Article about Digibalance in Finnair’s Blue Wings magazine

We are happy to announce that Digibalance Ltd. was featured in this month’s issue of Blue Wings magazine by Finnair, published on 3rd March 2017.  The article gives a brief explanation of our priorities in accounting and why we think utilising automation is useful. The article also mentions our upcoming mobile application. If you don’t have access to a physical copy of the magazine, you can read the article below:

Image of Digibalance article in Finnair Blue WingsDigibalance produces digital bookkeeping services for European micro-entrepreneurs

The Finnish company Digibalance has already developed a completely digital bookkeeping service for European small businesses. Now, this pioneering company will also launch a mobile app for small businesses; a tool for business owners to monitor financial performance that can be carried in your pocket.

Digibalance is a Finnish-owned accounting firm, established in 2008. Its vision is of producing Finnish origin online bookkeeping for small businesses in the entirety of the EU. The company’s primary target group consists of European start-ups, micro-entrepreneurs, and businesses of 1-4 employees in size. “This target group includes many people that employ themselves as entrepreneurs in unfamiliar environments. At the moment, we at Digibalance offer online accounting services in Finland, Estonia, France, the UK, and Italy, but our goal is to duplicate our services in all of the European SEPA countries. We are the best in on-going monthly accounting. For special taxation questions and Financial Statements, we use local expertise”, says the Chairman of the Board Mikko Ilves.

Automation keeps costs down

In practice, what does ‘digitalised bookkeeping services’ mean? “In the AutoAccount service we have replaced the arduous paper phases of accounting with automation. The service is effortless and affordable for the entrepreneur. Thanks to the digitalisation and automation of the process, the client does not pay for anything unnecessary. The service is also ecological and location independent, because all documents are transmitted online. In spite of the digital process, the client also gets assistance in case of need; since contacts with our team are conveniently handled online, for instance through Skype, and the service language is English.” Ilves reveals that online accounting, at its least expensive, costs € 40/month. “In addition, the monthly fee does not depend on the number of transaction documents; hence, a growth in business activity and the number of transactions does not automatically raise the monthly fee. This brings predictability into the everyday life of the entrepreneur.”

Online monitoring in your pocket

Now Digibalance is launching a mobile application – Digibalance mobileApps, a tool for small business owners to monitor financial performance. “Young entrepreneurs are especially used to taking care of their daily affairs through mobile devices. That is why we want to offer European small business owners the chance to handle business matters by mobile device as well.” Ilves says that Digibalance mobileApps works both-ways between Digibalance and the client. “The client can send us additional information and we in turn produce reports for the service. The idea is that when the micro-entrepreneur opens the mobile service, they see a view that reveals both the present situation of the business and a financial forecast. As a new feature, we also generate taxation forecasts in the service. Later, other services, in connection with entrepreneurship offered by various cooperation partners, can also be added to the service. We will launch the mobile service for clients during the spring.”

Text by Mia Heiskanen / Blue Wings.

 

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Remote work is a way of life for Carina

Digibalance accountant Carina Björnvik works from her home in Florence, Italy via remote work.

Digibalance's "office" in San Frediano, Florence

Entrance to Carina’s “home office” in San Frediano, Florence.

Carina “Cia” Björnvik has been working in Digibalance since 2015. Her work includes bookkeeping for different companies in different countries. Carina is originally from Finland, but she has chosen to remote work from Italy, where she moved in the beginning of the millennium. The flexible nature of the work made it possible to move to her husband’s home town, Florence. The family lives in the old central district San Frediano and they own a summer place in the countryside, just 20 kilometres from Florence, where work can also be done during the school holiday times.

Usually Carina starts working at 8 o’clock in the morning, when her son leaves for school. The first thing she does is checking and answering emails. Carina does bookkeeping for micro enterprises and self-employed from different fields of business. Also the customers’ backgrounds are often from different cultures.

For Carina, remote work enables the use of time more freely than in regularly scheduled work. Work can be done even in the villa or the work may be scheduled to do at an appropriate time, for example, when children are in school. However, even in remote work there must be some sort of a routine for the day.

In Carina’s opinion, the downside of remote work is that you do not see your colleagues very often or at all. You have to fill your social needs in somewhere else than work. You also must have some kind of self-discipline and the ability to create daily routines for yourself, since no one else is going to do it for you. In addition, especially in remote work, the importance of technological functionality is emphasized. If the Internet connection is down or your computer is broken, you have to figure everything out yourself, since you cannot just call the IT department to come and fix everything.

Prior to starting at Digibalance, Carina was already used to remote working in an international environment. She has worked in different countries and is familiar to the accounting practices in not only Italy and Finland, but also in the other Nordic countries. According to Carina, the Italian way of bookkeeping is still often very manual. In many companies the benefits of automation are not yet used in practice. Even though automation and remote work are slowly increasing in Italy, the biggest problem seems to be that the information is usually not in electronic form, which means both more manual work and massive paper consumption. However, Carina is continually making effort that Digibalance’s AutoAccount practices would be more widespread in Italy.

While Carina and her family make visits to Finland frequently, their plan is to stay in Italy permanently. However, the Nordic culture is far from forgotten! They often meet up with Swedish families who also live in Florence. Together they celebrate traditional Nordic festivities such as Saint Lucy’s Day.

Carina doing bookkeeping via remote work from her home in Italy.

Carina working remote from her home in Italy.

According to Carina, the possibilities of working from home have become a lot easier, when comparing to what it was before. For example programs like Teamviewer have made the internal workplace communication easier. Nowadays, being employed in a Finnish company is relatively effortless, even if you live abroad. As the technology and society develop, also remote work opportunities are constantly getting better.

Once you are used to remote work, you don’t want to go back to the office work and 9-to-5 schedule.” Carina says. “Remote work is a way of life, which may not suit everyone, but for me it is just right.

The majority of Digibalance's international customer's bookkeeping is done here.

The majority of Digibalance’s international customer’s bookkeeping is done here.

 

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