Automation nation: Ava, the digital accountant of 2024
To look into a specific aspect of accounting automation, we’re going to be focusing on a typical morning for Ava, a chartered accountant running her own small firm in mid-2024.
Ava started the firm during the Covid lockdowns of 2021 after six years working in corporate tax for a Big Four firm. After three years as a sole practitioner largely catering for self-employed and sole traders, Ava has recently experienced a spike in client numbers and has recently taken on help to meet this growing demand.
On the morning in question, Ava logs in to find that three pieces of client correspondence have arrived while she’s been offline. One self-employed client is applying for a loan and needs several supporting documents, another has a query about the timeline for submitting tax documentation, and a third is from a friend she acts for. The friend is worried about her cashflow situation and has asked for a chat about it.
A counterpart of Ava’s operating in the mid-2000s may well have had a similar start to the day and spent the morning replying to the emails, locating and scanning the documents and going back and forth via email to book the meeting.
However, it’s 2024, and waiting in Ava’s draft folder when she logs in are three replies to the clients’ queries for her consideration.
The first reply is a polite, professional response with all the requested documentation attached, including the client’s latest SA302 and the last three months’ bank statements.
The second answers the client’s question about the tax timeline, providing a detailed breakdown of what documentation is due and by when.
The third reply is written in a less formal, reassuring tone and contains a meeting booking for the afternoon, which the friend has already accepted. A slide deck for the meeting has already been prepared, containing several graphs of key business performance indicators and a number of bullet-pointed suggestions for how the client could boost the bottom line.
Well connected
As you may have guessed already, all three replies have been almost instantaneously prepared using a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool provided by Ava’s practice management software. This is linked to her email solution, financial management system, tax software and calendar tool via application programming interface (API) connections, allowing the tool specifically pre-defined access to the information needed to answer basic client queries.
Rather than spend the morning writing replies, locating and scanning documentation and wrangling calendar invitations – or hiring a junior member of staff to do so – Ava can use the morning to focus on the job she has been trained to do. She can examine the draft emails, and using her subject matter expertise and knowledge of the client’s personality and business model, Ava can add detail and correct any errors before pushing send on the emails and moving on to her next task.
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Shift in mindset
As with any new generation of tools, using this piece of software has required a shift in both the way Ava runs her firm and her mindset towards her work. While it has always been essential to check client communications, careful checking of copy and attachments has now become paramount as the tool has the habit of occasionally misunderstanding less formal language, or if a document that should be there is not, substituting another from the same client.
Despite its shortcomings, however, Ava feels that using the tool has led to improved efficiency in her practice, her role becoming deeper and more rewarding, and allowing her to develop client relationships, work on practice growth or spend more time with her family.
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Replies (13)
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This all seems highly possible and quite likely sometime fairly soon.
And so the world of work speeds up again, pushing us to work faster.
Oh, how we miss the golden days of Royal Mail post and replying at a glacial pace. Only HMRC still use that system and timescales now!
"Ava feels that using the tool has led to improved efficiency in her practice, her role becoming deeper and more rewarding, and allowing her to develop client relationships, work on practice growth or spend more time with her family."
Hmm ... that, or similar variants, are what we've been promised ever since the early 1950s (which means over 70 years of broken promises)!
It's never happened ... whether 'freedom from housework drudgery' or 'personal jetpack travel' or 'more time for strategy' or whatever carrot may motivate you.
The only thing of which you can be certain is that things continually change (not always driven by technology) ... and therefore so will your interactions with work/leisure/life, but often in ways that you will not enjoy.
In the scenario outlined within the article above ...
"Rather than spend the morning writing replies .. (Ava) can examine the draft emails, and using her subject matter expertise and knowledge of the client’s personality and business model, add detail and correct any errors before pushing send on the emails."
Two problems with that:
1. The effort still left for Ava to do is critical - and will take almost as long as if she had drafted it all herself in the first place (resulting in less need to 'add details or correct errors');
2. Ava appears to be a OMB - but if she is going to develop new talent in order to grow the business, then where will she find youngsters with the 'expertise and knowledge' (if they've all grown up with AI making choices for them)?
There are other more fundamental flaws/dangers in all AI systems (from which Ava will not be immune). For instance, an AI system will 'learn' from its own experiences (of being corrected etc) - which sounds like a good thing doesn't it?
But unless you're a multinational transworld corporation you're unlikely to have the budget to 'own' your 'knowledge base', so all that effort you put in to 'correcting it' (in line with your personal & business ethos) will be subverted by the majority thinking of others.
In short you will have to join in with everyone else's way of thinking & doing things (thereby losing any USP, let alone personality) - OR 'go off grid' by refusing to engage with AI predictive decisions.
2. Ava appears to be a OMB - but if she is going to develop new talent in order to grow the business, then where will she find youngsters with the 'expertise and knowledge' (if they've all grown up with AI making choices for them)?
This is my biggest concern with Ava's set up. We are already seeing it with trainees at the moment not understanding basic things like double entry with them solely using things like Xero for bookkeeping.
Lack of double entry understanding has been around a long time. Just think of the Sage trained bookkeepers who can only ask a VAT related question framed using the Sage VAT codes
Very interesting thoughts.
My boss said to me around 30 years ago, after I'd spent two hours in the computer room posting journals and typing up permanent text adjustment on Auditman II, that one day we'll all have a computer on out desk!! Yes, what a silly idea...... but how thinks have changed.
I really wonder whether in our lifetime "A slide deck for the meeting has already been prepared, containing several graphs of key business performance indicators and a number of bullet-pointed suggestions for how the client could boost the bottom line" will be prepared and appear in my inbox.
Will it just be a list of KPIs that are not really useful and a standard list to boost the client's bottom line. I could see my client not being impressed by all this rubbish. I think they want me, with a life time of real experience to talk to, and not computer generated rubbish.
Finding and pulling out an SA302 may be possible.... but I'd want to check what is going to be sent out! Is it worth paying for all this expensive AI IT, an office junior can do it for a few pounds!
"The first reply is a polite, professional response with all the requested documentation attached, including the client’s latest SA302 and the last three months’ bank statements"
Ava realises too late that she had accidentally uploaded a different clients bank statements to the client folder, the two clients just happen to be competitors in the same town and now client a has access to all client b's bank statements. Ava is sued and unsuccessfully tries to argue that it was the AI bots fault, her case is thrown out of court after the AI bot makes a more compelling argument that clearly shows it was all Ava's fault.
Its all very well to say that all you need to do in this situation is double check the attachments but in my experience once staff get used to automation they tend to forget all about it and assume everything just works, the problem is that it is very hard to control and once in place very difficult to unravel.
Proceed with extreme caution
Some lawyers in America relied on AI to put together a brief for them. The opposing counsel queried some of the case references cited as they could not find them. It turned out the AI had invented them.
The potential for such technology is great, but it needs a fair bit of work before it can become a major part of everyday work.
I'll be a little more receptive to generative AI when my smartphone stops mangling text that I type correctly into WhatsApp.
OK that sounds fantastic. Now the real question. What AI tools is she using and at what cost?
I am a small practice am paperless and use "AI" tools (quotation marks are because I often end up fixing AI). They are workpapers in QB, Practice management with Capium, Lots of spreadsheets for what QB and Capium do not cover.
My life is not as peaceful as Ava seems to have.
This sounds to me like a very similar dream to the one that the MTD architects had.
A great idea, and a few might try to fulfil this dream, but the detail is missing and in particular, no real thought for the human effort involved to make it all work.
Yet another dream destined to join MTD in the Failed Dreams Bin (and hopefully, will not be sent for recycling).
So that's what MTD stands for ... the Mortuary of Tax Dreams.
Now at last it makes sense (and can justly be called a success)!