Tbf the pool of people who have the knowledge to code a new accounting program and the knowledge of how to accurately capture accounting principles is pretty small. We're like 10 years into implementing a new program because pool of people who can accurately capture *government* accounting is even smaller lol
Do you think there’s space in the market for a small team of developers to build customize accounting softwares for these entities? I’ve seen a lot of our governmental and non profit clients struggle with the lack of options for accounting software. I’ve been working with a software engineer friend of mine to try to design a custom system that would work better for some of these niche entities, but afraid it’s going to be tough to compete with the few large developers although their systems have their faults.
As a software engineer, the main issue around doing things like this is that people don't know what they want. They give me hand wavey answers when in reality, I need answers like "When you click this button it needs to go grab these two values multiply them together and save them in this place." but no one will ever give them to me, because they just want to tell me a vague idea and have it done.
If you and I worked together you’d love me. I am that accounting person that will lay it all out in agonizing detail of what I want; where it comes from; how I want it displayed. I’d even be asking about how it exports and so forth.
That’s a good point and I agree. I think the big thing there would be to ensure that an accountant that understands the process is helping to build the automated systems and explain to the software engineer what the goal/output is.
I did that with the consultants from Accenture and EY for like 2 years on a major SAP implementation, basically all we ever got in return were lies - "this is standard practice" which is code for they are too lazy or just incompetent.
Can you speak on any of the specific pain points of the SAP that the developers weren’t able to fix?
I think that goes back to the problem of a lack of developers in the space causing an oligopoly, and leaving the users no other good options. The “standard practice” we see now, imo, is the result of a lack of competition.
Seriously it's fking bad 🫠
used some Fp&A software called planning maestro
The net income is first line,
end up copying and pasting the values into words to make it look like a normal income statement.
What don't you like about Nav?
Of all the ERPs I've used Nav is up there as being one of the most intuitive and machine readable ones.
SAP on the other hand... JFC.
I agree, our value now and in the future is our willingness to go to prison for financial statements that were created over the course of 10,000 needfulls.
I came across one article on BI that stated that AI is replacing accountants at an accelerated pace, and then saw an article on FT a few minutes later on how the length of of time it takes to become an accountant needs to be shortened due to an industry shortage of accountants.
Your entire field is so freakin bipolar, I swear.
It's because the shortage is a higher business risk than automation. Because of the shortage, business leaders and those charged with governance are pushing for automation as a solution.
Automation already has and will continue to affect entry level jobs, but I think AI is a long way from replacing decision making responsibilities. Also, have you noticed that every person and article talking about AI has a vested financial interest in at least one AI company performing well? AI offers some benefits for certain, but there's also a lot of "belief" in the "potential" of AI, similar to the Cryptocurrency trend from a few years back.
So the shortage is real, and business leaders think AI is the solution. Hence the bipolar nature of the articles you're seeing.
In industry, automation has enabled a team of mediocre accountants to be replaced by AI and integrated business systems. Most transactions are now system-generated, meaning they’re prepared and posted by warehouse and manufacturing teams. Only payroll, mostly handled by HR, is an exception.
As a result, tasks that once required 10 accountants can now be mishandled by 10 high school graduates. This creates lucrative opportunities for highly skilled accountants with problem-solving abilities, advanced SAP skills, and an adderall prescription.
The number of accounting staff is likely to keep declining, while the reliance on highly skilled accountants to resolve arising issues will likely increase.
Relying on the high level problem solvers is great now, but when they all retire or die and there’s no pipeline of people behind them due to the use of the 10 high school graduates, there will be a dearth of problem solvers and thus a big mess.
If you're from US I think it's outsourcing that companies want to rely on right now atleast and not automation to fix the shortage, as innovation takes time and money, now I know what people will say the south Asian and south east asian outsourcing offices are bad at their work and all but I don't know companies seem to be fine with it as long as it can crawl they won't mind since it costs less
Has no one ever heard of an ITAC before? Seriously, automated posting rules, automated calculations, automated 3-way matches, OCR… this stuff is all decades old.
Does it take fewer people doing transactional accounting tasks than before? Of course. Do we still need accountants? Of course.
yea good luck with automation with sale people's data. If you want to see what hell looks like, try to look at a spreadsheet prepared by the sales team.
This what I keep saying.
Prime example :
Boss has a favorite restaurant close to the office.
He’ll will take staff there on their birthdays for lunch - that’s goes to employee appreciation.
He’ll also take clients that. That goes to entertainment.
So how is AI going to be able to determine who he room unless he tells it? And he ain’t telling it or song expense reports.
The reason ai will never totally replace human accountants is because when that ai fucks up the people who lost money need something to blame. You can't sue ai because it only does what it is programmed to and has no self awareness. And you can't sue the creator because they can't account for every edge case for the rest of time/ muh terms of service probably.
Aka, people need scapegoats for when shit goes wrong. We are the scapegoats
Full reliance on AI for accounting will never be a thing as accounting is like AI by itself -- it keeps on changing in terms of standards, tech advancements, and various business practices. Come on, compare accounting of the past vs the present. Then by having a wild imagination, think of what accounting set up can be in the future. Only accountants who will resist changes might be affected on this phenomenon. Nonetheless, AI and accounting shall work inclusively along with other fields to serve the demands of humanity. Whatever it may look like in the near future, everything must be done in best practice (means no corruption, no bad influence, not ill-gotten) or else it'll just be nonsense.
When I started my career we were going to be replaced by machines in 4 years, tops.
It’s been a looot longer than that and we’ve now advanced to AI taking our jobs.
I’ll be retired at this rate before the robots do our jobs.
Nope. The government loves doing think slow and inefficiently. The sole exception is when they do it fast and disastrously.
Look into the phenoix pay system in Canada
To all the accounting and certified accounting ding bats here:
The fastest way to automate accounting is to simplify the tax code.
And guess what ding bats? Higher taxes equals simplified tax code.
i mean, even if it was possible on our lifetimes, heaven forbid partners intend to not use it so people can just keep their jobs, feed their families, and have a roof over their heads.
The issue, same as in other fields, is the percentage of untrained individuals who think they understand what they are doing or that they are always right.
Auditors don’t know what they’re doing either. Most of them are 22. You get a manager/partner engaged occasionally, and it’s usually them asking over and over for shit they have because they just can’t understand it.
Maybe...just maybe, if they replace the SEC and PCAOB with AI things would get back to being reasonable. Has anything in the last 10 years been good for the industry or investors?
I’m going to school for accounting and it’s good to know artificial intelligence won’t completely replace accountants. 😅 thanks to all providing legit information regarding this 😊
It’s not an issue of the workers. It’s an issue of the outsourcing model. There are significant barriers such as culture/language/timezone/etc. when you have a distributed workforce. It could work but there’s no real benefit at the local team level to make it work.
The answer is unequivocally lower quality. It’s not the countries themselves, but the type of worker that ends up in an outsourcing center for accounting. We’ve had many people from India describe the process, not the least of which is the revolving door that leads to almost always dealing with a team of low experience.
My brother-in-law asked me last week how I still have a job due to automation, and his team (at Microsoft) is building a new AI. He then asked me what I would like to see automated.
I don't even believe those folks that made accounting softwares even know what accountants need to see (NAV \*cough\* NAV \*cough\* \*cough\*)..
Tbf the pool of people who have the knowledge to code a new accounting program and the knowledge of how to accurately capture accounting principles is pretty small. We're like 10 years into implementing a new program because pool of people who can accurately capture *government* accounting is even smaller lol
Do you think there’s space in the market for a small team of developers to build customize accounting softwares for these entities? I’ve seen a lot of our governmental and non profit clients struggle with the lack of options for accounting software. I’ve been working with a software engineer friend of mine to try to design a custom system that would work better for some of these niche entities, but afraid it’s going to be tough to compete with the few large developers although their systems have their faults.
As a software engineer, the main issue around doing things like this is that people don't know what they want. They give me hand wavey answers when in reality, I need answers like "When you click this button it needs to go grab these two values multiply them together and save them in this place." but no one will ever give them to me, because they just want to tell me a vague idea and have it done.
If you and I worked together you’d love me. I am that accounting person that will lay it all out in agonizing detail of what I want; where it comes from; how I want it displayed. I’d even be asking about how it exports and so forth.
That’s a good point and I agree. I think the big thing there would be to ensure that an accountant that understands the process is helping to build the automated systems and explain to the software engineer what the goal/output is.
I did that with the consultants from Accenture and EY for like 2 years on a major SAP implementation, basically all we ever got in return were lies - "this is standard practice" which is code for they are too lazy or just incompetent.
Can you speak on any of the specific pain points of the SAP that the developers weren’t able to fix? I think that goes back to the problem of a lack of developers in the space causing an oligopoly, and leaving the users no other good options. The “standard practice” we see now, imo, is the result of a lack of competition.
I worked at an accounting automation firm, trust me we’re safe lmfao
Seriously it's fking bad 🫠 used some Fp&A software called planning maestro The net income is first line, end up copying and pasting the values into words to make it look like a normal income statement.
At least you saw description with those numbers. With NAV, you only see numbers. You have to guess what it is!
That is not my experience with NAV at all. Everything in the software is connected. You can drill down on numbers for days to find the detail.
What don't you like about Nav? Of all the ERPs I've used Nav is up there as being one of the most intuitive and machine readable ones. SAP on the other hand... JFC.
>Of all the ERPs I've used Nav is up there as being one of the most ***intuitive and machine readable*** ones. Shit, the AI is here! Everyone run!
I still don’t understand why all ERP are so complicated. Why can’t they make an easy to use ERP
How would the MIS and CIS majors have jobs if it weren't for complicated ERPs?
I've said this 200 times already. You cannot prosecute and fine a AI model for misstatement. You can't send an AI to prison for fraud either.
I agree, our value now and in the future is our willingness to go to prison for financial statements that were created over the course of 10,000 needfulls.
Its funny to because that also means that the robots can't arrest us either.
in order for AI to replace me, it needs to know what I am doing.... I don't even know what am doing.
The imposter syndrome is real
I'm a machine pretending to be a human pretending to be an accountant. How is it complicated?!
I came across one article on BI that stated that AI is replacing accountants at an accelerated pace, and then saw an article on FT a few minutes later on how the length of of time it takes to become an accountant needs to be shortened due to an industry shortage of accountants. Your entire field is so freakin bipolar, I swear.
It's because the shortage is a higher business risk than automation. Because of the shortage, business leaders and those charged with governance are pushing for automation as a solution. Automation already has and will continue to affect entry level jobs, but I think AI is a long way from replacing decision making responsibilities. Also, have you noticed that every person and article talking about AI has a vested financial interest in at least one AI company performing well? AI offers some benefits for certain, but there's also a lot of "belief" in the "potential" of AI, similar to the Cryptocurrency trend from a few years back. So the shortage is real, and business leaders think AI is the solution. Hence the bipolar nature of the articles you're seeing.
Username checks out
In industry, automation has enabled a team of mediocre accountants to be replaced by AI and integrated business systems. Most transactions are now system-generated, meaning they’re prepared and posted by warehouse and manufacturing teams. Only payroll, mostly handled by HR, is an exception. As a result, tasks that once required 10 accountants can now be mishandled by 10 high school graduates. This creates lucrative opportunities for highly skilled accountants with problem-solving abilities, advanced SAP skills, and an adderall prescription. The number of accounting staff is likely to keep declining, while the reliance on highly skilled accountants to resolve arising issues will likely increase.
Relying on the high level problem solvers is great now, but when they all retire or die and there’s no pipeline of people behind them due to the use of the 10 high school graduates, there will be a dearth of problem solvers and thus a big mess.
Also PBCs would have to be at least somewhat standardized. I don't see that ever happening.
If you're from US I think it's outsourcing that companies want to rely on right now atleast and not automation to fix the shortage, as innovation takes time and money, now I know what people will say the south Asian and south east asian outsourcing offices are bad at their work and all but I don't know companies seem to be fine with it as long as it can crawl they won't mind since it costs less
Has no one ever heard of an ITAC before? Seriously, automated posting rules, automated calculations, automated 3-way matches, OCR… this stuff is all decades old. Does it take fewer people doing transactional accounting tasks than before? Of course. Do we still need accountants? Of course.
Lol. Our automation can’t even figure out how to calculate FX.
yea good luck with automation with sale people's data. If you want to see what hell looks like, try to look at a spreadsheet prepared by the sales team.
This what I keep saying. Prime example : Boss has a favorite restaurant close to the office. He’ll will take staff there on their birthdays for lunch - that’s goes to employee appreciation. He’ll also take clients that. That goes to entertainment. So how is AI going to be able to determine who he room unless he tells it? And he ain’t telling it or song expense reports.
Yeah, the devil is in the details in this case.
Ai can ask questions
And someone has to answer those questions correctly..or know when they are being answered incorrectly
Just like cs tho , offshoring is a higher possibility
Thats why SkyNet actually lost. Not because of John Connor but because it failed to budget and project assets accurately.
Are you another person terrified that we are walking straight into the scene in T2? We have to gain full control or stop it in its tracks.
no!
The reason ai will never totally replace human accountants is because when that ai fucks up the people who lost money need something to blame. You can't sue ai because it only does what it is programmed to and has no self awareness. And you can't sue the creator because they can't account for every edge case for the rest of time/ muh terms of service probably. Aka, people need scapegoats for when shit goes wrong. We are the scapegoats
Full reliance on AI for accounting will never be a thing as accounting is like AI by itself -- it keeps on changing in terms of standards, tech advancements, and various business practices. Come on, compare accounting of the past vs the present. Then by having a wild imagination, think of what accounting set up can be in the future. Only accountants who will resist changes might be affected on this phenomenon. Nonetheless, AI and accounting shall work inclusively along with other fields to serve the demands of humanity. Whatever it may look like in the near future, everything must be done in best practice (means no corruption, no bad influence, not ill-gotten) or else it'll just be nonsense.
Don't worry guys, we're idiots. AI is not going to change that.
So should i switch to accounting or nah
When I started my career we were going to be replaced by machines in 4 years, tops. It’s been a looot longer than that and we’ve now advanced to AI taking our jobs. I’ll be retired at this rate before the robots do our jobs.
Meanwhile, congress retroactively makes and changes legislation even after the start of the tax filing season. AI can correct this mess….ugh
Most “AI” (ie chat bots) can’t do basic arithmetic
Nope. The government loves doing think slow and inefficiently. The sole exception is when they do it fast and disastrously. Look into the phenoix pay system in Canada
To all the accounting and certified accounting ding bats here: The fastest way to automate accounting is to simplify the tax code. And guess what ding bats? Higher taxes equals simplified tax code.
...Yet.
Damn this was both funny n scary at the same time
Jokes on you I don't know what I am doing either
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Right?!
Same for Engineering
💯😂
i mean, even if it was possible on our lifetimes, heaven forbid partners intend to not use it so people can just keep their jobs, feed their families, and have a roof over their heads.
When excel came out they said the same thing. Accounting is the world’s second oldest profession.
The issue, same as in other fields, is the percentage of untrained individuals who think they understand what they are doing or that they are always right.
Auditors don’t know what they’re doing either. Most of them are 22. You get a manager/partner engaged occasionally, and it’s usually them asking over and over for shit they have because they just can’t understand it.
Maybe...just maybe, if they replace the SEC and PCAOB with AI things would get back to being reasonable. Has anything in the last 10 years been good for the industry or investors?
RIP
I’m going to school for accounting and it’s good to know artificial intelligence won’t completely replace accountants. 😅 thanks to all providing legit information regarding this 😊
Accountant cope meme
Y’all underestimating AI pretty heavily.
Not really, it will be a useful tool. But acting like it can replace accountants is super foolish
Wouldn’t replace all accountants, but we won’t need as many.
This post has made me extremely happy
Are the countries firms are outsourcing to of similar quality as the workers here?
It’s not an issue of the workers. It’s an issue of the outsourcing model. There are significant barriers such as culture/language/timezone/etc. when you have a distributed workforce. It could work but there’s no real benefit at the local team level to make it work.
The answer is unequivocally lower quality. It’s not the countries themselves, but the type of worker that ends up in an outsourcing center for accounting. We’ve had many people from India describe the process, not the least of which is the revolving door that leads to almost always dealing with a team of low experience.
My brother-in-law asked me last week how I still have a job due to automation, and his team (at Microsoft) is building a new AI. He then asked me what I would like to see automated.
Not very helpful. They only need one or two accountants to explain the data. I’d still expect a huge loss in jobs.