Charmel Flemming is the founder and CEO of FTwelve, a bookkeeping and accounting services company offering small and medium businesses administrative and accounting support using cloud technologies. She is also a non-executive director who serves on several board positions to bring an independent perspective to decision-making and function as a “critical friend” while acting in the best interests of the company’s stakeholders. Her current board positions include DRDGold Limited, MixTelematics Limited, Acorn Agri & Food Limited and Afrikaanse Taal- En Kultuurvereniging NPO (ATKV). In addition to her roles on the board, she is also active on various committees and sub-committees.
Charmel is a CA(SA), qualified in March 2009 after completing her articles with KPMG in Bloemfontein. Until the middle of her matric year at school, she was indecisive about her career choice, but it all fell into place once the accounting bug bit. She reminisces on her varsity days which felt like a breeze as she thoroughly immersed herself in the world of accounting and finance – a subject that fits her like a second skin.
After years in the corporate sector and longing for a new challenge, Charmel started recognising the exciting opportunities that technology advancements were opening up in the accounting field. As the daughter of an entrepreneur, she felt in tune with the challenges small and medium businesses faced and was confident that she could provide the support they needed. With the emergence of cloud accounting technologies, the face of accounting was changing, and she wanted to be a part of that movement.
Driven by the desire to provide small and medium businesses with the necessary accounting tools to grow their business to the next level, Charmel founded F Twelve. It is an outsourced cloud-based accounting company committed to solving many small and medium business owners’ challenges. She is propelled by her commitment to supporting SMMEs’ growth and contribution to the economy. F Twelve’s use of innovative cloud-based accounting technologies turned the traditional concept of accounting on its head. With the onset of the pandemic, the world has embraced this once-foreign concept as part of the new normal.
In business, it is essential to regularly reflect and review your efforts and progress to fulfil your strategic vision and plan optimally. Charmel highlights how the first three months in business differ from the first three years and how the lessons along the way have moulded and dictated the direction of F Twelve. F Twelve started its humble beginnings with two micro-enterprises with an average turnover of R100 000 to now, four years later, and servicing clients whose turnovers range between R100 000 and up to 20M. Charmel credits this growth to her vision of taking a strategic, holistic and long-term approach to servicing clients instead of ad-hoc services that may provide a solution in the short-term but no support and relationship-building in the long term.
Being only too grateful in the early days for clients who put bread on the table, Charmel soon realised that to grow F Twelve efficiently and effectively, she needed to recognise and understand three things.
- Not every client is your client. Understanding your client’s needs and streamlining your offering can help you gear your business to operate the way your strategic vision intended. Ensure that you find the right fit both for what the client needs and what you supply as a service provider so that there are any gaps or misunderstandings in what you do and how you do it.
- As a business owner, you can’t do it all at once. Whilst there is a tendency in our startup phase to want to take care of everything and do everything on your own, as a business owner, it stands you in good stead in the long run if you can stick to what you excel in. If possible, hand over to either internal resources or outsource areas you are not effective.
- Nor can you do it all alone. Collaborate! Charmel believes that collaboration is the key to driving progress and growth within small and medium businesses. F Twelve embodies this philosophy by collaborating with its clients, staff and other companies where the opportunity presents itself. You rarely find innovation in silos. Charmel noted how newer accounting firms collaborate or partner when required. This notion of collaboration over competition helps service clients better and improves skillshare and knowledge transfer. If you have staff, she believes that you should strive to improve their skills and education to benefit your business in the long term.
Charmel is robust in roles that require ‘big-picture’ thinking. She enjoys working in an entrepreneurial environment and seeks opportunities to leverage her technical competence and entrepreneurial inclination. F Twelve uses innovative cloud-based accounting technologies to provide real-time and relevant information. As a SAICA registered firm, they provide quality outsourced accounting services to their clients. She draws from her experience in the corporate and big business sector by taking an integrated, high-level, holistic view of business, finance and accounting and applying that same thinking into the small business environment. With this, she brings the highest level of professionalism and advisory services and gears them for growth at any stage of their business.
Within her last four years as an entrepreneur, Charmel is most proud of her highlights and achievements, including being selected as one of twenty-five women-owned businesses to participate in the Proctor & Gamble South Africa Business Development Program for 2020. This collaboration between P&G and WEConnect International aimed to help these entrepreneurs revisit their business strategies geared to success in demanding business environments. Another noteworthy achievement was attaining Xero Silver Partner status. Being a Xero certified advisor and reaching Silver Partner status allows her to access valuable knowledge and the most innovative technology in the market to serve her clients better.
Charmel expresses that improving your knowledge and skills advances your career and benefits those you serve. The best example of this is often her intervention at the right time to assist clients facing challenging business obstacles. A recent recount is a client who faced liquidation. Charmel’s holistic approach allowed them to enter into a debt arrangement to consolidate and pay off their outstanding debt, leading to recovery and improved cash flow management. Financial statements and management accounts are a way of knowing your business’s financial standpoint that helps you plan better, forecast, budget, take advantage of funding opportunities, and even plan for growth. Charmel emphasises that sound accounting practices have helped her clients achieve tax compliance, and through this, they can open numerous procurement opportunities.
Besides the obvious benefits such as increased efficiency of systems, products and services, technology allows accountants to automate mundane and repetitive tasks and focus on tasks that add to clients’ needs. File and data safety and privacy are major concerns when it comes to storing their valuable information in the cloud – yet the cloud is possibly one of the safer & more convenient means of saving your data. Embracing cloud technologies allows the client benefits such as access to their data and information from any device, at any time, data protection through encryption and passwords, and space-and-cost saving through off-site storage with no physical servers needed from the user.
As a young CA(SA), you need to understand what you are passionate about and important to you. It is easier to build a reputable personal brand that aligns with you. Social media is the preferred communication and networking tool of the decade, so ensure you invest time and use it effectively. Invest in good, professional photos and sound copywriting. Select those platforms you are comfortable with and ensure your content aligns with the story you want to communicate to the world. It is crucial to build and maintain relationships as networking allows you to meet prospective clients, partners, and mentors. Besides developing and improving your skill set, networking gives you access to the resources necessary to grow your career.
Integrity is critical in Charmel’s path as a CA(SA) and non-executive director. She emphasises how it speaks of your character when no one is watching and the need for it to be an inherent moral compass rather than a box-ticking exercise. A part of practising integrity in the finance and accounting field is also being aware of potential challenges, failures and outdated practices and empowering oneself with the skills, awareness and competencies to navigate these integrity demands. In any career, there are many different and new challenges – this is why CPD is important as a lifelong commitment to ensuring that you maintain and enhance your abilities. CPD can take any form and should encompass various forms of activity from which you learn and develop. Charmel feels that young CA(SA) professionals should see CPD as more than just a task that needs to be completed but embrace it to stay abreast of current affairs and remain relevant in the industry. You not only retain your qualification but also continue to add the highest level of value to your clients, career and/or employer.
When Charmel embarked on her journey to become a CA(SA), she didn’t realise all the doors and opportunities that would open for her. She believes that because of the exposure to various aspects within different industries and even the communities that CAs(SA) operate in, a CA(SA) has a very holistic perspective and holds a unique position that should be used to everyone’s benefit – that is the key to being a #DifferenceMaker.
Social media links:
F Twelve: https://www.linkedin.com/company/f-twelve/
Charmel Flemming:https://www.linkedin.com/in/charmel-flemming-8956965/
Charmel Flemming profile feature for SAICA #differencemakers
