Admittedly Remko has never worked with other tax consultants: “NOA’s partnership with Koppel has come about by virtue of the fact that Koppel’s Bas Hollenberg and I were already acquainted, which at the time enabled us to get off to a trusty start.” It is precisely this which Koppel Services has more than lived up to over the years: “Koppel has been our regular financial and tax consultant right from the word go. They have got to know the ins and outs of our business over the past 17 years, having celebrated with us when we were up and commiserated when we were down and having gained first-hand experience of how we have grown.” Over the years Koppel has consistently taken the best possible care of the accounts and of filing the tax returns, which of course has been exactly what NOA had hired it to do. “The checks performed by our external auditors have never yielded any surprises, which is how I have always known for sure that Koppel had done a proper job.”

Koppel’s familiarity with Remko’s business puts it in a position to provide customised fiscal advice, which in turn has enabled NOA to save thousands of euros: “Having established that we had overpaid our national insurance contributions, Bas saw to it that we received a rebate of some six thousand euros from the tax man. Making the best possible use of opportunities whenever these present themselves, that is exactly what Koppel does for us.”

NOA – like any other business – found itself having quite a lot of IT ground to cover as opportunities continued to expand. It is not always easy to make the right choices amid such turbulence, and this has been one of the areas in which Koppel has proved invaluable: “They recommended that we start using Exact Synergy to document our processes. It is this software which has enabled us both to document and enhance our quality.” Virtually all of NOA’s business operations – work flow, work processes, client base, human resources, time sheets and work-related documents – are recorded using Synergy, and this includes the financial records: “We have access to our financials wherever we wish owing to Synergy being a web-based programme.”

There are quite a few additional applications that can be bolted on to Synergy, and Koppel can be relied upon to suggest potentially promising options to NOA as these become avail­able, “such as the ‘financial console’, which can be called up when using the browser to pro­vide us in one fell swoop with a proper insight into our financial status”.

Koppel also comes up with proposals aimed at improving the work process set-up, for example when they noticed that clients were frequently late settling up NOA’s invoices owing, as it turned out, to the client’s order number not being included in the invoice. “This translated into a lot of extra work, not just for Koppel, but also for us.” Koppel suggested that the procedures be expanded to include the retrieval of the client’s order number as well as the inclusion thereof in all future invoices. “They could have gone for extra billable hours and extra turnover, but what did instead, and have consistently done, is use this kind of information to our advantage.”

It is precisely this attitude by which Remko sets such great store: “Thinking not just in terms of what is commercially feasible, but also in what would benefit the client.” This is also reflected in the sponsorship of charities and the informal contacts between the two organisations: “Having known one another forever, Bas and I in our mutual dealings could not possibly stand on ceremony, but the contacts with the other staff at Koppel are as informal, and that is the sort of setting which makes me feel at ease.”

All in all Koppel has most certainly succeeded in setting itself apart from other tax consultants where Remko is concerned: “It is the sincerity of their investment in the personal aspects of the business association which has made all the difference, in that this has enabled them to provide us with a great deal of invaluable recommendations in areas besides that of finance, in addition to which they have got to know us so well as to make it really difficult for us to take our custom elsewhere – assuming we’d even want to, that is!” It is a formidable leading edge which Koppel commands where its familiarity with NOA is concerned, and one “which enables them like no-one else to provide us with tailor-made advice”.