The finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion of a scaffolding com­pa­ny con­sists of sev­er­al parts. Suo­mi Teline imports, does scaf­fold con­tract­ing, rents scaffolding and goods are sold to cus­tomers from its’ own sales ware­house or direct­ly deliv­ered from Ger­many, so finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion must con­sid­er how scaffolding is man­aged, invoiced, and account­ed for these var­i­ous ser­vices.

As the strengths of Suo­mi Teline are speed, reli­a­bil­i­ty and the pro­vi­sion of com­pre­hen­sive ser­vices, also finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion must act reli­ably in rapid­ly chang­ing sit­u­a­tions and find solu­tions that work as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble. Suo­mi Teline account­ing was pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out by an exter­nal account­ing firm. How­ev­er, we felt it was a bet­ter option to hire more of our own staff, and account­ing began to be done inside the house since sum­mer 2020. It has proven to be an excel­lent solu­tion. It is good for the per­son in charge of account­ing to have a broad over­all under­stand­ing of the entire busi­ness as well as the com­pa­ny’s oper­at­ing meth­ods and the out­look for the future.

In finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion, dai­ly work includes rou­tines and many tasks that change rapid­ly, which makes the work ver­sa­tile and inter­est­ing. Dur­ing the high sea­son months from April to Sep­tem­ber, as well as the finan­cial clos­ing time at the turn of the year, our work­days are often hec­tic. Dur­ing the coro­na sit­u­a­tion, we have also worked part­ly remote­ly. Our work­space is arranged so that work­ing safe­ly is also pos­si­ble in the com­pa­ny’s premis­es in Nur­mi­järvi. Our finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion is almost 100% paper­less, so the work can also be done out­side the office.

Finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion is the heart of the com­pa­ny

Almost all the company’s inter­nal infor­ma­tion goes through finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion. The flow of infor­ma­tion is two-way with con­tract­ing, sales, ware­hous­ing, and man­age­ment. In prac­tice, finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion should have all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion that the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment needs.

For exam­ple, month­ly invoic­ing of scaf­fold con­tract­ing, and rents requires close col­lab­o­ra­tion with bid cal­cu­la­tion, ware­house, and work man­age­ment. Infor­ma­tion must flow accu­rate­ly and in a time­ly man­ner between dif­fer­ent depart­ments to ensure the accu­ra­cy of both cus­tomer and sup­pli­er invoic­es. Often things can­not be clar­i­fied with a sin­gle email or a phone call because the chain of infor­ma­tion flows through many peo­ple. Suo­mi Teline has a flex­i­ble and mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive work team, which con­tributes to work effi­cien­cy and smooth­ness. We do not have depart­ment bound­aries, but co-work­ers are helped when­ev­er need­ed.

In the spring 2020, a coop­er­a­tion project between sales and finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion was imple­ment­ed, the project intro­duced a rack inven­to­ry man­age­ment pro­gram that also strong­ly sup­ports finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion. The scaffolding sales process is car­ried out from order to invoic­ing through the inven­to­ry man­age­ment pro­gram, and the next step is to expand the man­age­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and invoic­ing of the rental equip­ment do be done through the pro­gram. In parts, rent invoic­ing has already been intro­duced in the inven­to­ry man­age­ment pro­gram, which has facil­i­tat­ed the work of both the inven­to­ry and the finan­cial admin­is­tra­tion when unnec­es­sary work steps have been elim­i­nat­ed. This also reduces the num­ber of errors.

Son­ja Alakan­gas
Son­ja Alakan­gas is a chief finan­cial offi­cer of Suo­mi Teline.