In the last week of September, a webinar on data-based reporting and accounting was held, where SimplBooks was also represented. The webinar talks about the nature of data-based reporting and its connection with accounting. In addition, there is talk of activities of public and private sectors in this regard. The webinar was organized by partners of the Internet of Business –SimplBooks OÜ, ITL Digital Lab, Estonian Association of Accountants, Tieto Estonia AS, Fitek AS, Columbus Eesti AS, BCS Itera AS, Account Studio OÜ, OÜ Skriining. The webinar is specifically intended for accountants, but also for anyone interested in real-time economy and e-invoicing.

The Iob project is aimed at developing a standard for information on economic transactions (entries) to describe the economic activities of the entire company. It is planned to use the XBRL GL standard, which is already widely used in the world, to describe transactions. The project involves e-invoicing operators, professional associations and business software.

Jaanus Reismaa, CEO of SimplBooks, who participated in the webinars, said about the project that the intention to participate in the Iob project was to bring more open data to its clients and more automation when, e.g., submitting reports or declarations. Iob project is developing MyCompanyData service, which enables structured storage of company’s financial data and further automation of reporting.

According to Jaanus Reismaa, ERP softwares today is becoming more service-based, i.e. software is rented for a monthly fee, which makes modern software affordable for micro-enterprises and also small businesses. „In the project, we are working to make the original reporting data as open and machine-readable as possible, so that reports can be generated automatically as much as possible.“ Reismaa cannot predict at the moment when MyCompanyData service will reach masses since micro-enterprises have very different backgrounds and thus features a different level of readiness to keep up with innovations.

For example, if manager of a micro-enterprise keeps accounts himself, he is more likely to notice this change than an enterprise whose accounts are made by accountant. There are certainly questions about security, but since the MyCompanyData service is a distributed system, each ERP is responsible for the MyCompanyData service and data set up by them. “We do not create a centralized system, i.e. MyCompanyData data is stored with the ERP software service provider according to all assumptions. The MyCompanyData service is simply a layer between data and the rest of the world,”said Jaanus.

Webinar in English can be viewed here (panel discussion starts from 1:33:51):