Sage celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month

Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to commemorate the diverse stories and cultural contributions of the Hispanic and Latino community. According to the U.S. census, the Hispanic population as of 2019 is 60.9 million, making it the nation’s largest ethnic minority.

At Sage, we believe diversity drives innovation and collaboration, where we can highlight our employees’ collective skills, passion, and values.

This part of our culture plays a vital role in fueling our customer obsession. After all, our customers are diverse, so it makes sense we internally represent the businesses we serve.

We recently chatted with senior manager of accountant solutions, Rafael Casas and Spanish accounts manager at AutoEntry, Brian Fraire about their expertise with Latino accounting professionals and the meaningful ways they are helping the community gain more representation.

Here is what they had to say:

Can you describe your roles at Sage and AutoEntry and your expertise with the Latino community?

Brian Fraire: I am a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, as well as the son of an immigrant mother who ran her own company for many years in California. My title at AutoEntry is Spanish accounts manager.

Rafael Casas: I help accountants and bookkeepers identify and implement opportunities to grow their businesses with Sage’s comprehensive accounting solutions, cloud-based technologies, ecosystem, and University programs. I am an American citizen—however, my mother was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico and my father’s family is from Spain.

Can you highlight ways Sage and AutoEntry support the Latino community?

Rafael Casas: Sage is the only cloud product for accountants and small businesses that has a Spanish translation, which is such a huge benefit for the Latinx community to quickly start serving their clients and businesses.

Brian Fraire: My proudest moment working and serving the Latino Community as an AutoEntry employee was when we were able to “OCR” or extract and convert data from documents in Spanish. This is huge to automating the data entry flow of our Spanish clientele. We are the only software to do so in the US.

How can someone who is looking to start their own accounting or bookkeeping firm get the most out of Sage?

Brian Fraire: Anyone looking to start an accounting or bookkeeping firm is probably the most ideal user of data automation technology, like AutoEntry+Sage, because they are probably limited on time and resources. Using AutoEntry can give you the time to focus on the client instead of data entry.

Rafael Casas:  AutoEntry is very important piece of software for starting a firm that is cloud based and helps you build a strong foundation to grow your firm and help your clients more.

What do you think is the biggest issue facing Latino tax preparers, accountants, and bookkeepers?

Brian Fraire: The biggest issue we in the Latin accounting community face is the lack of knowledge and representation. I think it is important that we educate ourselves about “what” exactly is out there to help us but more importantly ‘how’.  When this information comes from one of our own it holds more significance.

Rafael Casas: Yes, to add to that, I think that there is so much information coming at the comunidad that it can be overwhelming. Another issue is that the Latinx community has not always been recognized in a positive way but now we see that is turning and it is a beautiful thing!

Can you tell us more about your upcoming Facebook Live with Latinx Training Centers?

Rafael Casas: We are partnering with Latinx Training Centers on a virtual Facebook Live titled Creciendo su Negocio de Contabilidad/Growing your Bookkeeping Practice on Friday, October 9 at 3 p.m. We hope to provide valuable information to those looking to start and grow their own practice, which tools can efficiently help them in this effort.

Brian Fraire: As far as AutoEntry goes; we will cover data automation of bank statements, invoices, receipts, and expenses.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Brian Fraire: Just that I am humbly proud to be serving our customers and assisting in anyway possible in English and in Spanish.

Rafael Casas: Sage and Autoentry are proud of la comunidad and are here to support any way we can! We appreciate our customers and their passion and commitment to serving small businesses.