During my training at a shipping company, I still prepared payrolls manually.
By hand, on paper, with a desk calculator and payroll tax tables. Punch cards were the basis for merchandise management, and microfiches were my first encounter with digitization. In the course of my further professional life in the shipping business, construction industry, retail trade, and church administration, I always worked in areas that had something to do with numbers: bookkeeping, payroll, travel expense reports, and cash administrations. Since July 2020, I have been working at netzstrategen as a numbers strategist in the area of finance and accounting.
I can’t say exactly when or how computers, the internet, email and social media crept into my personal and professional life, but now it’s just part of it. You google recipes, search for train connections, and book tickets on the spot. Others can reach you anytime, anywhere via messenger services. In my field, though, there are some things that haven’t changed. Debit to credit and no money without a receipt, but these receipts are usually no longer printed on paper today. In our (almost) paperless accounting department, many work processes are organized in a purely digital way. We save paper, toner, folders, and space. The digital availability of data and documents makes it possible to work from home without any problems. No more lugging around binders with documents. Access to central data repositories, text recognition to find documents, collaborative work on documents even though we may be many miles apart. I really enjoy being able to work like this at netzstrategen.
Edel explains what she finds so exciting about finance and accounting and why she is so enthusiastic about digitalisation.
As the Administration team, we have an overview of everything that happens around the project work. We receive all invoices, contracts, etc. from the other teams, which we then take care of.