A Day in My Life as an Accountant and HR in Kinshasa

My name is Zeeshan, and I’m 28 years old, working in Kinshasa, Congo, as an Accountant and HR. I handle the accounting for seven restaurants, managing everything from payments, purchases, and debtor-creditor relationships, to salaries, employee hiring, and even inventory. Interestingly, the restaurants have two menus—one Congolese and one Indian. There is a large Indian community in Congo, with many running businesses here. My boss is also Indian.

My day starts at 9 AM, and within an hour, I’m fresh and ready for the office. Since my office is in the same building as my home, I just have to sit at my desk and start work. Lately, I’ve been particularly happy because I got a new HP i7 laptop from the company, which is much faster than my old one, making work a lot more enjoyable.

I primarily work with Tally Prime, which I used to use in a cracked version. But now, I’ve been provided with a licensed version, which is significantly faster. Once I’m set up, I connect to the office Wi-Fi and access the cloud-based Tally through Remote Desktop, as all my restaurants close by midnight, and I do the next day’s entries.

The first task I handle every day is recording daily expenses, including internet and staff food costs, local purchases, and transport expenses. After that, I match these expenses with the sales entries on an article-wise basis. I repeat this for all seven restaurants, completing each task one at a time. At the end of the day, I also take care of payments, such as payments to creditors or any items purchased. I tally the cash and prepare the final reports.

Today, my boss called and asked me to write an email to Kenya Airways regarding a pending payment. I drafted a polite and professional request and sent it to their finance department, asking them to release the payment as it’s been a year since the due date.

One more thing is that today, I had an interesting conversation with a customer who, by profession, is a Chartered Accountant and now works with an I engineering company. During our conversation, he asked me that if we handle air ticketing and transportation services. I confirmed that we did, and that’s when he made an intriguing offer. He suggested that I speak with my boss and ask him to get in touch with him, as they’re looking to collaborate.

He shared that his company has partnerships with many travel agencies, but not with ours yet. They are interested in working with us and mentioned that they are currently generating around $30,000 in business from their existing travel agency partnerships. This was a great opportunity to expand our business.

I made sure to save the phone number of the Chartered Accountant in my contacts for future reference. I’m excited to see where this leads and if we can strike a deal with their company.

Pre order of gas cylinder for restaurant

I recently placed an order for 10 gas cylinders, but only 5 were delivered today, with the remaining 5 set to arrive the next day. In Congo, there’s a major gas cylinder company named Sogaz, which is well-known here. Many people from around the world come to Congo to do business, and because gas cylinders are a necessity, they often enter into contracts with Sogaz.

If you know someone who is planning to start a business or a startup and isn’t familiar with how things work here, you can guide them after reading this blog. Sogaz could be a reliable option for anyone in need of gas cylinders for their operations. This could be valuable information for anyone looking to set up a business in Congo.

That’s all for today’s blog. I’ll keep sharing more about my daily life, hoping to keep you motivated, no matter where you work or what you do. Every job has its challenges, but with consistency and effort, we can keep moving forward.