The shortage of available finance professionals in the Netherlands has provided us the opportunity to engage with The Finance Generation by nearshoring our services to our remote Belgrade audit teams.

We started hiring Serbian colleagues in Belgrade from September 2022. It has since grown into a team of ten team members with roles ranging from starting assistant to senior manager. This growth has been relatively fast however the expertise and drive of the audit professionals and our onboarding process have made it to a great success. Our focus was to build a full team and by assembling a team with different levels of expertise. A number of team members have now been promoted due to personal development. It’s great to see that this way of working results in success. We are proud of the achievements of our team in Belgrade.

Our colleagues from Serbia have a strong work ethic and are eager to incorporate knowledge about the Dutch laws and regulations and our clients. They have a great desire to deliver quality and their documentation skills are outstanding. By guiding them properly and explaining the Dutch culture and quality standards, we have experienced that it significantly contributes to our audit efficiency, effectiveness and audit fun. Additionally, hiring colleagues in Serbia creates capacity, allowing our office to serve more clients and maintain our work-life balance for all team members.

In principle our colleagues from Serbia are fully integrated in our audit teams and depending on the type of client we have decided the leverage between Dutch and Serbian team members. We have created the following split internally (i) International clients with a fully staffed Serbian team, (ii) audit clients with a 50/50 audit team, and (iii) Dutch audit teams. The level of English language proficiency among our Serbian colleagues is high. Our team members are highly educated professionals who, like in the Dutch education system, receive education in English. The key of successful audit teams is to clearly communicate expectations in the early stages of the audit. As methodologies and audit procedures are documented and communicated in English, their autonomy and ownership grow over time. The team we currently have in Serbia is a high-quality team that is an integral part of our office.

The largest challenge of integrating our Serbian team members was related to firstly Dutch audit files and secondly team communication. The first challenge was to translate our audit files to English, and this was not as hard as we first anticipated. The new Microsoft word and Excel translate software combined with the use of AI tools resulted in a standardized easy process. The second challenge was resolved by using MS Teams as our communication platform.

This largely depends on individual personalities, but generally, our Serbian colleagues find it enjoyable and enriching to serve our Dutch clients in an international environment. The colleagues we have hired consciously choose to work at The Finance Generation to perform audits of Western European companies by working for a Dutch accounting firm. The possibilities to travel to the Netherlands and empower their knowledge of international companies is a big advantage.

The partner in charge of our engagement is responsible for the quality of the work performed in the audit files. We fully integrate the Serbian team members in our audit process and provide them with all the knowledge they need about the client and our Dutch specifics items by training on the job. We use English-language standardized work programs in which data analyses are largely integrated. In addition, The Finance Generation provides training and in-depth knowledge about the Dutch Culture and laws and regulations. Our Serbian team members have a strong foundation because they all are studying to finish their ACCA license, which means they are trained in accordance to ISA standards. The Dutch NV COS is similar to the ISA standards.

We can scale our business with the help and support of The Finance Generation and are able to continuously serve our Dutch clients with our high-quality audit services without having to worry about Serbian labor legislation, housing and the first layer of the hiring process. It is also nice to have an international working environment and of course, Belgrade is a beautiful city to visit now and then!