Aestus

Aestus started with the idea of digitalising—i.e., automating—accounting, while also offering advisory support to companies in fundraising, preparing EU projects, providing investment support, and assisting with business start-ups. Aestus’s comparative advantage is that it has developed its own software for accounting automation as well as for other business processes. This enables fast and low-cost adaptation to new requirements—whether regulatory or customer-driven—and opens a path toward full automation of business processes, now further accelerated by AI.

Their new release, Parra, primarily addresses requirements arising from the new Croatian regulatory framework “Fiskalizacija 2.0.” This framework requires business entities to issue e-invoices mandatorily for all entrepreneurs in the VAT system, as well as to be able to receive e-invoices for those who are not in the VAT system. Parra enables e-invoice issuance, financial data review, tracking of incoming and outgoing invoices, a digital document archive, employee records and payroll calculation, travel orders, cash-flow monitoring, a fixed-assets register, etc. By offering a free—or at least affordable—version of Parra, the goal is to build a large user base, primarily among micro and small entrepreneurs, who could later be offered service-based solutions (the aforementioned automated accounting) which are, in any case, technologically, functionally, and price-wise far ahead of the competition.

This functional and digital gap between Aestus and its 'peers' combined with talent, hard work and pure wit withing the Aestus team, was a value proposition that has easily grabbed our attention. Given Aestus’s strong position to take a leading role in Croatia’s SME segment (and hopefully beyond), we’ve also asked them to issue an invoice, an e-receipt to SQ Capital.

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