Accountants are scarce and often overwhelmed with work. How can you convince them that the time they invest in new tools now will save them valuable time later?
AI can provide answers to several challenges within the accounting industry that the accountant is not yet awake to. When new AI solutions are offered for future challenges, the accountant is more reluctant.
Accounting platform Yuki offers a software for bookkeepers and continuously introduces new solutions to answer tomorrow’s accounting issues. “We try with Yuki to find solutions to problems that bookkeepers did not yet know they needed,” says Ellen Sano, Managing Director at Yuki. The rather conservative attitude within the accounting world makes evangelizing those new (AI) technologies a tad more difficult. As a SaaS company, Yuki is tackling its own challenge in an atypical way: convincing accountants of the added value of new (AI) tools.
Online accounting platform
Yuki is an online accounting platform for accountants and entrepreneurs in Belgium and the Netherlands. The platform provides support for administration and accounting based on digitization and automation. This allows accounting firms and SMEs to improve their efficiency, gain real-time insights into their figures and lose less valuable time.
The accounting platform has two sides, one for the business and one for the accountant. “For the accountant, it provides an overview of all his files and to-do’s, and gets insight into how and where to automate. On the other hand, the entrepreneur has insight into his up to date – and accounting-based – finances. And this in an understandable language,” Sano explains.
Together with Visma
Yuki is part of the larger Visma. It does function as an independent entity, but is supported by Visma based on all kinds of knowledge about AI, privacy or new developments. For example, Visma has 80 ethical hackers under its wing. Visma already includes more than 180 companies, spread across Europe and now also in Latin America.
Today, Yuki’s accounting platform runs entirely in the cloud, on AWS servers, but exclusively in Europe. “Each client has its own SQL database within the platform, which means that Yuki is not dependent on how big a particular accountant is. This allows each entrepreneur to maintain their own power and speed,” Sano explains.
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AI is playing an increasingly important role at Yuki, but the company does not have a team of data scientists under its belt today. Thanks to the integration with Visma, however, Yuki does have access to several existing AI models and experts.
Proactive advising
Accounting is a profession in its own right. One of the challenges Yuki faces today is transferring the accountant’s knowledge into software. “We try to think ahead and provide solutions that the accountant doesn’t yet know he or she needs,” Sano says. That proactive advice, Sano says, is very specific to the accounting industry, but comes with other challenges.
“When we introduced the invoice processing automation process years ago, it initially seemed like an unnecessary new feature to the accountant,” Sano said. Today, it is ubiquitous, and most accountants use such automation processes.
It takes time to convince accountants of the added value of a new feature. “Accountants don’t immediately feel the need for new tools, or simply don’t have time for this,” she says.
AI in accounting
Just as with the advent of automation quite a few years ago, which many accountants did not yet know they needed, the same story applies with artificial intelligence (AI). “There are a lot of opportunities on the table with AI within accounting, but it has to add value,” Sano says.
You have to deal intelligently with new AI features and give accountants the confidence that they will effectively add value. Our job is to convince them of this.
Ellen Sano, Managing Director at Yuki
Yuki already integrates AI for certain automations, as well as internal processes. Yuki developers use AI primarily to facilitate tasks or extract anomalies. “I believe very strongly in AI as a means to facilitate certain processes rather than being an end product,” Sano states.
Personal approach
Accountant is a bottleneck profession. “There are very few accountants for very many businesses,” Sano argues. When new tools are handed to them, accountants must invest time to master them, time they don’t always have. “As a result, evangelization takes longer,” Sano says. Yuki wants to respond to this by taking a human approach.
We try to focus on a personalized approach, which may sound rather atypical for a software solution that runs entirely in the cloud.
Ellen Sano, Managing Director at Yuki
Each accounting firm has its own challenges, speeds and teams. Some teams are already more advanced in terms of thinking than others. “Within Yuki Belgium, we have a team of about 50 people who focus entirely on those offices. They guide them, draw up plans and organize training to land that conversion at the pace of that team internally. “In that respect, we are an atypical SaaS company, where the personal and ‘customized’ nature is our strength,” Sano said.
In addition, Yuki is also strongly committed to learning from each other. For example, Sano and her team already organized a Yuki event where different accountants interacted with each other. “It’s nice to see that accountants are still learning from each other and can help each other with certain problems,” she says.
“It is important for us that accountants understand what we stand for, and how we want to move in the market. With our personal approach, we try to guide accountants at their own pace, so we can assure them that the time invested in new tools, saves them time later,” Sano concludes.