can be judged only by external signs: the accountant is sitting, 1C has opened, he brings documents - there is a feeling that something is happening.
And how it all turns out at the exit, it can be seen only when submitting reports, and this is not the first, because we have a tax statute of 3 years, and the demands from the tax inspectorate usually come in a year or two. We learn about the work of an accountant in a couple of years.
Alina: If we talk about the transition from small to medium-sized businesses, are there any limits? For example, a company comes to you and says: "We want to use your services," and you answer: "No, guys, we will not pull you ..." Are there any limits on turnover, number of operations, something else?
Sergey: Here the question is not in the number of operations, in turns - these are indirect indicators, but rather in the requirements that are presented to the accounting department. For example, if you take the work with primary documentation, a small company has a document flow in the hundreds of operations per month. These are the documents that can be sent by scan, courier, you can somehow work with them.
When the workflow is calculated “football fields in a three-story building” (and there are such organizations), it is a question of correctly dividing the plots. Some areas are effectively outsourced from the outset. For example, for many small companies we bill, we make payment orders, we replace everyone we can: a manager, an accountant, an assistant accountant.
With the growth of the company, some areas are effectively left inside the organization, because the iterations and communications at this level are so significant that they take a lot of time for the employees. If we talk about turnover, in which outsourcing is still effective, it is up to one or two turns, with a stretch of three billion rubles a year.
This is adjusted for the document flow, the fact that the client is adequate and understands what is effective to keep and what part related to responsibility, competence, expertise can be outsourced, because this is the work of the team, and not one person.
Alina: There are two polar myths about accounting. The first is that this is a very difficult area of "nuclear physics", it is better not to touch it, it somehow boils itself. The second myth is that a small entrepreneur may have a familiar girl with some kind of accounting at the institute who can do everything.
Accounting and reporting is a big responsibility for business. An accountant should be able to bear a lot of things and be responsible, first of all, for what is surrendered, for those documents that come to the funds. For students who are not immersed in the subject of accounting, the question is: what should an accountant know and be able to do? What is the responsibility of it?
Sergey: I'll start from the end. There is a moral responsibility to the employer. It is limited to the ephemeral code of ethics of accountants and the conscience of the accountant, because in our country there is a 402- “On Accounting”, according to which the full responsibility for accounting and reporting lies only with the general director of the organization.
There is a hired accountant, a visiting accountant, in any case, for everything that this person does, the general director is responsible materially and criminally. If there are any fraudulent actions, and the investigation has established the participation of the chief accountant, this is already a group of persons, the responsibility is extended.
/ photo by David Goehring CC
Take the standard situation - the delivery of incorrect reporting by an accountant or delivery at the wrong time - such things that each company faces. All fines and penalties that are charged cannot be deducted from the accountant, there is no legal way to keep them from the accountant.
The accountant’s liability has always been calculated in size, for example, 200 rubles for improperly closing an account - there is no way to verify this, and the amount is a penny. Since 2016, these fines have increased. There are official fines from an accountant for incorrect, inaccurate reporting, violation of the rules of accounting registers. Fines are paid not in favor of the employer, do not compensate, do not reduce [his fines]. They are paid to the budget.
If the director is warm at heart, that besides him the accountant has also paid money, you can probably say that it is good. In general, the situation does not solve it.
In terms of basic indicators, we have one tax code for all companies: large and small. The laws are also for everyone alone. Due to the workload of tax inspections, small companies are paid less attention, many [the tax] do not get their hands, even there are cases of non-reporting.
Recently, those who follow the changes in the legislation on taxes, understand that the control is very much toughened even in terms of filing reports. Imposed fines that may be significant for small businesses. From the point of view of accounting, it is very important to understand the principles of forming and filing reports. The main thing is, if the accountant is not as competent as we would like, and the director understands this, then it would be good for the director to control the accountant to control the accounting at least as a whole.
We have clients who have gone on accounting courses to talk with the accountant in the same language. A man has learned a year in order to understand what is happening. It also makes it possible to understand whether an accountant is doing something.
From the latest cases: the simplified company paid the accountant a pretty good salary for 5 years, the director was engaged in sales and did not go into anything, he was just not interested. The accountant periodically disappeared, did not contact, the director was fed up, he came to us. We asked the accountant for a database and did not receive it within a month. The accountant was hiding.
When they received the base, they understood why: for 5 years not a single document was carried out. All statements were “drawn”, accounting was not kept, and the person received the money. If the director had at least some understanding of what was going on, he could request access to the database, open a negotiable statement and see what was there at all.
These are things that in modern society, I think, need to know. It is like English. I understood, Alina, that you know English very well. I can at least distinguish it from German and French and understand what it is about. In approximately the same basic manner, I would recommend to understand the situation with respect to taxes and accounting.
Alina: The main thing is to understand that even if you do not want to understand this, the responsibility will not pass you anyway. If you are the head of the company, it will be on your conscience.
Sergey: Absolutely. An accountant may not make mistakes intentionally — not knowing something. Having delegated authority, unfortunately, we cannot delegate responsibility. Adjusted for the work of the outsourcing company, we understand this injustice and in the contract we clearly state that we fully compensate and take all the fines and penalties that are due to our fault.
Probably every self-respecting company should do the same. There are amendments on the limits of this liability, on how compensation will be physically carried out. Outsourcing is interesting because it is one of the few work systems that allows you to delegate responsibility to the contractor and the contractor. We are not talking about criminal liability if the company does not pay taxes.
Alina: Outsourcing is work not on fear, but on conscience, because the environment itself dictates such conditions.
Sergey: Yes, of course. Any outsourcing company, including ours, would like to delete this clause from the contract and say: “We were wrong - we apologize, and you pay.” On the one hand - the environment, and on the other ... When we opened the company, we had a table with the movement of money with some planning, but, first of all, we wanted to do it well.
When working with clients, we clearly understand that in addition to the accountant we want to give people a friend. Our conscience does not allow us to delete this line from the contract. Many clients do not know about it and do not ask, but we bear this responsibility. If we make a mistake, then our honor will be more precious than fines.
If the penalty is estimated more than our honor, then there is an insurance company in which our liability is insured: if we cannot arrange such compensation at the expense of our reserves, there is an [agreement with the company] Rosgosstrakh, which has a practice of payments in these areas. They have an act, and the insurance company indemnifies the damage.
/ photo dun_deagh CC
Alina: You talked about what an accountant should know and be able to do, and mentioned that tax legislation is constantly changing: new items, new articles appear.
For an accountant, it is important not only to keep correct reports, one must also be aware of what is appearing and constantly keep track of “new items”. It turns out that an accountant is a person who is on the cutting edge of this whole process.
Sergey: Accountant - let's draw an analogy with military operations - monitors the target, monitors the rear, monitors the presence of ammunition, communicates with the commander by radio and tries to predict further actions. Accountant to be not easy.
Many accountants live in ignorance of these events. We regularly conduct interviews, and sometimes people answer the question that is relevant since 2015. We understand that they were stuck in 2013-2014 because there were no such cases in their current company, or they were not aware of the changes and work in the old fashioned way.
Keep track of all the changes - a tremendous job. A plus to the changes is the practice of arbitration, which, so formed in our country, is very far from the tax code. If you open the “Consultant” or “Garant” help system and see how many changes and amendments to the laws relating to entrepreneurs come out daily, you will see that there are from 15 to 47: letters, amendments, changes.
If this number is multiplied by the number of days of the month, we understand that there may be 25% of tax issues. No normal person alone can understand all the nuances, understand how it actually works, and how then the tax authorities will look at it.
With the growth of our team, we feel plus synergy, which is due to the large number of different tasks arising from different specialists. It's not bad when an accountant cooks in his own juice, but one head is good, two is better, and ten or twenty is even better. The fact that different situations arise for different clients allows us to create an intellectual fund of accumulated situations and from there to take information.
Alina: If a person works as an accountant in one company, he is used to the business that is conducted in this company and the cases that arise there. This does not mean that he can go to your company, if it does something else, just as well work there and constantly understand the new things that are happening alone.
Sergey: It happens differently.They take an accountant with a very specific background, and then, when there are difficult moments in reporting, taxation, the accountant, referring to his past work, obviously does wrong according to the principle: "I did it a thousand times - everything will be fine." The reaction to this may be the following: “Once it’s gone there, we will do it now.” Although it is not the same thing.
Accountants who cook in the same business have a narrowing mind. For example, accounting in a motor show is simple, but very specific. A person who has worked 10-15 years in a motor show is unlikely to be able to come to a construction company and work effectively.
Alina:Accounting is a question that can be outsourced, it turns out to be specific for different businesses. For me, for example, this is a new moment in terms of how it all works.
Sergey: Yes, he [accounting] has specific moments. At 60%, these are overlapping things, basic ones: reporting and record keeping. To reinvent the wheel is not necessary. There are no different reporting rules for different companies.
We are talking about helping the entrepreneur in these matters, when the accountant is not just a conveyor for issuing reports that are not related to a business that does not work for a business. They are formal. We say that an accountant is a consultant and advisor, a person who plans and analyzes helps to deal with all this entrepreneur.
Specificity plays a very important role. For example, construction is an interesting industry. Many accountants spit on her because she is partially "black." Well, how is “black”? Documents come at the wrong time, they are of rather low quality, the estimates of the foremen write on a piece of paper in a checkbox, these leaves are photographed and sent to the accounting department.
To make an act of COP-2, COP-3, you have to sit and figure out. Here we work better and better understand what the client wants if the accountant does not just work in a construction company, but knows what a construction site is. We have an employee who, besides accounting education, has engineering in construction. It is much easier for him to understand what is happening at the construction site.
If they give him a document that is somehow incorrectly filled, he does not just blindly accept him, he looks and asks: “How are you going to assemble a house from this number of positions?” You have a very different expense here. You cannot use such beams here. ”
Jokes jokes, but something like this happens. The client was shocked by the conversation with the accountant, he just did not expect it. Of course, it is not always possible to understand the industry so deeply, but if it works, then it is easier for us to work, and the client feels that we speak the same language.
Alina: The accountant sees all the logic of the process. That's cool, of course.
Sergey: Ideally, when so. It does not always work, now the business is changing, a lot of new industries in which the client plunges us, talks about his business, and we didn’t even know about it. They did not know that this could somehow build a company or processes.
But it is doubly interesting. We always understand and delve into the internal kitchen of the client, try to come to the client's office, see what happens with them, how the process works. This is important in order to continue to interact correctly.
Alina: You say that you understand the work of a client, you want to be friends with him. In fact, you work to do well, and not just to hire a lot of people and take a lot of business into circulation. And this is the leitmotif of your entire workflow.
When we talked before, you mentioned that projects, whose credo also “do well”, are somehow coming to you in some unknown way. How did it happen? How did such a “company of companies” form around you?
Sergey: Yes, “company of companies”. On the one hand, for me it is still a mystery, on the other hand, I sincerely believe that accidents are not accidental, everything happens for something. Probably, when interacting, when communicating, people informally feel some message outside the words. I understand, on the same wave, we are with a man or not.
Why it happens?Probably, because, objectively, some new generation of entrepreneurs comes to replace those who were in the 90s. In the 90s there was a difficult situation with money, with the economy. Money was the first necessity. Any business was aimed at frankly "namutit dough", and this was the interest.
Young educated people understand that money is good, but they are needed for something. In addition, there is a process of some constructive activity, from which a person derives pleasure. The more such people become, and there are really more of them, we feel it, the more changes both our country and businessmen become completely different. They simply become more proportions.
Well, how they attract us, I don’t know, some kind of magic, magic. We are so tuned, we are sure that we will find our partners and friends who will be comfortable with us and whom we will help, which we will not abandon. People feel it and attract. In this case, probably, other people are attracted to others. Energy. Like that.
Alina: Like attracts like. Business for people attracts outsourcing for people.
Sergey: That's about it. We love people, we do not hide it, we are talking about it. We have the same attitude towards employees. We do not have formalist relations on the principle of "customer - performer". We do not poke each other in the contract. About 30% of our client portfolio are my good friends with whom we are friends of families. We are holding not so much a contract as moral obligations.
Therefore, we, first of all, are adjusted on that those people with whom we work and to whom we promised something, received what we are talking about. Well, and the financial component somehow follows. But this is a separate epic. Everyone just spends at work some number of hours of his life. If the first goal is money, it is probably not exactly what you need, you will not take everything with you. And the process in which a person participates should bring pleasure.
Many clients are surprised: “Accountant is such a profession, you sit and stick into the database. What is interesting in general? ”And we really have girls getting high on it, some won't be driven home at 7-8 in the evening. They sit, they are interested in something to figure out. We and the staff are the same as we are selected, fanatics to some extent. This is wrong, for the sake of which everything was planned.
PS If you have any questions that can be asked right here (in the comments), do not hesitate - write. I will give everything to Sergey and get back to you with the answers.
/ photo by Alan Cleaver CCIn our introductory release, you will find a story in which Sergey Yashin, the founder and head of the outsourcing accounting service provider Yashin and Partners , shares his experience with myths and delusions in bookkeeping.
')
How to listen to the audio version of the podcast:
Myth 1: An accountant does not know how to explain in simple words.
Alina: Sergey is sitting in front of me. He is a man with a beard, in tattoos, in a skirt shirt [who is interested, you can check out his Facebook profile ], and at the same time he is involved in bookkeeping! How did you decide to do this particular service?
In my opinion, the biggest misconception about accounting, accountants and everything related to this is that accounting is women in years, retrogrades. Nothing fashionable, modern, interesting accounting can not offer.
This is something very boring and very scary.
Sergey: Hello everyone! Most of our fellow citizens and entrepreneurs have the same opinion. And it is quite reasonable, either fortunately, or unfortunately.
The story is quite interesting. Once destiny has abandoned me to work in an accounting company. She was small, rather "sovkovaya." The idea of what the guys wanted to offer was in the air, but I didn’t like the implementation. Then I didn’t have a relationship with these guys: they were too conservative.
Further, realizing that this is already a trend, I went to work in a fairly large audit and consulting structure and took up the process of building such a service and at the same time studying its market and opportunities. In the process, several interesting things emerged. I met a large number of colleagues from other audit and outsourcing companies. I saw some stereotypes, which for some reason people follow.
So historically, all the auditors are strict men in ties, they sit at black tables, communicate with incomprehensible phrases, the official status of them is rushing, and it is impossible to speak with them in a normal language. Auditing, as well as tax, verification is always some kind of stress. An accountant is a person with whom it is impossible to communicate without a translator.
And when we began to work and transfer different clients to “our” format, it turned out that there were ordinary businessmen at that end of the line. It could be a small family-owned company or a rather large holding, but people are the same everywhere. And, like all people, it is much easier for them to communicate with friends, acquaintances in ordinary simple language. “Ponts” complicate the process, they make the already complicated sphere, which is associated with the constant change of laws in the regulatory framework, in practice.
A classic audit firm is a big bureaucratic machine. She is guided by her own made-up plan, and not by what the market and the entrepreneur want. I am very sociable person. With all the clients I tried to communicate and find out in what form they want to see the service. I got the feeling that what is happening in this company [in which I worked] is not what the entrepreneur wants.
It is strange that there was no company in the market that could give it.
By that time, we broke up with the shareholders in some rather serious management issues. A year ago, my wife and I decided that it was time for us to act. We have accumulated a great deal of expertise - in addition to the professional component. The expertise was in building processes, understanding what works and what doesn't.
We decided that we want this approach [to the work of the accounting department], which was tested from beginning to end, to provide normal entrepreneurs, like us. At first, we didn’t believe in success that we didn’t believe ... When we just rented an office, we didn’t even have a legal entity registration.
The office was removed for their money, they signed a letter of guarantee on a piece of paper, because the legal entity was still registered and they didn’t want to miss the premises. I went to the office and thought: “Will it work? Will not work? The whole market works differently. And we decided to stand out and go our own way. " Then doubts quickly disappeared due to the large number of tasks and routine.
Now almost a year has passed. I turn around and think: the vector is correct and the trend is correct. Everything that we do is close to modern entrepreneurs - recently, both the business and the approach [to its management] have changed quite seriously. 10-15 years ago, the main business was construction: the sale of building materials, something serious, conservative, just as retrograde as an accountant in rings and a dark-violet blouse.
Now the format of entrepreneurs is different. One of our clients is the managing partner of the group of companies. He is 26 years old.
He is engaged in blockchain, neural networks, all that any entrepreneur from the 90s does not understand: what is it and how can one build a business on this?
People work with the Viber headquarters in Tel Aviv, they have a telecommunications agency. The guys are very young. They are dressed very simply: in stretched T-shirts, in shorts. The guys are not soared about this and do quite a big business.
Alina: Cool!
Sergey: We are focused on this direction.
Alina: Tell me, please, considering that accounting is a conservative area, were there any problems in order to show the first customers that it might be interesting, convenient, described by human language? Maybe people came and said: "No, guys, you are too fashionable, I'm afraid of you."
Sergey: I still have the feeling when I arrive at a meeting in a t-shirt and torn jeans. I think if I did not overdo it, I do not know who is there. Maybe a man sits in a tie - and we work in different worlds.
There is such a thing, I call it “gravity,” when something similar is attracted to such a thing. Yes, we have rather conservative clients. A client in a jacket looked at me in a red T-shirt very embarrassed, he was expecting another. But it was sufficiently substantive to talk with a person for half an hour, and he realized that we understand the question. All the rest does not matter.
Someone understood this and accepted it after some time. And someone did not accept it, so we are not on the way. There are still classic audit companies with a classical approach, where it is comfortable for someone to communicate at the level of formalism. And to us attracts people who understand that all this is a facade, a cover, and it is not so important.
/ photo by Zach Copley CC
Myth 2: An outsourcer will not be able to understand your specifics and "nuances"
Alina: I emphasize once again for our listeners that Yashin & Partners does accounting and auditing and helps small and large companies build their business so that they do what they like and handle some of the issues related to accounting and various formal things beyond your day. Please tell me why such a service is really needed and to whom, in your opinion, is it particularly important?
Sergey: If we go from the general to the particular, the general vector of the entire movement in the field of accounting services or bookkeeping in general is the format of outsourcing. In Europe and America, 99% of entrepreneurs work with accounting offices and services. There is no concept of "personal accountant". He may be personal in the family, as a tax consultant, but not as an accountant in a company.
In some countries there are legal requirements: at the time of registering a company, within 10 days, bring a contract for servicing or for an audit with an auditing company. This is a guarantee that the entrepreneur will not stumble, will really follow the right path in terms of finance.
Russia is still lagging behind other countries in this direction. In the mid-90s, people changed their skills, listened to 1C courses, accountants, and lawyers. It was very fashionable to be a lawyer, but now there are few good lawyers. There are many of them in the courts, they are ready to work for free. Also with accountants. The market in Moscow is oversaturated, in regions, depending on the distance, not so.
The problem remains - there are a lot of accountants, few are good ones. Good specialists go to large companies, where there are entire accounting departments, where you can receive advanced training at the expense of the employer, where you can sit in the office not with builders, but with accountants. Professional communication of people in this regard pulls.
Either the main part of adequate accountants goes to audit companies for the same reasons. In a small business there is little work. The entrepreneur considers, if the work is a little, it should cost a bit too. Gives an announcement about the vacancy of the chief accountant with a salary of 30 or 50 thousand rubles.
50 thousand rubles - the salary of an average specialist in Moscow. But a normal accountant for 50 thousand rubles, unfortunately, is not found. This is an overpriced figure. A good salary starts from 85 thousand rubles.
At the same time, it is clear that in many companies for money there is nothing to do. The entrepreneur understands this perfectly and is looking for an accountant for some part of the work. Responding to these proposals are not the professionals who are needed, but those who understand that they will probably not be taken anywhere else for 50 thousand rubles. And there are quite a few such people.
At the exit, it turns out that in the small business companies, 5-6 chief accountants change over the year. Every accountant trains to some degree and goes to a cooler company. Nothing can be done with this, except for how to outsource such services. We give the entrepreneur a very cool accountant, and he only pays for the amount of work. And this is a trick!
Alina: Yes, and at the same time, a cool accountant may give the client 20% of his time, and the rest of the time he will deal with other issues, because there are few operations on small business.
Sergey: Yes. Many students will say that the accountant who comes once a week does the same. But the accountant arrives on the day on which he needs to be on schedule, and not on the day when something might happen to the client. We work 365 days a year.
We do not have such that we work with one client on Mondays, with another - on Tuesdays. We do not stop work, it goes from morning to evening. We inside the company understand the tasks and can delegate them within the accounting group. We distribute tasks, it turns out that an accountant can simultaneously conduct several companies without loss of quality, because there is a team.
Alina: Do you think outsourcing accounting services are preferable for small companies, or can medium and large businesses also work on such a basis?
Sergey: Large business works on the principle of insourcing. This is the creation of its own outsourcing company, which is part of the holding, but taken out of the state. Many companies, for example, Rosatom, have switched to this.
Alina: In fact, they create spin-offs.
Sergey: They do it themselves, because for big business there are no such contractors that they could attract for such services. If we take the number one outsourcing company in Russia in terms of turnover, then it would hardly have served Rosatom, while maintaining quality for the rest of the clients.
There are a lot of peculiar requirements for this accounting department besides filing reports. In big business it does not take root. Small business - yes, firstly, because of the cost, secondly, because of the competence. In an average business, motivation for outsourcing can be a reluctance to bother, delve into, take a staff of accountants, financial directors, control everything: I want to give and forget, even if it will be more expensive. In a small business, I would be happy to pay, but there is no budget for one or two good accountants.
And most importantly, if in a large company you can hire financial inspectors to verify your own accounting, then in a small business the director controls the accountant. He picks it up, but whom he took is not clear. How this person works is also not clear. It can be judged only by external signs: the accountant is sitting, 1C has opened, he brings documents - there is a feeling that something is happening.
And how it all turns out at the exit, it can be seen only when submitting reports, and this is not the first, because we have a tax statute of 3 years, and the demands from the tax inspectorate usually come in a year or two. We learn about the work of an accountant in a couple of years.
Alina: If we talk about the transition from small to medium-sized businesses, are there any limits? For example, a company comes to you and says: "We want to use your services," and you answer: "No, guys, we will not pull you ..." Are there any limits on turnover, number of operations, something else?
Sergey: Here the question is not in the number of operations, in turns - these are indirect indicators, but rather in the requirements that are presented to the accounting department. For example, if you take the work with primary documentation, a small company has a document flow in the hundreds of operations per month. These are the documents that can be sent by scan, courier, you can somehow work with them.
When the workflow is calculated “football fields in a three-story building” (and there are such organizations), it is a question of correctly dividing the plots. Some areas are effectively outsourced from the outset. For example, for many small companies we bill, we make payment orders, we replace everyone we can: a manager, an accountant, an assistant accountant.
With the growth of the company, some areas are effectively left inside the organization, because the iterations and communications at this level are so significant that they take a lot of time for the employees. If we talk about turnover, in which outsourcing is still effective, it is up to one or two turns, with a stretch of three billion rubles a year.
This is adjusted for the document flow, the fact that the client is adequate and understands what is effective to keep and what part related to responsibility, competence, expertise can be outsourced, because this is the work of the team, and not one person.
Myth 3: “I have a girl friend I know she will understand”
Alina: There are two polar myths about accounting. The first is that this is a very difficult area of "nuclear physics", it is better not to touch it, it somehow boils itself. The second myth is that a small entrepreneur may have a familiar girl with some kind of accounting at the institute who can do everything.
Accounting and reporting is a big responsibility for business. An accountant should be able to bear a lot of things and be responsible, first of all, for what is surrendered, for those documents that come to the funds. For students who are not immersed in the subject of accounting, the question is: what should an accountant know and be able to do? What is the responsibility of it?
Sergey: I'll start from the end. There is a moral responsibility to the employer. It is limited to the ephemeral code of ethics of accountants and the conscience of the accountant, because in our country there is a 402- “On Accounting”, according to which the full responsibility for accounting and reporting lies only with the general director of the organization.
There is a hired accountant, a visiting accountant, in any case, for everything that this person does, the general director is responsible materially and criminally. If there are any fraudulent actions, and the investigation has established the participation of the chief accountant, this is already a group of persons, the responsibility is extended.
/ photo by David Goehring CC
Take the standard situation - the delivery of incorrect reporting by an accountant or delivery at the wrong time - such things that each company faces. All fines and penalties that are charged cannot be deducted from the accountant, there is no legal way to keep them from the accountant.
The accountant’s liability has always been calculated in size, for example, 200 rubles for improperly closing an account - there is no way to verify this, and the amount is a penny. Since 2016, these fines have increased. There are official fines from an accountant for incorrect, inaccurate reporting, violation of the rules of accounting registers. Fines are paid not in favor of the employer, do not compensate, do not reduce [his fines]. They are paid to the budget.
If the director is warm at heart, that besides him the accountant has also paid money, you can probably say that it is good. In general, the situation does not solve it.
In terms of basic indicators, we have one tax code for all companies: large and small. The laws are also for everyone alone. Due to the workload of tax inspections, small companies are paid less attention, many [the tax] do not get their hands, even there are cases of non-reporting.
One of the latest cases: the young man opened the PI. And we now have a Regulation on tax holidays for new private entrepreneurs: people do not pay taxes for 2 years if they fall under a certain OKVED. Comrade has a cafe. There he pours tea, sells juices. He read that there are OKVEDs production of teas and juices, and read something about the tax holidays. But only the production of tea is not to brew a tea bag in a cup, but to gather from the bush, to dry, to pack.
He works for a year and a half and does not pay taxes at all, honestly thinking that he is on a tax holiday. And he has to pay taxes. But he did not receive a single request, no one wrote, because he was in the queue, maybe the 586th or 1586th, and his hands still do not reach him. But the rules are the same. In a small company, properly placed accounting is the basis of the fact that in the future when changing accounting, this accounting will be continued adequately.
Recently, those who follow the changes in the legislation on taxes, understand that the control is very much toughened even in terms of filing reports. Imposed fines that may be significant for small businesses. From the point of view of accounting, it is very important to understand the principles of forming and filing reports. The main thing is, if the accountant is not as competent as we would like, and the director understands this, then it would be good for the director to control the accountant to control the accounting at least as a whole.
We have clients who have gone on accounting courses to talk with the accountant in the same language. A man has learned a year in order to understand what is happening. It also makes it possible to understand whether an accountant is doing something.
From the latest cases: the simplified company paid the accountant a pretty good salary for 5 years, the director was engaged in sales and did not go into anything, he was just not interested. The accountant periodically disappeared, did not contact, the director was fed up, he came to us. We asked the accountant for a database and did not receive it within a month. The accountant was hiding.
When they received the base, they understood why: for 5 years not a single document was carried out. All statements were “drawn”, accounting was not kept, and the person received the money. If the director had at least some understanding of what was going on, he could request access to the database, open a negotiable statement and see what was there at all.
These are things that in modern society, I think, need to know. It is like English. I understood, Alina, that you know English very well. I can at least distinguish it from German and French and understand what it is about. In approximately the same basic manner, I would recommend to understand the situation with respect to taxes and accounting.
Alina: The main thing is to understand that even if you do not want to understand this, the responsibility will not pass you anyway. If you are the head of the company, it will be on your conscience.
Sergey: Absolutely. An accountant may not make mistakes intentionally — not knowing something. Having delegated authority, unfortunately, we cannot delegate responsibility. Adjusted for the work of the outsourcing company, we understand this injustice and in the contract we clearly state that we fully compensate and take all the fines and penalties that are due to our fault.
Probably every self-respecting company should do the same. There are amendments on the limits of this liability, on how compensation will be physically carried out. Outsourcing is interesting because it is one of the few work systems that allows you to delegate responsibility to the contractor and the contractor. We are not talking about criminal liability if the company does not pay taxes.
Alina: Outsourcing is work not on fear, but on conscience, because the environment itself dictates such conditions.
Sergey: Yes, of course. Any outsourcing company, including ours, would like to delete this clause from the contract and say: “We were wrong - we apologize, and you pay.” On the one hand - the environment, and on the other ... When we opened the company, we had a table with the movement of money with some planning, but, first of all, we wanted to do it well.
When working with clients, we clearly understand that in addition to the accountant we want to give people a friend. Our conscience does not allow us to delete this line from the contract. Many clients do not know about it and do not ask, but we bear this responsibility. If we make a mistake, then our honor will be more precious than fines.
If the penalty is estimated more than our honor, then there is an insurance company in which our liability is insured: if we cannot arrange such compensation at the expense of our reserves, there is an [agreement with the company] Rosgosstrakh, which has a practice of payments in these areas. They have an act, and the insurance company indemnifies the damage.
/ photo dun_deagh CC
Myth 4: “I did this a thousand times - everything will be fine”
Alina: You talked about what an accountant should know and be able to do, and mentioned that tax legislation is constantly changing: new items, new articles appear.
For an accountant, it is important not only to keep correct reports, one must also be aware of what is appearing and constantly keep track of “new items”. It turns out that an accountant is a person who is on the cutting edge of this whole process.
Sergey: Accountant - let's draw an analogy with military operations - monitors the target, monitors the rear, monitors the presence of ammunition, communicates with the commander by radio and tries to predict further actions. Accountant to be not easy.
Many accountants live in ignorance of these events. We regularly conduct interviews, and sometimes people answer the question that is relevant since 2015. We understand that they were stuck in 2013-2014 because there were no such cases in their current company, or they were not aware of the changes and work in the old fashioned way.
Keep track of all the changes - a tremendous job. A plus to the changes is the practice of arbitration, which, so formed in our country, is very far from the tax code. If you open the “Consultant” or “Garant” help system and see how many changes and amendments to the laws relating to entrepreneurs come out daily, you will see that there are from 15 to 47: letters, amendments, changes.
If this number is multiplied by the number of days of the month, we understand that there may be 25% of tax issues. No normal person alone can understand all the nuances, understand how it actually works, and how then the tax authorities will look at it.
With the growth of our team, we feel plus synergy, which is due to the large number of different tasks arising from different specialists. It's not bad when an accountant cooks in his own juice, but one head is good, two is better, and ten or twenty is even better. The fact that different situations arise for different clients allows us to create an intellectual fund of accumulated situations and from there to take information.
Alina: If a person works as an accountant in one company, he is used to the business that is conducted in this company and the cases that arise there. This does not mean that he can go to your company, if it does something else, just as well work there and constantly understand the new things that are happening alone.
Sergey: It happens differently.They take an accountant with a very specific background, and then, when there are difficult moments in reporting, taxation, the accountant, referring to his past work, obviously does wrong according to the principle: "I did it a thousand times - everything will be fine." The reaction to this may be the following: “Once it’s gone there, we will do it now.” Although it is not the same thing.
Accountants who cook in the same business have a narrowing mind. For example, accounting in a motor show is simple, but very specific. A person who has worked 10-15 years in a motor show is unlikely to be able to come to a construction company and work effectively.
Alina:Accounting is a question that can be outsourced, it turns out to be specific for different businesses. For me, for example, this is a new moment in terms of how it all works.
Sergey: Yes, he [accounting] has specific moments. At 60%, these are overlapping things, basic ones: reporting and record keeping. To reinvent the wheel is not necessary. There are no different reporting rules for different companies.
We are talking about helping the entrepreneur in these matters, when the accountant is not just a conveyor for issuing reports that are not related to a business that does not work for a business. They are formal. We say that an accountant is a consultant and advisor, a person who plans and analyzes helps to deal with all this entrepreneur.
Specificity plays a very important role. For example, construction is an interesting industry. Many accountants spit on her because she is partially "black." Well, how is “black”? Documents come at the wrong time, they are of rather low quality, the estimates of the foremen write on a piece of paper in a checkbox, these leaves are photographed and sent to the accounting department.
To make an act of COP-2, COP-3, you have to sit and figure out. Here we work better and better understand what the client wants if the accountant does not just work in a construction company, but knows what a construction site is. We have an employee who, besides accounting education, has engineering in construction. It is much easier for him to understand what is happening at the construction site.
If they give him a document that is somehow incorrectly filled, he does not just blindly accept him, he looks and asks: “How are you going to assemble a house from this number of positions?” You have a very different expense here. You cannot use such beams here. ”
Jokes jokes, but something like this happens. The client was shocked by the conversation with the accountant, he just did not expect it. Of course, it is not always possible to understand the industry so deeply, but if it works, then it is easier for us to work, and the client feels that we speak the same language.
Alina: The accountant sees all the logic of the process. That's cool, of course.
Sergey: Ideally, when so. It does not always work, now the business is changing, a lot of new industries in which the client plunges us, talks about his business, and we didn’t even know about it. They did not know that this could somehow build a company or processes.
But it is doubly interesting. We always understand and delve into the internal kitchen of the client, try to come to the client's office, see what happens with them, how the process works. This is important in order to continue to interact correctly.
Alina: You say that you understand the work of a client, you want to be friends with him. In fact, you work to do well, and not just to hire a lot of people and take a lot of business into circulation. And this is the leitmotif of your entire workflow.
When we talked before, you mentioned that projects, whose credo also “do well”, are somehow coming to you in some unknown way. How did it happen? How did such a “company of companies” form around you?
Sergey: Yes, “company of companies”. On the one hand, for me it is still a mystery, on the other hand, I sincerely believe that accidents are not accidental, everything happens for something. Probably, when interacting, when communicating, people informally feel some message outside the words. I understand, on the same wave, we are with a man or not.
Why it happens?Probably, because, objectively, some new generation of entrepreneurs comes to replace those who were in the 90s. In the 90s there was a difficult situation with money, with the economy. Money was the first necessity. Any business was aimed at frankly "namutit dough", and this was the interest.
Young educated people understand that money is good, but they are needed for something. In addition, there is a process of some constructive activity, from which a person derives pleasure. The more such people become, and there are really more of them, we feel it, the more changes both our country and businessmen become completely different. They simply become more proportions.
Well, how they attract us, I don’t know, some kind of magic, magic. We are so tuned, we are sure that we will find our partners and friends who will be comfortable with us and whom we will help, which we will not abandon. People feel it and attract. In this case, probably, other people are attracted to others. Energy. Like that.
Alina: Like attracts like. Business for people attracts outsourcing for people.
Sergey: That's about it. We love people, we do not hide it, we are talking about it. We have the same attitude towards employees. We do not have formalist relations on the principle of "customer - performer". We do not poke each other in the contract. About 30% of our client portfolio are my good friends with whom we are friends of families. We are holding not so much a contract as moral obligations.
Therefore, we, first of all, are adjusted on that those people with whom we work and to whom we promised something, received what we are talking about. Well, and the financial component somehow follows. But this is a separate epic. Everyone just spends at work some number of hours of his life. If the first goal is money, it is probably not exactly what you need, you will not take everything with you. And the process in which a person participates should bring pleasure.
Many clients are surprised: “Accountant is such a profession, you sit and stick into the database. What is interesting in general? ”And we really have girls getting high on it, some won't be driven home at 7-8 in the evening. They sit, they are interested in something to figure out. We and the staff are the same as we are selected, fanatics to some extent. This is wrong, for the sake of which everything was planned.
PS If you have any questions that can be asked right here (in the comments), do not hesitate - write. I will give everything to Sergey and get back to you with the answers.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/328270/
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