The practical part of the programme has so far been spent in the accounting department. As the central accounting department is located in Gaildorf, all Bechtle invoices are paid from there.
Each one of our IT system houses is handled by one person, who takes care of everything from collecting the invoices to creating the respective annual financial statements and stays in close contact with the system house. The system houses receive the invoices and they are then forwarded on to us.
My mentor is one of those responsible for a system house and, as time went on, I was given increasing responsibility.
The day started with banking meaning I allocated incoming payments to open sales invoices and direct debits to purchase invoices. The system does most of this automatically, but sometimes there needs to be some manual intervention. 😉
Once that was done, I took care of the post which is mostly invoices we have to pay. We make a difference between invoices for commercial goods and those for other expenses.
Invoices for commercial goods are entered into our Navision ERP system by the system houses. When we receive the invoice in Gaildorf, we check the data has been entered correctly and then transfer it into our SAP accounting program. It’s a little bit different for the other invoices: The colleagues in the system houses approve the invoices and we then post them to the corresponding expense accounts.
I regularly had to do the payment run, which meant I transferred the money for outstanding invoices to our suppliers and service providers. It’s crucial for this to be done regularly otherwise we could get a payment reminder.
We also send reminders to our customers when they don’t make a payment on time. These are sent out once a week. I checked which invoices were overdue and sent a list to colleagues in the affected system house who sometimes told me that a reminder wasn’t necessary because the invoice was being clarified. As soon as I received feedback from the system houses, I prepared the reminder letters to be sent out.
Working in accounting has taught me that it is extremely important to be organised and work with precision. I really enjoyed my time there because you get an overview of the entire system house. I got to know mine very well and was always well informed about what was going on. I had already dealt with some theoretical, special accounting cases during my studies and this period helped me put theory into practice. Accounting is definitely a great department!
I hope I was able to give you an insight into daily work there, but if you have any specific questions or just want to know a bit more, get in touch!
Bye for now,
AZUBIT Nina 😊
