ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 👉 ACCOUNTANCYVANDAAG.BE 👈
The Ghent-based Vadecas en Partners has experienced steady growth since 2007 under the leadership of Chris Vandecasteele, thanks to a clear focus on digital services and valuable advice for SMEs and sole proprietorships. For Chris, it is important to focus on a well-defined target audience and suitable offerings, so your clients can fully rely on your skills and knowledge. At the same time, Chris advocates for collaboration with specialists and a smart use of software applications which allows you to offer proactive advice as an accountant in the language of the entrepreneur.
Quality through focus
When Chris Vandecasteele started in 2007, he immediately saw a lot of growth potential through efficiency gains. Over the last two years, the office has experienced significant growth to fifteen employees focusing on a digital way of working and a valuable service with much attention to advice. Vadecas specializes exclusively in accounting and taxation for Belgian SMEs and sole proprietorships. This focus ensures that the office's expertise is applied in areas where they are thoroughly familiar, which is greatly appreciated by the clients. In 2014, a significant digital step forward was taken by requiring clients to submit their documents digitally via the WinBooks Connect portal. The next digital step was the digital processing of bank transactions. With the smooth processing of invoices and bank transactions, the foundation was immediately laid for real-time accounting. This way, clients also benefit from a fully digitized accounting firm with faster processing times, easier access to documents, and real-time insight into their financial reports.
The various ways you can utilize advice
Chris also considers it important to help budding entrepreneurs and sole proprietors with advice. “Where many offices shy away from copyrights, we are happy to refer them to Creative Shelter where they receive a well-founded answer regarding the feasibility of fiscally attractive income based on copyrights. At the same time, they also receive the right software solution that relieves both the entrepreneur and the accountant administratively.”
Another important building block is the integration of each file with Bizzcontrol. “That proactive advice tool can be used in multiple ways,” Chris explains. “With the file analysis, we can delve deep into the case during the preparation of an advisory conversation and quickly gain crucial insights. During the discussion with the client, you can also easily make simulations with it to provide an accurate annual forecast. A third value is that we now send reports in the entrepreneur's language, which offer faster and more understandable insights than a traditional annual account. A fourth option that I find very interesting is the dashboard that allows you to walk through your files and provides insight into anomalies, positive or negative, that are worth a proactive discussion with the client.”
A discussion in the language of the entrepreneur
Chris is aware that the financial statements are a maze of figures for many entrepreneurs. During a discussion based on the financial statements, there is a tendency to explain it from an accounting perspective. The Bizzcontrol report clarifies the figures for Chris much more clearly. “We now start with an insightful report in which the accounting is divided into clear cost groups. Complex figures are thereby presented more understandably. For instance, you can indicate that the fleet cost has increased by so many percent and what the reason for that is. Your housing costs, manager's salary, personnel costs… everything is nicely presented in groups, which makes your advisory conversation much more effective.”
The power of automated accounting triggers
Vadecas and Partners uses Winbooks to manage approximately 800 files. Chris personally oversees about half of these files and Bizzcontrol plays a crucial role in this. Every night, the software retrieves all figures from the accounting package, allowing the team to set specific triggers that automatically review the files. Each file manager can view the status and relevant results of their files. For example, you can see if taxes, depreciations, and wage costs have already been recorded. The triggers alert if certain tasks still need to be carried out, such as recording salaries for certain companies. For Chris, it is both a reassurance and a time saver: “Previously, we analyzed the status of sole proprietorships for each file. Now, by the first quarter, we can already determine if a sole proprietorship is generating significantly more revenue.” Everything is automated: each new accounting file in Winbooks automatically becomes a cockpit file in Bizzcontrol, ensuring good monitoring. “We could no longer do without that cockpit,” concludes Chris.
The client notices that you keep track of everything professionally
The Bizzcontrol report generator allows Vadecas and Partners to automatically send a report to each client. Because they work with a fixed chart of accounts, the mapping was very straightforward. And thanks to the integration with AdminPulse, the reports are sent directly from the management software to the right recipients every quarter, where they maintain a good overview of the communication. Chris: “In these reports, we focus on major items such as executive compensation, housing costs, and fleet costs, which we clearly report in a clear one-page report, as detailed as we or the clients wish. In the meantime, the client is well informed and also notices that we keep everything under close watch.”
Harnessing the full potential to make your added value visible
At the start of Bizzcontrol, now four years ago, the mission was to help accountants provide their entrepreneurs with better insights into their figures. Founder Nicholas De Nil explains to us that it is equally important to do this in a way that is scalable for the entire office. “An accountant does a lot of work for their clients. We like to use the iceberg metaphor to represent all that work. For us, it is important to make the value of all that energy put into perfecting the figures clearly visible. We achieve this through four pillars: reporting, simulating, analyzing and monitoring.”
Accountants can generate a report that conveys a company's figures in understandable language and images. The accountant or file manager can then use it to create accurate forecasts thanks to simulations. During the discussion with the client, you use the dashboard to provide dynamic insights during the results discussion. “This way, the tools make your work visible as well, above the waterline of our iceberg,” Nicholas tells us.
An important innovation introduced this year lies below that waterline: monitoring the files. Once you are managing more than fifty files, you want to know, for example, whether all the depreciation entries have been recorded, whether there are no large amounts remaining on suspense accounts, and whether, for instance, there are no files with a significant revenue increase. If you know these matters are in order, you can potentially add insights and then forward the report based on an interim result. It is just a push of a button, but one that makes your quarterly work visible and thus increases the perceived value.”
Provide advice even before the client calls you about it
Nicholas gives us a concrete example of a filter that was very popular last year. It allowed you to easily get an overview of customers who had more than a quarter of a million euros in their accounts and simultaneously had a healthy liquidity ratio. "You contact those customers to explain what they can do differently with their money. That's proactive advice," Nicholas tells us. "You help your client move forward even before they call with the question."
Chris adds: "In the past, we had to open and dissect the accounting files every quarter. That's no longer necessary: your files are continuously analyzed behind the scenes. "You see the conclusions in a dashboard without having to look at the accounting file." The combination of the software with your personal knowledge of the client makes it complete for Chris: "With one client, the current account fluctuates significantly, but for instance, with a management company, you can advise to place the money in a term deposit that yields three and a half percent. Then your fee is immediately earned back."
Excel op steroïden
A feature that Chris finds particularly useful is the budget simulator. The screen that allows you to simulate the budget or forecast the cash flow is described by Chris as an “Excel on steroids”. You can adjust sales, costs, personnel, inventory, or other items, and you immediately get an update on their impact. For example, if you plan to hire additional staff in the last quarter, rent new premises, or make a significant investment, you can enter these changes right away and see the immediate impact on your results. If you enter tax data, it becomes immediately clear what the expected tax on the result will be in 2024. When the client asks for comparative advice, Chris can present the result after the first quarter. “These forecasts are valuable because you can estimate future results for tax payments and profit expectations. Due to the increase in tax levies, it is important to make an accurate estimate at the beginning of the year.”
In the same way, you can now also predict cash flow. Bizzcontrol allows you to perform simulations where you take into account inventory, receivables and credits, historical figures and seasonal influences, revenue increases, and more. The entrepreneur sees the quarterly cash flow at the bottom of the calculation and thus better understands the significant impact of changes on the total cash flow.
Chris concludes: “This way we can truly help them maintain a healthy cash position. Our entrepreneurs not only gain insight into their finances through our proactive advisory tool, but you also anticipate with advice that helps them move forward. We work with the client using complex figures that are displayed in an understandable way. This makes your advisory role visible.”
Back to overview