After leaving the Canadian Armed Forces<\/a>, Manuel started a B.A. in translation<\/a> at Universit\u00e9 Laval with the goal of taking over from his father, who was a self-employed translator. One thing led to another and he ended up opening his own translation firm.<\/p>\r\n \u201cI felt fairly comfortable with numbers,\u201d he said. \u201cI started an entrepreneurial profile at university and I also took an accounting course.\u201d<\/p>\r\n In the initial years of his firm, which only had a handful of translators, Manuel wanted to save money by taking care of the accounting for his business. However, he would have hired an accountant earlier if he had known how much he would benefit from it. <\/p>\r\n\r\n Since he started working with an accountant, Manuel realizes that he overestimated his abilities and that, ironically, the best way to save would have been to add an expense to his budget.<\/p>\r\n \u201cThere is a difference between being good in accounting and being a professional accountant,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I handled my own accounting, I didn\u2019t necessarily think of following up on my margins and ratios. I would follow up on my financial statements, but I didn\u2019t get an accurate picture of my situation.\u201d<\/p>\r\n According to Manuel, entrepreneurs in the startup phase are often absorbed by daily challenges and the short term, whereas it\u2019s easier for an accountant to see an overall picture of the business\u2019s finances and suggest long-term solutions. It\u2019s not just a question of specialized knowledge, he explains, but also a question of work environment.<\/p>\r\n However, specialized knowledge also plays an important role.<\/p>\r\n\r\n For example, there are many benefits to doing business with a tax accountant<\/a> for your business\u2019s income taxes. In addition to helping make better business decisions, the tax accountant can help you choose the right tools to prepare your income tax return.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \u201cThe translation field is a little like that,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\r\n \u201cA company can decide to have its texts translated by a bilingual employee in order to save money. But this decision is often motivated by a lack of knowledge of the subtleties of a language and the consequences that amateur translations could have. The same applies to accounting: If you aren\u2019t a professional, you can\u2019t know all of the subtleties of taxes and their consequences. In other words, when you don\u2019t consult a professional, it\u2019s often because you don\u2019t know that you are unaware, and this type of dual unawareness often leads to downstream costs.\u201d<\/p>\r\n How many advertising campaigns have failed due to a poor translation? Similarly, how many businesses have not exploited the full potential of their revenues by not outsourcing their accounting to a professional? Since he turned to Hamel Comptable<\/a> , a member of the Ordre des CPA<\/a>, Manuel believes that he avoids this type of downstream cost.<\/p>\r\n\r\n When Manuel incorporated his business, he did not perform a rollover since he believed that it wasn\u2019t worth it with his few computers and chairs. However, by working with a professional, he learned that his possessions were not just material.<\/p>\r\n \u201cI never thought that my translation memories could be considered assets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\r\n A translation memory<\/a> is a computer tool used by professional translators to save terms and segments of texts that have already been translated. Translators save time for themselves and their colleagues by not having to perform searches.<\/p>\r\n \u201cOne of Sematos\u2019 translation memories contains approximately 750,000 entries, or more than seven million words. It\u2019s hard to evaluate, but if this translation memory allows me to save an average of one cent per word, it\u2019s worth a significant percentage of my revenues.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n How do you add a translation memory to the company\u2019s value without it becoming a taxable benefit? To be certain, Manuel had to consult a lawyer. Accounting and law are very close disciplines, he says. That\u2019s why he believes that a lawyer should be consulted fairly early in the business startup process.<\/p>\r\n \u201cYou can create a business with the snap of your fingers. You go to the Enterprise Register, provide your information, pay the fee and it\u2019s done: Your company is created from a government standpoint. However, the legal aspect is more complicated. For example, nobody will tell you that you must make a minute book<\/a>. A lawyer will tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\r\n Although he didn\u2019t succeed his father as a self-employed translator, today Manuel is at the head of a translation firm that has about 15 translators. He recently started a second business, Premier Plan Photobooth, to which he can apply the lessons that he learned from his first entrepreneurial adventure, namely hiring an accountant.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Manuel Fresnais, president of the translation firm Sematos, even the most confident entrepreneurs should work with a professional ...","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,121,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounting","category-blog","category-management-tips"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5122"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24479,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions\/24479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acomba.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It pays to pay an accountant<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Discovering new assets<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads-svn\/blog\/quand-engager-un-comptable-pour-votre-entreprise\/homme-femme.png\")
<\/p>\r\n\r\nThe lawyer: the professional you should not forget<\/h3>\r\n\r\n