It was in the summer of 2012 that Hans Ober first coined the idea of creating an on-line platform for the purchase and sale of e-tickets: “There was no easy and reliable way at the time of buying and selling second-hand admission tickets, as I myself had experienced more than once.” He put his outline ideas to two prospective business partners he had sought out – both of whom had already earned their spurs as web site designers – and the newly formed triumvirate launched TicketSwap before the year was out.

The fledgling company started out with a different accounting consultant, mostly for tax advice. “It’s not that we didn’t get on,” remembers Hans Ober, “but when practical issues started cropping up, we realised that they fell short in the technological affinity department and simply did not have enough staff on hand to process the ever-growing number of bookings.” As every single transaction on the platform entails certain administrative steps to be taken and the number of purchase and sale transactions soon ballooned, it wasn’t long until the manual entry of the myriad of bookings had reached unacceptably time-consuming levels.

Hans’ partners had had dealings with Koppel Services for some considerable time in connection with their other business and introduced Hans to Nico Koppel. The latter’s keen interest in start-ups was the first thing Hans noticed: “Not only did he hint at his affinity with start-ups and IT, but one of his first observations was how much time we’d be able to save by having transactions automatically converted to bookings.” This clinched the decision to switch to Koppel, under whose supervision a fully automated system was created for TicketSwap – in close harmony to Koppel’s own system – to handle the administrative processing of the steadily expanding transaction flow.

A further challenge presented itself in 2015, when changes were implemented at EU level to the value-added tax regime for Internet-based services and Koppel once more proved invaluable. The new rules made it compulsory for businesses to settle up their value-added tax with the tax authorities in the countries of residence of their customers rather than their own country of establishment, as they had done before. The MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop) scheme was introduced at the same time, to obviate the need for businesses to register in every single EU Member State to which they were supplying their services by allowing them to report the value-added tax they had charged on their digital services in just the one EU country. Explains Hans: “By this time we had successfully taken our operations to several other EU countries. Thanks to Koppel our system had a unique option bolted on to it which has enabled it to select the applicable value-added tax rate by having the customer disclose his or her country of residence. A single Dutch value-added tax return and one for all other EU Member States now suffices. Just imagine how much time this is saving us!”

Its partnership with Koppel has continued to date to be of crucial importance to TicketSwap: “We are in the process of reforming our private limited liability company set-up and consider ourselves fortunate in having Koppel to rely on for support and advice. They know us well enough to allow us to give them free reign. It is the professionals at Koppel who talk to our lawyers, crunch the numbers for the various options and come back to us with a proposal.”

“I consider Koppel’s comprehensive service range as a major advantage,” says Hans Ober. “We have outsourced our payroll accounting to them as well, and they handle the accounts of our personal holding companies. It’s with complete confidence that we leave all our financial matters to them – that’s how up to speed on our business they are. In fact, it’s almost as if Koppel is a TicketSwap business unit,” he chuckles.

Hans is currently in the process of buying his own home, and here too Koppel is lending a hand: “Nico is thoroughly aware of where we are financially, which puts him in the perfect position to provide each of us with financial advice on a personal level. It’s a great relief to be able to dispense with compiling the business figures all over again.”

Hans regards Koppel’s IT proficiency and empathy with the IT industry as “absolutely vital” to his business. He has warmly recommended Koppel to quite a few of the fellow on-line business owners with whom he maintains frequent contact, he says: “There’s no need for us time and again to tell Koppel what’s what. They simply ‘get’ us and know exactly what it is we need.”