An engagement that began as a routine bookkeeping handover and ended up stopping an error that had been running automatically through the company’s EU sales for a year and a half.
The company had just ended the engagement with their bookkeeper, and the request was straightforward: they needed someone for bookkeeping, VAT, and reporting. On the surface, it was about capacity.
But the picture didn’t quite add up. They lacked an overview of cash flow, the VAT reporting kept causing trouble, and they no longer fully trusted the numbers they were supposed to make decisions on.
For a while, their auditor had pointed out that a lot of hours went into fixing errors in the VAT settlement, without anyone being able to point to the cause. The assumption was that it came down to how the accounting system was set up, or a lack of bookkeeping capacity. That was the assumption we were hired on.
The task started in the usual way: document the bookkeeping processes so they could be handed over to a new bookkeeper, and sort out the setup of the VAT accounts.
But when we started going through the VAT reconciliations in detail, the errors continued, even after the first corrections. If the problem had been in the bookkeeping, the corrections would have worked, and they didn’t.
So we traced the data back through the systems, from the accounting system to the payment solution to the webshop, and that’s where the cause was. The company’s automated handling of EU B2C sales wasn’t processing the data correctly. The invoices looked right to customers, but the basis for the OSS reporting was wrong, and because the process was automated, the error was carried forward automatically across the company’s EU sales.
This was no longer about finding a new bookkeeper. It was about a system error that had affected the finances for a year and a half.
First we paused the automated transfers temporarily and put manual controls in place, so no new errors were booked while the work was underway.
Then we got in touch with the system provider to clarify whether the existing solution could be set up correctly. After a longer dialogue, it became clear that the platform simply couldn’t handle the company’s EU B2C sales in the way that was needed.
Instead of just noting that, we researched the market, found the alternatives, and assessed which solution could best carry the company forward. We handled implementation, testing, and quality assurance before the new setup went live. Along the way, we tightened the processes around finance and reporting, so the company became less dependent on manual controls going forward.
In hindsight, the biggest value wasn’t in VAT or bookkeeping. It was in getting to the real cause that no one had managed to pin down.
The error had been running for about a year and a half and cost auditor hours in every single VAT period. After about a month and a half, we had documented the cause and could say with certainty why the problems occurred. The full process from problem to finished, tested solution took about four months. The solution is still running today and handles the company’s EU B2C sales automatically.
The company sold across the EU, with the majority of revenue from four markets. Every new customer and every new market would have made the error bigger. For management, the solution meant they could trust their VAT reporting again and know that what went on to the authorities and the auditor was correct.
Once a process is automated, you assume it works. But automated errors are still errors, they just happen faster and are harder to spot. And the first problem a company describes is rarely the real one.
30 minutes. No preparation. An honest answer on whether there’s a problem that needs solving.
