Anyone Can Do Accounting

An accountant from another firm once told me that “Anyone can do accounting” and this is about as far away from the “truth” as the flatness of the world. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent intelligence and comprehension skills but accounting is something that makes that big vein in my head double in size and causes my head to spin faster than, well.. nothing comes close to making my head spin in this way.

“Anyone can do accounting”? Yah right, as I limped away from today’s two hours meeting with my accountant, shaking a little, but trying hard not to let it look obvious. This big A hurts me even more than parallel computing and artificial intelligence algorithms put together!

A word of advice to all entrepreneurs out there running sole-proprietorships or partnerships – do not convert your company to a private limited unless you have a very compelling reason to do so. Please do not do it just for the sake of the pretty “private limited” in the company name or you will be in for a very rude shock when the administrative overheads kick in.

Of course, if the company starts off small, with a small number of transactions, adjusting to the accounting requirements will be less painful and doing so gradually will be a good way to gain familiarity with the system, but iStyles unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) started with this big giant rolling ball that was passed on from ObjectsFusion. As with all big giant rolling balls, this one picked up little bits of dust, grime and moss over the years. Matters were further complicated by the migration from QuickBooks Premier to SAP BusinessOne in the second half of the year.

A solid ERP platform will be an absolute necessity but even that alone will not be sufficient to cover all angles. An accountant will be necessary.

iStyles Pte. Ltd. was previously ObjectsFusion, a sole-proprietorship that existed since July 2004. We ceased ObjectsFusion and started a private limited company with a sole purpose – to qualify for a Verisign merchant account. Despite the merchant fees of two thousand odd yearly, a merchant account will work out to substantial cost savings for us, compared to existing methods at the current transaction volume, and even more so as the business expands. In addition, a merchant account will potentially improve sales by radically simplifying the checkout and payment process on our store.

The acquisition of a merchant account as a Singapore business does not come about easily as it is strictly available only to private limited companies with a paid up capital of more than S$100k, unlike the case in other countries where a merchant account can be acquired with barely more than a corporate banking account, social security number and company registration number. A quick glance at our statements shows that we may be able to put in a paid up capital of S$100k but I’ll only be able to verify this after the statements are compiled.

Not everyone can do accounting and I sincerely thank Su Yen for her patience in working with me.