Branch Development

09.01.2009

           

Companies and entrepreneurs - sole proprietors providing the services of bookkeeping, accounting, tax advice, and auditing for external clients, do not have a long history in our country. They were all established after 1991 when the process of entrepreneurship began.

 

In those early times the newly established businesses were not as yet aware of the usefulness of professional accounting services and therefore considered them as unnecessary expense. The services they required were merely recording business events for the needs of composing financial statements required by the state.

    

However, developments in the entrepreneurial culture have through time contributed to the realisation that financial accounting needs to be upgraded by management accounting because it prepares information for the decision-making processes, by advice in issues of taxation, as a special field, and by audit reports in cases when these are required by the legislation. Accounting companies adapted to these requirements by widening their range of services and improving the quality of services, to satisfy the high standards of clients.

 

This shift in the thinking of businesses concerning the issues of quality has also had an impact on the size of companies requiring accounting services. In the past these services were mostly  required by  small and micro companies whose owners were also directors and did not have any knowledge about accounting, but who had decided not to employ a professional as the costs for this would be economically unjustified. Nowadays more and more medium-sized companies are interested in the services rendered by accounting companies, especially in services covering specific fields and functions which cannot be covered by their own personnel.

 

In addition, entries of foreign companies in the Slovenian market have increased the demand for accounting companies which would provide information on the Slovenian legislation in the fields of accounting and tax regulations and which would supervise the regularity and compliance of work of accounting departments of these foreign companies in Slovenia.

 

In the practice the most frequent solution is a combination between a company's own accounting department and an external contractual provider of accounting services. An accounting company provides only a part of a company's accounting tasks, and mostly provides these tasks from its own premises. Developments in the information technology have had important impacts also on the operations of accounting companies. Especially important is the possibility of electronic data interchange with the government institutions.

    

The future development of this field will on one side lead to further specialisation within an accounting company, and on the other side to each accounting company offering a comprehensive range of services, similarly as in the countries of  western Europe.

 

Author: Chamber of Accountant Services