A few kilometres from the capital of the Grand Duchy, in an industrial zone, one finds fiduciaries "VOET & Co" who chose Mercator for managing their clients' accounting. Fiduciaries Voet, established in 1997 in the Luxembourg market, is a Mercator user since 2008
What software did you use before starting to use Mercator?
M. Voet: We used Kluwer's Expert/M.
What were the reasons that influenced you to use Mercator?
M.V: We were looking for new software that would be more adapted to Luxembourg accounting requirements. More than ten years experience had led me to pass through Cubic, Bob and Expert/M. The options for Luxembourg were always appendixes adapted to our specifics.
What are the Luxembourg specifics accounting requirements?
M.V: The biggest problem is issuing an annual recapitulative VAT declaration, which is composed of a first accounting component and an appendix that recapitulates a sort of balance of overheads. Another big difference is that in Luxembourg there is still no Minimum Normalized Chart of Accounts. There is therefore no "Central de Balance" (Balance centre), so we use the Belgian accounting system, in the hope that they do not impose a French style system one day. In terms of banking relationships, there is still no standardized structured communication as in Belgium, and we are in a transitional period between the old "multiline" and the new (note: developed by Isabel).
Did you find your Luxembourg specifics in Mercator?
M.V: Yes, and developments in this sense are still ongoing, following the changes I just mentioned. One of the features in the spotlight is, without doubt, the issue of an annual VAT declaration.
Did the data transfer from Expert/M go without a hitch?
M.V: This type of transfer is always complicated and the source of insomnia. We hesitated for a long time between pure and simple re-working and data retrieval. We chose retrieval by Mercator. Segma (Mercator official distributor) was able to resolve all the problems that arose and everything went well. We were able to recover our clients' accounting histories from 2003 to 2004.
Could we get an idea of the number of accounts dossiers you manage?
M.V: We manage around 75 accounts dossiers We are now at the point of starting a second phase, in which our clients will use Mercator themselves. Their documents can be sent to us by e-mail without any new data entry, while, the client and ourselves can continue working on the file.
Are you satisfied to have chosen Mercator?
M.V: Yes, changing software is never an easy thing for a fiduciary. Besides data transfer from the old software, there is also training on a new interface and the doubts concerning the quality of the legal documents it creates. Ultimately, everything went well with Mercator, especially printing monthly and quarterly VAT declaration forms, which were correct from the debut. Above all, when we bought Mercator, we got software that evolves continuously with our needs. Today, for example, our dealer, Segma, came to install a module for editing the overhead annex, in the form of a table corresponding to fiscal documents.
Which Mercator modules do you use?
M.V: We use fixed assets, banking management and of course accounting. We are discussing proposals for analytics with our clients but there is still a little resistance.
What criteria influenced your choice of Mercator?
M.V: Here in Luxembourg, the choice is limited. There are a number of little local applications but no real performing solution. Mercator offers us an adaptive structure for our needs, and equally a local dealer for service and solving any problems. What I like most about Mercator is being able to make corrections at any time, without having to make each OD, for example, when one sees an anomaly when filing the VAT.