[Digital Start] Slavonian Woman Started Creating the Largest Accounting Service in Europe Out of Spite

The owners and directors of the Osijek accounting service D-Invoice Lauri Gergelj told her a sentence that changed everything. They told her, namely, that she was not a person for a manager. This awakened a spite in her that, as she claims, often guides her through life. During the pandemic years, she entered an entrepreneurial project, took over the company from her ex-husband, and began to realize her ambitious business plan.

– When I started entrepreneurship again, I knew exactly what I wanted, what awaited me, and I knew exactly what I did not want. I want to create the largest European accounting service where every worker has a salary appropriate for a European citizen. I knew that many hard years awaited me with overtime hours and without annual leave. I also knew that I did not want to wait for the first of the month without money in the account for the salaries that my workers receive on the first working day of the month – says Gergelj, who has five permanent employees, one regular external collaborator, and two students.

Her plan to break into the top of Europe has already begun. In order to become the largest accounting service in the EU, the Osijek company is connecting with accounting services from neighboring countries and negotiating cooperation with them. D-Invoice has opened offices in Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Slovakia, and since February also in Romania. This year, they plan to open offices in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands, and perhaps in another country along the way. Gergelj explains that the market is ‘hungry’ for accountants who speak at least one other European language besides English, and their main vision is to facilitate clients’ entry into foreign EU markets and to help foreign clients from the EU enter the Croatian market.

– One of our missions is to help women in rural areas gain knowledge and experience in accounting through our system, and to enable them to earn additional income through accounting jobs and thus improve their quality of life. This mission is extremely important and dear to us because we help people, which makes us happy. Webinars are an extremely powerful tool for sharing knowledge, and we use them for education aimed at young people and women in rural areas – says the owner of the accounting service, which, in addition to accounting and bookkeeping services, also deals with consulting and management. They currently have 86 active clients, and new ones come to them month by month. They have the most large clients in Hungary, but the number of clients in Germany and Slovakia is also growing. Although they plan to grow at a rate of at least ten percent annually in the future, this year they intend to exceed last year’s revenues by 30 percent and educate and prepare at least 20 new women for work.

– I want to have an open office in every EU country that will facilitate the conquest of foreign markets for Croatian clients, and not, as is currently the practice, facilitate foreign clients’ entry into the Croatian market. For D-Invoice, I want it to be an independent company in the next five years and to be able to operate without me. You know, I have a hundred ideas and I desperately want to realize one of my production projects. Here I am in Slavonia, the idea is great, and until then I am looking for an investor – energetic Gergelj says, who regrets that she does not have more capital and time to realize all her ideas, but she says that maybe one day she will gather them and publish them in a book ‘A Hundred Ideas of an Accountant’. She has already realized a lot, the accounting service is not her first entrepreneurial venture, nor her career turnaround.

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Laura Gergelj

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She graduated from the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin as a computer scientist and began her career teaching computer science at the Economic School in Požega. She then opened the company Dom Računala, where she worked as a programmer, accountant, director, and everything else that was needed, as is usually the case. She completed a course for independent accountants and project managers and quickly advanced in that segment working for some of the largest Croatian companies and financial institutions. Her entrepreneurial efforts have also been recognized by the professional community gathered in the International Forum Perspective, which awarded her the ‘Creators for Centuries’ award last year for her contribution to the development of entrepreneurship in Central and Southeast Europe.

The entrepreneur from Slavonia, Laura Gergelj, has been a long-time reader of Lider, and at the beginning of the year, she subscribed to the digital edition of the business weekly Lider using the benefits of the new Digital Start package intended for newly established companies. – I have always answered the question: ‘Which newspapers do you read?’ with: ‘Lider’. The only newspaper in which I find texts that interest me, in which there are topics I love to discuss and think about. For professional reasons, I am a subscriber to the RRiF magazine, which I read because I have to, and in which those topics that are important for my bread are processed from a professional standpoint. From the perspective of an entrepreneur, a leader, it is very important to know what the latest events in the entrepreneurial world are, what trends are on the global and European scene, and what challenges the East brings us, and what the West brings us, because do not forget, we are lagging behind them. It is nice to know in which direction to lag behind. I believe that Lider is the only magazine that covers existentially key topics for all entrepreneurs, not just newly established ones. I recommend Lider to young leaders who are inexperienced but flexible because it opens a completely different world, a world of businessmen that is beautiful – without politics, without gossip, unlike what we read in other newspapers and watch on television. Every entrepreneur should read Lider – says Gergelj.

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