--- title: "Ulvi Tallo and Helari Pallas: one plus one now equals four" date: 2022-04-08T12:41:19Z modified: 2024-05-28T10:10:42Z permalink: "https://grow.ee/ulvi-tallo-ja-helari-pallas-uks-pluss-uks-vordub-nuud-neli/" type: post status: publish excerpt: The merger agreement between Grow Finance and Pallas & Partners has been signed. Let's talk about the nature of the work of a modern accountant. wpid: 7365 featured_image: "https://grow.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Blogi-pilt.jpg" featured_image_alt: Capital raising_2 timestamp: 2024-05-28T10:10:42Z tags: - Entrepreneurship, management --- ![Grow Finance](https://grow.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Blogi-pilt.jpg) When the ink of the digital signatures had dried on the files of the merger agreement between [Grow Finance](https://grow.ee/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/page/front-page-3-2.md) and Pallas & Partners, we took time with Ulvi Tallo and Helari Pallas to talk about the background to the merger and the nature of the work of a modern accountant. **Two good accounting firms put their shares in one cabinet and are now one big and good accounting firm. Why?** **Ulvi:** When you operate small, you can only do small things and you don't get the opportunity to do something bigger and more exciting. Today we have accountants, tax and financial consultants in-house. If you do accounting on your own, you don't have the resources to offer other services. This is an advantage of a larger company. Plus, all kinds of solutions, digital solutions and more - one person's head cannot have as many thoughts or solutions as dozens of heads. There are so many digital solutions in the accounting field today that can help make work more efficient. For this, you need people who help you move forward with these things. When you operate small, you can't offer such a professional and [versatile service](https://grow.ee/services/raamatupidamine/), you can only offer an accounting service. **Helari:** Invoice entry service. **Ulvi:** Yes. To offer more, you have to be a bigger player. It's not possible when you're small. **So both companies reached the limit of their internal resource expansion capacity?** **Ulvi:** Yes. **Helari:** And from the owner-manager's perspective, in a small office you can find a replacement for an accountant if necessary, but you can't find a replacement for yourself. If there are several partners, you can go on vacation at one point without doing telework every day during your vacation. Not that I don't currently spend part of the year abroad, but I've always had a work computer with me there and some work item every day that I haven't been able to delegate. That was also one of the reasons for me to join, that I can rest without working and delegate tasks. **Ulvi:** And we are now part of the international GGI group, which also includes other accounting, auditing and law firms. I've been going to joint events of the group for ten years and at one point I was told that Ulvi - you're alone there, don't you feel that no major clients will come to you because you are the biggest risk for your company? If something happens to you, the client has no security. The small number of partners is a big risk for large clients and they do not choose such a company as a service provider. **And now an accounting and financial advisory firm has been born that is immediately among the top three in Estonia in terms of sales revenue?** **Helari:** Based on this, we are in the top three. There are over five thousand companies in Estonia, of which approximately twenty-five have ten or more employees, one hundred have five or more, and one hundred and fifty have three or more. And one-person companies are not really offices, but for example, an accountant does accounting for someone in addition to his main job. **Ulvi:** Ten years ago, there were less than a hundred accounting firms with three or more employees, and six or seven with more than ten employees. The growth in the number of employees per firm has been constant. And last year, twenty larger companies accounted for 35 percent of the market turnover. If we consider that there are five thousand companies, then this percentage is quite impressive. **Helari:** If we look at the statistics, the sales revenue of the Finnish accounting market was ten times higher than that of Estonia. But their population is not ten times higher. There is quite a lot of room for growth here. The trend is still towards ordering services from an office, not hiring your own accountant. **Ulvi:** And all accounting offices in the world are expanding rapidly, audit offices are expanding faster. This goes hand in hand with digitalization. Accounting is no longer such a big job to hire a separate person for it. I can cite Rantalainen, our Finnish partner, as an example. In the meantime, their staff increased by a hundred people a year. Today, they should have over eight hundred employees on their payroll. And they are not the largest in Finland. **And in your case – who contributes what competence to joint ventures, who had the strongest advisors, who had the accountants?** **Ulvi:** The competence overlapped in some places. We probably had more on the tax side. But now we are just building the right package of services together. Both sides had this competence pretty equally and now synergy is being created from it. In our case, one plus one must make three, pure accountant logic. **Helari:** We were both in a situation where we knew who we needed to add to our team, but we didn't have the resources, we didn't have enough clients. Today, we have a total of eight hundred of them and we still see a lot of room for growth. And if something needs to be developed within the company, then when there are more people around the table, there will also be a better plan on how to do it. You don't think things through in your own head for many people, you miss something and then you spend money on fixing errors. **And what does the client gain from all this?** **Helari:** As Ulvi already said, the more partners in the company, the more secure the client feels. A larger client is looking for an equal partner. They don't want to be with one accountant who at one point, for example, goes on maternity leave, because accountants are usually women. Or changes their specialty. An accountant is an important person in the company and it can't be that if it's not known, things are on hold and don't move forward. This is important because we are permanent partners for our clients. We have both been on the market with our companies for twenty years, and continuity of service is important. **Continuity and development. What do you think have been the most exciting developments in the field of accounting?** **Ulvi:** When I started, when I got my diploma, it was still the Soviet era. When I got my first diploma, it was such a tiny piece of paper, I threw it in the corner and told my mother that I would never become an accountant! It's so blunt! Actually, it was blunt because of how it was done and taught back then. Back then, it was all about paper. When I first went to work, I applied for an assistant position, and it was written on my CV that I had studied accounting. Of course, I was made to do accounting. Fortunately, the computer age began then. Companies could afford to buy computers, which were expensive at the time. And that's how I got acquainted with Excel. And I've also been interested in the IT side, how you can use technology to your advantage. It's great and awesome. In terms of expansion too - I see how you can't use all the gadgets alone, you need a whole team to think along and work. That's what makes my eyes sparkle when I see how to use technology to your advantage, to do things better, faster and easier. **Helari:** When I studied accounting, I already had to enter data into the computer, although calculations were also done on paper. Those who know me, know that I don't like to waste time on nonsense. I prefer to delve deeper at first, make things thoroughly clear and optimize the work process. And I also tell my clients how to do things more efficiently. To do this, you have to step out of your comfort zone for a month, because things have been done a certain way for ten years. But 99 percent of the time, they say afterwards that it was the right thing you recommended. But coming back to myself, when I graduated from high school, I couldn't get into the university in the field I wanted. Then I went to the school of economics, where there was an admissions office for accountants. I was the only guy there! Of course, I turned around and left. In the end, I studied administrative management at university. Which turned out to be extremely dull, because I've known all my life that I wouldn't become a civil servant, my worldview is too different for that. And the most interesting subject was accounting. And so I started it all over again as an accounting student in an office right after school. And I liked that job! It wasn't the steady routine of punching in invoices, I can't stand that, but that part of the job encouraged me to look for solutions on how to automate such activities. And I also saw different companies, understood their problems, and my worldview expanded. Moreover, if you have knowledge of accounting, it makes life easier as an entrepreneur. I still don't mind being my own accountant. **Why is accounting a so-called women's profession, how strong is this gender stereotype?** **Ulvi:** Traditionally, accounting has been a male profession. And elsewhere it is still a male profession. Except in Eastern Europe. This is because this profession was not highly valued during the Soviet era, salaries were extremely low, and where salaries are low, women tend to work there. It was an underpaid field with a lot of responsibility. When I was at school, they scared us that if one ruble makes a difference, you'll be arrested. If the balance sheet doesn't add up. And then I got defiant, saying, "What's the point of going to jail for some meaningless ruble? Of course I'm not going to be an accountant!" Too much responsibility for that salary. And that's a characteristic of all of Eastern Europe. And in these countries, the prices for accounting work are also lower. When I go to [Grow](https://grow.ee/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/page/front-page-3-2.md) group meetings, the women who run the offices are all from Eastern Europe. And in China, it's also a women's field, probably for the same reasons, but I can't comment on that in more detail. **Helari:** We don't have any male accountants between us. **Ulvi:** I have. From time to time. **Helari:** At work too? **Ulvi:** Yes. **Helari:** I haven't seen any. **Ulvi:** But this aspect of women's work, it's an attitude and that's not changing today. Cashiers and accountants are women in the big picture. But that will start to change at some point, when there is even less data entry work and more smart work. Because accounting is heading in the direction of needing people with digital knowledge and analytical skills and fewer data entry people. **I once read a theory on how to find a good accountant. Give the candidates a creative task and choose the worst performer. Then you can be sure that the accountant will not start thinking in his own head in his absence…** **Ulvi:** We don't have such employees. We have everyone logical and creative. **Helari:** They really say that an accountant cannot be creative…. **Ulvi:** In reality, that's not true! There has to be quite a bit of creativity within a person when it comes to someone's tax and expense accounting, then that creativity is needed. It's not a job for the faint of heart, although the image is still that an accountant is a middle-aged woman made of dry matter. I'm also told that oh – you don't look like an accountant at all! The same can be said about Helar. Maybe that's why we do things differently, because we don't look like stereotypes. **Helari, have you been looked at strangely when you walk into a company's office as an accountant?** **Helari:** I don't really remember the time when I went to a company with my first employer and was introduced as a future accountant. I didn't feel it at the time. When I go somewhere today, it's as a company manager, and it's basic that I'm a man. In the past, when the main job was accounting, people looked at me in a funny way. But people who don't know what an accountant actually does imagine this job in a completely different way. So what is it, do you enter invoices? In fact, that's probably a third of an accountant's job. It's not accounting, it's data entry. And in English there are two different words "bookkeeper" and "accountant", they are two different professions. And our accountant is a direct translation of the German "buchhalter", and in Russian the accountant is a foreign word of German origin. Anyway - who is the kind of accountant today that you would hire right away? **Ulvi:** The first thing that comes to mind is proactivity. An accountant sounds like you should have books, like you are a librarian, you are alone and don't communicate with anyone. An accountant has to communicate, be an open person. They say what they don't like and what they like. And a good learner, lifelong learning is part of this job these days, you have to be ready to learn new techniques, it gives a boost to your career and makes the work easier. Getting stuck in old habits doesn't lead to progress. And some, unfortunately, can't learn. **Helari:** The customer service role is quite a lot in an accountant's workflow, but it's hard to teach. It's easy to teach the nuances of VAT or income tax laws, not communication skills. But it's important, as is the client's understanding that we don't do accounting for ourselves, but a service for them. And this change in mindset is difficult for many people. But if you offer a client a service that doesn't appeal to them, that service will be short-lived. **Ulvi:** Understanding the client, whether and to what extent we can solve their problems, is important. Of course, we could solve all their problems, but clients are not yet ready to pay for solving some of them. **But how has being an accountant's boss changed, for example, in the last two years?** **Ulvi:** In the last two years? For example, we have always had the option of a home office and it has been difficult for me to explain to both employees and clients that video calling is a very okay thing. I had a terrible time! In that sense, I am very grateful to the coronavirus. We conduct employee satisfaction surveys once a quarter. And when the corona started, the indicators went up. They were able to be at home even more and it had a positive effect. But after a while, it had the opposite effect, so that now people want to come back to work. That today it is a benefit when employees can go to the office. It used to be the other way around. Yes, we offer our employees the opportunity to work in the office. **It sounds funny.** **Helari:** But that's how it is now. But if we now consider the situation in the market, the corona and the economic difficulties caused by it have made companies think about whether they need to keep their own accountant on the payroll or whether it is worth outsourcing accounting as a service. That the current time is definitely giving the market more momentum. **Ulvi:** And we can see from our company that it is giving momentum. We also saw this during the previous crisis, that this market is not going to fall away. **Listen, but then you could say that accounting is the dream job of a modern hipster - work wherever and whenever you want, all that matters is the deadline and getting the work done?** **Ulvi:** It is. And we now also have a new office. When designing it, we aimed to make it look more like a hipster office of a startup company than a regular office. **Helari:** I have been telling my employees for years that it is okay for me if you go to Spain in the dark and do your work from there. I don't see any obstacles. We have all kinds of communication tools. For me, it is always important to have a sense of team spirit, that if you can't hear and see others, you kind of disappear from the team. But if you can keep that, then it is definitely location-free work. **Ulvi:** You just have to recommend digital solutions to clients so that they can also send invoices and documents as easily as possible. We ourselves feel that we have such an awesome digital company, not a paper company. **And people want to come to work? What does that give them compared to going somewhere to be a salaried accountant?** **Helari:** In the past, there was an opinion that offices pay accountants the lowest wages and there is a lot of work. **Ulvi:** And they are treated badly. This is the image that offices have had until now. But this image is changing, that accounting firms are cool. And people want to come to work in them more than they want to go somewhere to be an accountant. And we can see from the larger offices that this image of a cool place is taking hold. We also have more different cases, it never gets boring here. **Helari:** You never have the same day. Life changes all the time, clients change. Although I have clients since 1997. But everything changes, new digital solutions come, tax laws change. A person who wants to develop is more likely to come to work in an accounting office than a person who wants to comfortably earn their salary. 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