Wouter Pieters recently joined as a partner and director at the accounting firm Van Coile & Partners, which has been established since the early '80s (and even before that) and employs 40 staff members. “Of course, much has changed over the years. We come from a time – not so long ago, by the way – when we would paste receipts on a sheet of paper, add a barcode, and then scan them. In a way, that was also a form of digitization, albeit not a very efficient one (laughs).”

“However, we have continued down that path, partly because we notice that regulations are increasingly evolving in that direction – for example, Minister Van Peteghem's policy note states that digital invoicing will become mandatory starting in 2024. As accountants, we had better proactively engage with this. Change is always difficult, and in every office there are fixed minds who only want to work with one accounting package, but it is often just a necessity. Even if it's just to attract new, young profiles, because the influx of new accountants is, frankly, dramatic.”