Finance manager
Services:
About the company:
This is a subsidiary of an international French holding engaged in the production and wholesale of chemical reagents used in municipal and industrial water treatment, oil production, mining and other industries.
We decided to leave for several reasons. First, we faced the need to move to a new version of 1C, and the previous provider could not help us with that. Second, mutual claims had accumulated regarding the quality of work and staff turnover. Although our activity is fairly simple, mostly buy-and-sell, misunderstandings still arose periodically.
We shortlisted around 30 companies according to published rankings for the quality of accounting and HR administration services, requested proposals and analysed them in terms of price and quality. In the end five companies were selected, and we spoke to their representatives in person.
Particular attention was paid to the availability of references, the size of the insurance cover and, most importantly, responsibility.
If an outsourcing company prepares and submits reports, then if errors are found in them the outsourcer must take responsibility and cover all possible risks. Having analysed all the shortlisted proposals, we realised that on the price-quality ratio we liked UCMS Group best of all, and we were won over by Ekaterina Menshikova and Natalia Dolgopolova.
We worked with sales manager Natalia Romanenkova. She was always in touch and we spoke at length about the contract terms. And later, in the first days of work, Natalia was in touch and resolved all issues very promptly.
I would divide the project into two parts. The first part is technical, namely moving 1C to UCMS Group's equipment. There we encountered connection quality problems, which made 1C slow. The second part is the accounting itself; there were small hiccups there too, but after two months of active communication everything settled down and now works perfectly. In particular, UCMS has already been through two audits with us. The auditors had no material findings about the new outsourcer's work.
Minimally. My function is management reporting and interaction with the head office. So my colleagues interact with UCMS Group more; I get involved at the level of signing contracts and some approvals. For example, we are now in an active period of interaction with the tax authority, so I communicate constantly with Ekaterina Buldina (project manager for accounting). But essentially I am just a coordinator.
My position is simple: the better the outsourcer works, the less often we think about them.
Ekaterina Buldina (project manager for accounting) is as comfortable as possible to communicate with: at any time, on any matter, she will always advise, explain and come over if needed. I have no complaints at all.
Yes, that is IFRS, and in line with the head office's requirements; none of the employees has access to that reporting, it is entirely with UCMS Group. Another specific feature is our polymer flooding projects in the oil production sector. Such projects are not yet very widespread in Russia, so questions periodically arise, including on accounting and tax treatment.
Yes, we had not recovered VAT since the company moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in 2017, so a very large amount of VAT had accumulated for recovery. And now, together with UCMS Group, since April we have been trying to recover it.
I would also note that we had certain problems when we finally moved to the new version of 1C, which had to be adapted to our requirements and specifics.
UCMS Group's help was invaluable here, because it was a new experience for us and certain tasks required a joint search for solutions.
I would advise paying attention to IT. I know we had major complaints about that part. And probably the second point is the turnover of specialists that went on throughout the year.
Now the final team has been formed, it is trained, and I hope no changes are planned.
For my part, definitely yes, and as far as I can see, for my colleagues too. The number of shortcomings and the time taken to fix them have decreased.
I think flexible. I can hardly name another company that would help when I had a problem at 10 pm and the only number I had was Natalia Dolgopolova's. Literally 10 minutes later Natalia Romanenkova called back, and in the morning we were already processing the documents.
Our company's strategy is market expansion. We are actively working on it, developing in the oil sector and promoting polymer flooding projects.
No, not hard, but we have introduced a slightly shortened name. We affectionately call you Yusik.
