Phil, and guests Billy and Charles discussed the importance of AI tools for accountants. They highlight how AI can alleviate workload and enhance advisory services, with tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot being particularly beneficial. The conversation emphasized the need for proper data structuring and the integration of AI tools into existing workflows to maximise efficiency. Participants shared their experiences with various AI tools, noting their potential to improve productivity and streamline processes. The session concludes with a call for accountants to adopt AI responsibly and explore new technologies.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to, welcome to two o’clock, and welcome to the webinar, the five AI tools AI tools every accountant needs to use. My name is Phil Ogden. I am the UK sales lead here at Silverfin, and I am joined by two great guests. And I’m gonna talk I’m gonna introduce those guests in a second. We’ll just give everyone a few minutes to to dial in and and kind of enter the room. It’s the room’s starting to fill up. So, what invariably happens is is if you jump in too early, you end up repeating your introduction three times. So I hope wherever you are, the weather is nice. I always like to start off with some some, weather chat because, you know, it is a webinar after all. So, weather where I am is alright, but I’m looking forward to the fifteen degrees we’re promised. So so good. Okay. So I think we are starting to fill up, which is great. So once again, welcome to the webinar, the five AI I’m gonna get it right in a minute. The five AI tools every accountant needs to use. So in the next kind of forty five, fifty minutes, I’m gonna talk you through a little bit of research we’ve done here at Silverfins. So we’ve done a a research project specifically around AI and the impact on accountancy firms. So so I’m gonna talk you a little bit through that. And then, based on the questions that you’ve asked, so all the listeners and and kind of people who have registered for this webinar, we’re then gonna have some conversations around specific AI tools. And by the end of it, we’re gonna talk about a list of five essential AI tools that you should be using in your practice, which sounds exciting. I think we set ourselves a pretty high bar for, for content, but, hopefully, there’ll be some good practical rather than just theory. So, I I guess with that, let’s crack on. So I’m gonna introduce my guests. And by by that, I mean, I’m gonna say hello to Billy and Charles and get them to introduce themselves because they’re far more qualified to talk about themselves than I am. So, starting first, Billy, do do you want to kinda say hello, introduce yourselves, and, kind of, you know, let everyone know a little bit about you? Yeah. Of course. I mean, with the weather chat, I’m from Sunny Hall. So, there’s definitely no sunshine today. My name is Billie. I am from twenty twenty Innovation. I am a practice consultant there following from just over twelve years in practice, qualified accountant ACCA, and just loved all things digital, all things technical, could see the benefits it brought to the practice and our clients. So I moved over to twenty twenty to help as many practices as I can with growth, which ultimately leads to technology. So as a result, I, head up a membership called Tech Talk where I help our members, implement the right tech and AI to keep them informed of everything they need to know with regards to what’s on the market and implementation. And you also host a weekly AI conversation chat video, Friday day, I think it’s called. Is that Fri Fri Fri Friday Eye, which I do each Friday on LinkedIn. And the idea is that it’s kind of like the news and the big bad world of AI, but tailored very specifically to our industry so that people are not getting lost in the noise that they don’t really need to be aware of. Are you saying there might be a lot of noise around AI out there, Billy? Just a little bit. I think we all need some headphones on. So welcome, welcome to this webinar. And my other guest today, is Charles. Welcome, Charles. Thank you, Phil. Nice to meet everyone. I’m Charles Richards. I’m the head of digital at Azit. So, I’m not a qualified accountant, but I’ve spent my entire career thinking about different ways we can use technology, digital data, and now AI and automation to transform businesses. So, you can imagine what that means for the work I’m doing at Azets, thinking about ways we can improve our client experience, make things easier for our colleagues, which I know is one of the topics we’re gonna talk about here, and also think about how it can drive revenue and cost savings. So thanks homely, Phil. Thank you too. And, also, we have the q and a, open, so you can feel free to say hello, pop some questions in there as well. So if you didn’t get time to put your question in first, you can absolutely pop some questions in there. Thank you, Kev, Kevin Law, who, has come in and said typical southern bias with the weather, freezing and raining in Scotland. Deb, I can’t help it if it’s raining up in Scotland and not down south. Right? I love being called Southern as well. I’ll take that. I know. I do. That’s brilliant. So, right, let’s crack on. So we’re gonna start with a poll. So our first poll, which is gonna come up on screen now, and you’re gonna have to just excuse me just a little bit while I get to know all of the new technology we’re launching here today. So how frequently are you using AI tools? So daily, weekly, or occasionally. So if you could just pop that in. And when we get to about seventy five percent of the, of the webinar, about seventy percent of the webinar, I normally then kind of, call it a day at that one. We’re about seventy percent now. So a few more of you just pop your answer then, and we’ll we’ll get that answer. Couple more, seventy three percent. It should be couple more people. Anyone feeling brave? Anyone? Okay. There we go. Seventy five percent. Thank you. Perfect. So, I am going to end the poll, and I’ll share the results with you. So we are looking at a combination of yeah. You know, forty three percent of people on the call are using ALA daily. If you wanna pop, something into the q and a, just what is your favorite tool that you’re using at the moment? We can maybe look back to that at the end. A few more people using it weekly and then, kind of the the the second half really leading towards, occasionally. So, here’s our next question. How often how frequently were you using AI tools last year? So, I am going to I need to stop sharing that. Need to launch this poll. And here’s the second one. So the second question is, how frequently were you using tools last year? Okay. Well, this tells a really interesting story. I get to see the answers there coming in. It’s get tells a few more people if we’re there, if possible. Meanwhile, Jonathan said in the q and a, so it’s not all saying down south. He’s in Surrey, and it’s chucking it down. So, you know, think that kind of asks everything you need to know. Good. Right. We’re up to seventy eight percent, so I can end that poll there. And I’ll share the results of that one as well. Huge change. Right? Like, a year ago, most people were using AI occasionally or weekly. So in the last year, that’s in a massive change in the way people’s using AI from occasionally to kind of to the bulk of it now being daily, which is really interesting. Any thoughts on that, Charles and Billy, before I kinda jump on to the next, the next slide? Yeah. From me, I think it’s almost sort of a trick question because, actually, AI has been around for such a long time. Like, spell check is a form of AI. So there will be a lot of people on the call that are like, oh, actually, yeah, I I have used it daily. It’s not as scary. But I think the the probably reason for this is that people have started to realize that it the impact it’s having, so they feel more comfortable using it, which is great to see. Yeah. Absolutely. I think you’re absolutely right, Charles. Yep. Billy’s spot on. It’s it’s not necessarily that we’re using AI more. It’s that we’re we’re now more aware that we are using AI. And I think that there’s so much out there. Sat nav in the in the car or just even just walking around town is is AI. People don’t necessarily realize that. I think the last of twelve, eighteen months, there’s been a real shift, and it’s been to to the point at the top of the call, lots of noise about it, which makes us more aware. And, of course, that’s starting to translate to the world of work as well. Yeah. Absolutely. I think I think that’s a really interesting point. I think AI has been around a lot longer than people, expect or suspect, and, you know, it’s just becoming more talked about, more prevalent. May I may I say in some regards, a very good way to market products, and to add that little bit of, I I always used to call it the, the Coke the Coke lemon, twist for something. We’ve got a product that’s been around for years and you put lemon on it, and all of a sudden people go, oh, now I wanna try that. And you’re like, well, you’ve kind of been doing it anyway. I mean, good. Alright. So on my screen, on your screen, I should say, do you wanna count kind of what inspired the webinar and, I guess, the podcast that we’ve spun out from the work we’ve been doing? And and to the core of that is an accountancy survey that we’ve been running over the past, few months. And we appreciate the accountant’s role is evolving faster than ever shaped by technology, generational shifts, and changing firm dynamics. The Silverfin, in partnership with three Thinker PR agency and Censuswide, surveyed over three hundred and fifty UK accountants to uncover how these changes impact efficiency, growth, and work life balance. And we’re gonna be launching that report soon. If you’re coming to digital accounts at T show, we’ll absolutely have that to the center of some of the work we’re doing there and other events, through the year as well, including a roundtable event and and other bits and pieces. So we’re gonna we’re gonna kind of bring that full report to market soon. But before we get there, what I do wanna do is share with you some, key findings from that. So one in four firms reported at least twenty one percent of their team experienced burnout in twenty twenty four. One in four teams one in four firms reported that twenty one percent of their team experienced burnout. And on average, twenty five percent burnout rate across firms. That’s pretty shocking. Right? Like, you know, I read that earlier when I was going through the slides, and and that kind of it didn’t surprise me because I know a lot of that conversation, but it certainly kind of flagged how significant that burnout rate is. And the impact that has to productivity, the impact that has to a firm in general, not to mention the individual there at the court to it. Right? So so that’s a that’s a pretty pretty shocking statistic. And then six in ten accountants worked four hours plus per week beyond their contracted hours, money that, you know, people don’t get paid for in a lot of, a lot of times. And over the over time, it’s becoming the norm with many accountants clocking in over two hundred and sixty extra hours per year. That’s massive. Two hundred and sixty hours per year is a huge amount of extra work. And I guess you see it in every day. Right? Like, there are some days where you go and kinda go, oh, do you know what? I’m not gonna take a lunch. So I’m gonna shorten my lunch because I’ve gotta do that task. Or, you know, if you work from home, it’s that. I’m I’m just gonna log on a little bit early because I wanna get to the emails before everyone else does. But those ten minutes, thirty minutes, fifty minutes a day will start to add up. And, you know, over the course of a year, that that’s pretty significant. And then right now, firms report saving about ten percent of time when using AI. So looking at kind of that potential burnout and and the impact of those extra hours, actually, AI is starting to become a solution to some of those problems. And in fact, in three years, many firms expect this to be upwards of twenty one percent time saving with the most common use cases being workflow automation or compliance tasks. So, Billy, Charles, what do we think about kind of some of those statistics that we’ve heard and and those points around kind of AI? You know, do they do any of that surprise you, any of it shock you, or or did you just go, well, kind of that’s the way it’s always been? Yeah. I think it’s really sad, I think, to start off. I think it because it is, it’s such a great industry to be in. And, unfortunately, I think when you hear statistics like this, it’s gonna deter people. It’s gonna make people leave the industry as well. And with an already tight talent shortage on the market, it’s it’s just gonna encourage that. I think there’s also this aspect of as as great as technology is, it’s probably a contributing factor to some of this because, actually, the time we then need to learn technology is then taken away from the work we’re doing with clients, and we have to find that time somewhere. And I feel like probably saying this word seventy years on sounds weird, but after COVID, we thought it would all drop off a cliff because of the change in regulation at the pace it was. And it never actually happened. It just seemed to have got heightened and heightened, and the economy and the change in government and everything else has just snowballed on. And as accountants, we get this full force, probably more like more than any other industry. And that’s why we need to find ways to create these efficiencies that are on this slide here. So, Charles, any thoughts on, that data and those questions? Yeah. I’m I’m actually gonna pick up on the point on this slide you’ve got on the screen right now, Phil, in terms of time savings. It’s such an interesting area, and it’s not a new area. There’s been a lot of different companies and a lot of different sectors looking at ways that we can use different types of automation and AI to save people time, and I know that’s that’s one of the things we’re going to be talking about today in terms of reduction of that manual work. I guess what I’m surprised about is that these percentages are potentially quite low, actually, because a lot of companies are able to think about huge, huge savings of potentially over fifty percent of either time or even FTE in certain teams, where if you’re using AI and automation in the right ways, it can have a big impact and free people up to do the more value adding activities. Well, I think I think that’s always such a great point. When I entered this industry many years ago, the the conversation was about moving from purely compliance to added value and, you know, being able to do more for your customer. I don’t wanna use the the a word, not not AI, the other a word. The the that that being that, like, I think vendors generally create it, right, to try and drive a a need for their product. Well, that added value piece for the customers is massive, and we saw it during COVID. Right? Like, for the first time in in history, the advice, support, and guidance that accountants were providing was not just nice to have. Actually, for many businesses, it became essential and and, you know, that that almost freeing up of all the noise to then be able to focus your attention down onto helping and supporting businesses in a completely different way. We’re something completely different and finally started to realize that that added value piece. So I think, you know, to a point, some of that has drifted away a little bit post COVID. But, but I’ve used advisory and COVID on the same call. If anyone’s got a bingo card for webinars, I’ve probably ticked off a couple on that one. I mean, but, you know, so but but I think you’re right. It’s it’s what did you train to do? And I I people always ask this question. Did you train to to do numbers on a on a spreadsheet, or did you train to kind of help businesses and and support businesses to to grow and do more? And I think there’s value in both, by the way. I’m not saying one is more important than the other, but but certainly, as someone that used to own a business, the most important sessions for me with my accountant were the ones where they would support, give me advice, and and show me how I could do things better because, clearly, there was a lot of ways I could have done things better. Billie, I think you’ve got something you wanna say on this one? Yeah. I think you you’ve raised some really great points. And I also don’t wanna take it away from practitioners that they they don’t it’s not like they don’t want to do it, and I think they know what they they want to do, and they understand sort of even how to do it to an extent. But what they don’t have is they don’t have the capacity to because to enter that level of and I will say the a word. To enter that level of advisory, it takes a bit of groundwork. You need to do some discovery. You need to do some research into that client to be able to offer that advisory work, which practitioners are more than qualified to do, but, unfortunately, just don’t have, as I said, the capacity, time, resources, and the practice to do it, which is where I see that that twenty odd percent that we thought, will sort of be a time saving. What we need to do now is make sure that when we’re implementing these tools, we are super intentional about that time saving on where that’s going to go and then use that as the opportunity to then offer these services that we’ve wanted to do for so many years. Yeah. I I think that’s that’s a really, really good point. Cool. So look. I think that probably brings us to our core discussion. Right? Like, so AI tools and what are good tools. I guess we can kinda talk briefly about ChatGPT because I think ChatGPT is the one that everyone goes it’s the tool it’s the AI tool of AI tools. And I always go that, you know, I always think that AI stretches so much beyond what ChatGPT has and can offer. But, actually, as a starting off point, ChatGPT is all large language models. Like, there are other things out there. Let’s be honest. The use cases that I found for ChatGPT, two really interesting ones for me. Some as someone who is dyslexic, I sometimes struggle with when I write a a a letter or or a letter, nineteen eighties. When I write an email or or I’m I’m writing a report or something, quite often, grammatically and and spelling wise, there’ll be some challenges within that. So it’s good to use chat GPT as my own little spell check, which I feel slightly underutilizing its capacity. The other use I found, as someone that struggles with with spreadsheets sorry, everyone on the call, but I’m not a spreadsheet expert. It’s great for going in and saying, I wanna achieve this, and it will just give you the sum that takes hours to work. So, like, for me, it’s just taking off the edges of some of those day to day challenges and and just improves my efficiency on certain tasks by ten, fifteen, twenty percent, which gives me time to do other things right. So that’s kind of my core of how I use AI on a data. And I guess the other one is is note takers. So the ability to have a note taker on a call that can then kind of transcribe and and even with really smart ones, draft your follow-up emails to a point. Right? So those are my kind of those are the ways that on a day to day basis, I’m improving my kind of life with AI. You know, I don’t wanna jump ahead to the the the key tools that people wanna use, but what are your kind of go tos, both of you, I guess, in terms of kind of your AI tools, and how do you use them to to try and make a difference? Charles, do you wanna go first? Yeah. Happy to, Billy. Thanks. To be honest, Phil, I think the two that you’ve just talked about, which we we basically call LLM based chat assistance and that kind of meeting minute or summarization tool, There’s loads of different options. As you said, it’s it’s not just chat GPT. You’ve got things like Gemini and Copilot, and then there’s Teams Premium is doing some really interesting things around the note taking right now. I think those are actually two really fruitful areas that, certainly, I’m seeing in different places, Azets and other places that I’ve worked where people are using them both in order to save time on the the kind of classic write up and collation tasks after a call or a conversation with a client, but also helping to draft and structure anything from a letter, a proposal, a deliverable market context. There’s so much that can be done there. And the power of those tools, it’s not just about using them in isolation. It’s integrating them into a classic end to end workflow where, you know, a lot of the steps that an accountant would take are are going to be things like copying and pasting information, writing things from scratch, trying to use templates where otherwise they might be able to come up with something much more quickly using AI. And I think that combination of effectively capture and then create from those kind of tools that you’ve just talked about, that those are the kind of things that are already on my top five, top ten list when we came into this call. Nice. Absolutely. Billy? Yeah. Likewise. I mean, I just talking a lot. I’ve got so much to say. Like, I’m bursting with all these things. So with with Chargebee, I think it’s a great place to start. I think because it’s in the the press so much, people already feel an element of okay. They feel an element of concern, but they also feel an element of comfort that it’s a it’s a known product. Using the paired four version, the security, you know, you probably you’re gonna have to use the paired four version. You you want the security. If it’s free, generally, you’re the product. Whereas if you’re paying for for it, you can prevent it from learning from you. I actually spoke to a practitioner recently who used it for the exact same reason you said, Phil, about dyslexia. And, because, that was, seemed to be something to aid his team members, he was able to get a grant for it from the local authorities. So he’s been able to get a grant for Chatuchy Busy because it’s helped some of his dyslexic team members. So it just shows that even the local authorities have recognized the importance of this. And if you can build that confidence in people, then, you know, why would you choose not to? With the likes of ChatGPT as well, and probably relating back to some of the statistics you’ve said about, well, the the poll was really interesting because people have started to use it more. Something that I’ve seen probably in the last six months is people have learned to give it feedback or they feel confident now giving it feedback. So one use case that we’ve seen is a member of ours used it to write a letter to HMRC. And she said it’s great, but I always have to tweak it. And I said, well, have you ever fed back the letter once you’ve tweaked it? And she said, no. And it didn’t think of that. And she did it three times, and now she no longer has to edit that letter. It knows exactly how she would write it. It knows the context. It understands her tone of voice. And being able to have the not necessarily just have the confidence, but have the understanding. And, again, as an educational piece here that you treat this like a team member and you kind of reap what you serve with it, then you’re gonna see the benefits. And the notetakers is such a great entry level product. And you can either have an island product, so you could have something like Fireflies, which enters Google, Teams, Zoom, whatever you want it to. Or if you are just a purely Teams, business and everything you do is on Teams, you might just want to use one that’s already integrated in Microsoft with no extra cost. And to take it one step further, and I read that Charles mentioned about sort of integrating the things together. If, for example, every time you had a call with a client who worked in a certain sector, you inputted those notes into a certain area of ChatGPT, so now you can have projects or you can have different, conversations on one side, you essentially build up this knowledge bank of these are all the meetings I ever have with my Gardener clients. And you can ask it questions. You can start to spot trends. This generative AI, it learns, and it can develop from that data. So those are things that as practitioners, we just we don’t have time to sit and read fifteen transcripts that we’ve had over the last twelve months. But we could quite easily say, right, what are the challenges that this sector seems to face in every meeting? What are the same questions that keep coming up? And it will help us then deliver better service for future clients. It helps us with the marketing aspect. They usually like to talk about marketing to think it’s ever done with AI. But it does help support that side of things where we know it. We just don’t really have the time to deliver on it. Yeah. I think it’s interesting, isn’t it? ChatGPT is such a brilliantly such a brilliant tool because it’s it can offer so much to so many people. I mean, another key user I use ChatGPT for is transcribing notes and slides. So I’m doing a project outside of work where I have to take a lot of notes. And my handwriting is not great, but I’ll bring it back, pop it into ChatGPT, ask ChatGPT to transcribe it. And nine out of ten times, it’s bang on accurate. And it saves me then having to type those notes up separately. And, again, if you’re going out to client meetings and you can just feed those notes, those manual notes into a into an LLM, and it can then transcribe them for you. That’s a huge time saving because, you know, you can take pages. Sometimes I’m I’m taking, like, ten pages of notes, and and that is a lot of notes that you then have to come and type up or pass to someone else. So, you know, I I’m I’m loving those kind of uses, and I think and the thing I love about chat GPT, boss, it’s like the most boring tool to talk about because it’s the one everyone knows. Right? It’s it’s actually everyone knows it, but does everyone know what it can really do? That use case expansion is is when I found out it could do Excel formulas, it blew my mind because I’m like, I no longer need to, like, phone up everyone in my office that can use Excel and go, you know, our our very, you know, very busy product product and product managers. I’m phoning up going, how can I do this really simple formula that I should know? And they’re telling me, cool. Okay. I just wanna get the chat EPT, elephant out of the room to start. Right? So we’ve got that one. We we’ve kind of got it. It’s landed. We moved it off. So I think the best way we’ll go we’ll do the next kind of fifteen, twenty minutes is we’ll kind of talk through the questions that people have sent through, which are all kind of AI and AI tool based. Right? So, I’m gonna start off with audit. Now there’s an area I there’s an area that’s gonna be a good one to talk about. Which which kind of auditing task can be replaced by AI? So this was one of our first question. Which kind of auditing task can be replaced by AI? Which of my two experts would like to jump in on on on that one? I’d I don’t mind. Charles, are you using it within a set at the moment or, looking at it? We are we’re using a few things, and, it’s a really interesting space, Phil, because a couple of years ago, I probably wouldn’t have had such a good answer to this one, but I I think audit is now starting to catch up with the traditional accounting and tax work. I think, the ones that come to mind that there’s obviously what you call OCR scraping, so pulling out different, key bits of information from a document to turn image to text. It’s sim it’s kind of the reverse of what you were well, it’s the same as what you were describing, Phil, actually, with your your handwriting. It’s the similar principle of really saving that time of pulling key information off a document. Another area is definitely error detection. That’s a big kind of space that I see some of the tools that we’re looking at and a lot of competitors are looking at would be how can we reduce that error level, which in turn increases speed and quality as well. I think there’s all sorts around, you know, generating letters of engagement, thinking about different ways that you can transfer and review data more efficiently as well. There are a few tools that will connect between your audit platform and your work papers, and we’ll make sure that what’s going from one to the other is captured in the right way. I think it’s a super interesting space, and there’s a few players that are starting to do some quite interesting things here. I I read an article the other day in the times that was talking about how the next sort of generation of auditors, it will be all about speed. It wouldn’t be about competing on price. It will be, we can do this audit much quicker, and that will be the way that firms are able to differentiate themselves. If they’re using the right tools, if they’re using AI and automation, it unlocks that for them. Nice. I love that. Like, speed is a differentiator rather than price. Speed and accuracy, clearly. Accuracy being the key to it. Billy, over to you. Yeah. And with the speed as well, which Charles is just talking about, there is no human on Earth that can compute the amount of data that some of these AI models can. So it can identify patterns that as humans, we just you know, no matter what your IQ is, you are not wired that way. So, one of the, you know, the best things is kind of that anomaly detection and fraud detection. So one of my favorite tools on the market at the moment. Shall I save my tools, Phil, or then just tease it for now? No. I I don’t I think you could probably mention. We we can do a wrap up at the end of your five favorites. But, yeah, you can you can tease them in through. I feel like we’re doing one of those YouTube videos. You know, you see the the things that come up on, on your phone that goes, the five best ways to do this, and then an hour and forty five minutes later, you kinda get the answer. You can tease them as we go through it. Fine. Okay. There’s there’s there’s a couple there’s one that is actually not AI called audit tool ballot. Sits in your Excel spreadsheet, and it’s it’s a super low cost. I think it’s like a hundred pound a year or something. And it helps with the sampling. So, again, how much time do and I say juniors because that’s why I used to do juniors, sit and pick samples out. And it’s not actually valuable to anybody to do that. So there are tools on the market to help with sampling. But what’s more is there’s a there’s a tool called Xpert, and I do laugh with them because they have so much functionality. It’s a fantastic product. And I pick on this this one thing that I absolutely love about it, which is probably one of the it’s probably low down on their feature list. But they have a feature where it can detect if anybody on your payroll has the same bank details as any of your suppliers to identify that fraud. Now when you’re doing an order, you know that that’s the type of thing you’re looking for. But if you if you’re going into a factory that’s got thousands of employees, the chance of you actually picking out an invoice or picking out an employee that’s a duplicate is very, very slim. But to have this type of tool that’s available and not just to audit clients as well. So auditing is fantastic for those huge clients, but, actually, a lot of the smaller clients are just as susceptible to fraud. And we can offer that same level of service of of kind of what the audit does and recommendations and things by using tools like this to do this even for our smaller clients, which is fantastic. So that’s great. And then the other thing I’ve seen and and I know we’ve kind of closed the chat gbt chat, but somebody, that, I was made aware of, at an ICAW meeting, they used it for audit planning. So they put in all of the kind of team members, all of their audits, when the stock ticks were, how many juniors, seniors, managers they had, how many they needed for a job. They put it all in into a spreadsheet, fed it into ChatGPT, and asked it to create an audit plan. Now there’s a little bit of upfront work there, but what we have to remember is if any of those team members left, it is so simple to say to the product, that person’s now left. Could you rejig the plan for the next year? Or we’ve just acquired a new team member. Could you fit them in? And it’s it’s those time savings and looking ahead that are gonna be super beneficial and set the kind of futuristic firms apart from those that are doing things still quite labor intensive. Yeah. No. I like that. I think that’s, I love that fraud detection one, though. That’s really smart. Right? That’s a that’s a a both a a a key task, but also, like, quite a like you say, if there’s a thousand people, like, that is a very hard thing to spot, but if you’ve got a tool that does it. Okay. Interesting. Well, it’s interesting stuff around audit then. And I think, like Charles said, that’s definitely an area that’s that’s growing in terms of kind of AI and and tech capacity and usage. Good. Okay. Brilliant. So that’s that’s our audit question. So next up, how about what oh, this is a good one. What is the impact on professional judgment when using AI? So, again, not a specific tool question. Right? But I think, actually, it’s it’s an interesting one to to to to bring in. You know? What is the impact on professional judgment when using AI? Billie, do you wanna take this one first? Yeah. Absolutely. This is if anything, unfortunately, this is gonna actually put more reliance on our professional judgment. But we could see this as a positive because what AI cannot do is it cannot kind of give those lived experiences that we’ve got as practitioners. So we’ve dealt with those businesses in that industry for years. We’ve had to go through the pain of of, you know, redundancies with one sector, or we’ve had to deal with how somebody gets, certain accreditations for certain supplies. You had to go through a lot of that, which AI maybe doesn’t have that land experience. There are a couple of things, I guess, with this that it’s it’s a negative. So I actually spoke to somebody last week who said they’ve had the busiest January ever purely because they’re answering questions that their clients have seen on ChatGPT. So it’s become the new day of down the pub, hasn’t it? But it’s actually more accessible because accessible because you can look at Chachypetee fifteen times a day, whereas they might only go to the pub once a week. So, unfortunately, they felt like they were getting so many questions. And if you have people in your practice that may be, less experienced, they can knock confidence because they ask you questions and you think, I should know the answer to this. This is really obvious. And you end up second guessing yourself because ChatGpc has given a certain answer. So there needs to be a lot more professional judgment, and we need to give clients that kind of confidence that we we have done it. We’ve been there. We’ve we’ve we’ve got the t shirt. And also use it as a as a positive. So one of the examples I give is, I just have a farming client, and it it might come as a surprise, but farming actually isn’t an interest of mine. So sitting and reading Farmers Weekly on the lunchtime before I met that client was a bit onerous. Whereas now I would go on to Chat Your Petit and say, could you summarize these articles from this this, magazine, or could you tell me the top ten challenges facing farmers right now? And it would just save me a lot of that boredom in terms of reading. And so it’s the judgment piece is, you know, it’s gonna, take a bit more from us, but, also, we could use this as positive and get it to work in our benefit as well. It probably might I absolutely that’s my other use for chat GPT is taking a fifty page document. And getting, like, the key talking points out of it. I think that that ability is just fantastic. And I love that, by the way. My dad was a farmer, and I I complete even as someone that used to do that, it was something that I was never that excited about. It’s like, yay. Until he got to the very expensive tractors, and then I was super interested. Caleb Cooper’s got me into a little bit, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Good old Caleb. Charles, anything you wanna add around, professional judgment, around AI? Because it’s it’s a big concern. Yeah. It it’s a great question. I, when you said professional judgment and AI thought, my immediate thought my immediate thought was about the medical sector, which I know is not what we’re here to talk about today. But that you know, we’re now at a stage where AI can measurably do better in terms of spotting or, you know, identifying symptoms and working out what that might mean in terms of a a diagnosis for for a patient. That doesn’t take away the value of the doctor, though, in terms of that professional judgment and being able to add the human side of things. And I think that’s probably where the sector is going to start to go in professional services and accounting. It will be you know, a lot of things can be automated. A lot of those kind of measurable, mathsy, hopefully, painful or admin related tasks go away. But what what will be left will be that that human touch that, you know, certainly, as it’s a lot of other firms, we really value and our clients really value. It’s a kind of, hopefully, cut out all of the, you know, high volume, low excitement things, a bit like your Farmers Weekly analogy, and then bring to the fore more of the kind of value adding human centered service that I I know a lot of accountants want to spend their time on. Yeah. No. I I absolutely love that. I think I think you’re absolutely right. Okay. Cool. So, I I love this question. This is this is a great question. Nothing specific, but other than what AI tools are other accountants using? So, you know, not specific, but just generally, what are people using that that you’re hearing? And they can be some of your top tips and top top tools. But, Charles, over to you to start with you, I guess. What what are some of the tools that you’re seeing and maybe some of the tools that you guys are adept to using? Right? What where are you kinda Yeah. I’d I’d so I think there are probably a couple of different buckets here. The first is basically big tech, which can be applied to accounting. You know, we talked about things that Microsoft can do in terms of chat DPT. We’ve also talked about, I think we’ve touched a little bit on the classic CRM platform like a Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. A lot of capability built into those platforms in terms of understanding the client, in terms of note capturing, in terms of generating documents and drafts. The the other bucket would be tools that are accounting specific that are starting, as you said at the top of the session, to use AI, but not just as a buzzword. I think companies like Inflow or AlphaTax starting to do some interesting things where as part of that platform, you get some AI capability built in. If there’s a third category, there’s a few that are effectively connectors or data scrapers. So things like Alteryx or data snipper that allows you to, you know, link together two different datasets and really reduce or remove a lot of the kind of painful admin that comes with that or or things that will allow you to extract the core information from something very quickly, thus, you know, accelerating and improving the quality of the work that comes out as well. So I know that was a few in there, but I’ve got it in that kind of different buckets, mindset, how I think about this. So from my point of view, what I would say is that with this question, it’s it’s framed quite quite differently because, unfortunately, what we’re seeing with AI being a buzzword is people want a solution before they actually know what the problem is. So I have people come to me and say, right. I want to use AI in audit. What can I use it? And then I’m like, but what do you want to use it for? So with this question, I guess it depends where I bounce on your journey you are as well. Something I wouldn’t want you to be doing is jumping in five steps up the ladder thinking, well, everyone else is using this. I want to use this. AI is moving at such a pace that we also need to take a step back and understand some of the basics. So we need to understand that artificial intelligence is not the same as generative AI. It’s not the same as robot processor automation. And understanding that, actually, there are some cases where AI isn’t necessary. So, for example, there are some really great bots that can do bookkeeping, but you might want to use generative AI to look at the trends of the patterns to then pick up with that client that one of their customers is failing to pair. So there’s I think with this, have a look internally and see what your issues are before exploring what everyone else is using because the practice might be set up completely different. Having said that, one of the big, increases in terms of use cases is Microsoft Copilot, and this is because a lot of practices are Microsoft based businesses. We already know the software. We trust it. We believe in it. We’ve been using it since we we’re using computers. So using Microsoft Copilot is is great because, also, it’s embedded in your product. So something I quite often say is when we’re using an AI tool, we can go and find the weirdest facts about a rare frog in the Amazon rainforest. But to try and find out something quite simple about our own business becomes very difficult. Whereas if we’re using Microsoft Copilot, because it’s embedded in our files, it it will prompt you and be like, you’ve got a meeting tomorrow. Do you want me to pull off all the emails to do with that client for you so you can prepare and do a summary? And it just has that intuition. So as I said, depending on where you are in your journey, we’ve already discussed note takers. We’ve already explored ChartGPT. Please don’t use this in the same way you would use your Alexa and ask a question and take the first response. Do do feedback. But then also looking at where it’s embedded in your existing products, and it gives you that confidence because you know that you’re already in safe hands before you start putting data in places it doesn’t belong. So Copilot would probably be my number one there. Yeah. I think you make a really good point. And and through the silver lining podcast that that you’re you’ve been a guest on, Billy, and, you know, we spoke to a load of different people across that podcast. The one message that came out for everyone is don’t get a tool and then look for a problem for it to solve. Look for a problem and then find the right tool to solve it. And I think that’s quite often where where firms and people, you know, businesses in general make mistake is they they hear the hype and the buzzwords, and they go, I must go out there and and find out the, I must go out and find a way that I need to use SATGPT. But, actually, they’re not trying to solve a problem. They’re just trying to to use it because everyone else is. Right? And and if you’re not trying to solve a problem, it’s the same as any other tool. I’ve got a whole garage full of tools that I bought at one point or another thinking they might solve a problem one day, and I can guarantee half of them still haven’t been used. It cost me a fortune, though. I think that that’s kind of the problem. Right? Like, is sometimes we go looking for a we go looking for a a solution without a problem, and that will always be relatively inefficient way of doing it doing things. I’m conscious that we wanna get to our five core core four tools. We’re gonna ask one more question, and I guess, let’s look at the one around so we’ve done all the best AI tool for accounts. We’re kinda talking about that one in general. But, actually, let’s kinda focus on that one a little bit. Like, for accounts, and I’m assuming they’re talking specific accounts. AI tools that work in that kind of accounts field, what are we seeing that we think is actually some pretty good impactful tools that are making a difference there? Billy, I’ll I’ll I’ll start with you on that one. To be honest with compliance work, I think that’s one of the areas what which is being left behind the most in the industry. I think Silverfin and this is not maybe biased. I’m on a Silverfin podcast, but or webinar, but, Silverfin have the the kind of the crown for this one and the fact that they’ve got AI embedded in the tool. Because, again, it’s a case of there’s nothing that we can pull out of a product and put into another product automatically. Everything has to be done manually. So unless you’re willing to go ahead and do that, that there aren’t really any that I’m seeing people use very commonly in the account space. Yes. There’s ways to kind of can you, analyze this data, give me some points to discuss with clients, but actually preparing the accounts. My number one tip here would be to get your data in order because as we start to see the inception of AI even more, and with that, we’ll see a Gentic AI, then we need to make sure that our information is in the right place and up to date because it’s no good utilizing an AI product. The analogy I keep giving is so many accounts that are shopping for roof tiles, and they don’t have the foundation set yet on the house. Because if the if the information isn’t there, what are you expecting AI to draw on? If your bookkeeping isn’t up to date monthly, you can’t expect it to produce you all these fantastic reports. So, there are some good ones like monthly from based on the bookkeeping aspect. But I think in terms of compliance for annual, I think Silverfin is the the only one I’m seeing that’s actually making true waves in this. And that wasn’t actually rehearsed. No. It wasn’t. Hey. Look. I I what I’ve what I liked about what we’ve done is we bought an ALA company and embedded it into we didn’t you so it was that kind it was a different approach. Right? We said early days, here’s a company. We like that. Let’s buy that company. Let’s embed what they’re doing into what we do. And I think that for me is where you get the most impact is where the tool is embedded or built in rather than a plug in. Right? Like, there’s some great tools, like, Jack too, the the the the AI bookkeeping tool is a really interesting one. We talked to to Nikolai on the podcast about that, but, you know, there’s some really interesting stuff around that that that kind of, for me, looks like it’s gonna drive innovation in that space. And you’ve always done a look at what Xero and and QuickBooks are doing in in that AI space as well. I think, you know, they’re gonna be really exciting to watch over the next couple of years as they evolve their offering to be, you know, more than just the ask it a question or be it, you know, asking a question can sometimes be a a great tool. Charles, anything you wanna add around around that piece? I I think, to be honest, between you and Billy, you’ve mentioned the ones I was going to talk about in terms of Xero and Silverfin. I I think, to pick up on Billy’s point about data, though, absolutely right in terms of a lot of accounting firms are sitting on a lot of really good data and potentially a level of data that’s that’s more valuable than the kind of information that a bank would have on a customer or a business. So the the trick now is starting to structure that in a way that makes it usable for automation and AI and GenAI and and and Adgentic AI and all of the different things that are gonna evolve in the coming years. I I see a lot of businesses that have not got their client data in order, and they haven’t got properly structured records from previous years of what they’ve what they’ve produced with different accounts. Without that, a lot of what we’ve talked about is gonna be really difficult to bring value from. So the next question is, how do you do that, and then how do you improve it over time so that what you’re trying, you learn from, and it gets better and better? Yeah. A hundred percent. And in the chat, in the quick q and a, someone has posted, evolution, you know, machine learning RPA. Yes. They look to a agentic AI purpose driven orchestration of AI agents for specific use cases in accounting. And then they said, oh, Billy just said that and nailed it. So well done, Billy. You you you said it and nailed it. So, I think let’s let’s, let’s talk our favorite AI tools. Right? So so the five tools that people could take away from today and go and try and that will they’re gonna have some kind of impact in their practice, in their business. So, I tell you what, I’ll go through mine first because mine aren’t gonna be very accounting specific. Mine are gonna be a little bit more kind of general specific because that’s kind of where I live in that world. And then, Charles, I’ll come to you, and then Billy, come to you afterwards if that’s okay. So kind of the key one to me, like, I think Grammarly is an amazing tool. Speak to the dyslexic side earlier. Apparently, I can’t speak today either. Clearly, in Chat GPD, I use daily for a variety of different tasks, and that’s just to drive my speed. But the use cases are things like transcription, note take you know, notes, you know, all of that kind of stuff. You know, mid journey, if anyone sees some of my LinkedIn posts, I love a good AI picture of me, which is funny because they always come out with hair and and really weird things. So love that. But it it again, it’s a great way to express creatively, and I love the creative. Cap cut, so for video projects and stuff like that, there’s some great AI AI in those things that kind of take something that would take hours and hours and hours before and make it a minute long job, which is wonderful for the time, Paul. And we use Gong, which is a kind of a a note taker, but more. So when you join a call, Gong is a great coaching tool. So from a customer perspective, it gives you a transcription of the call, keynotes, and and key talking points. But from a sales leader perspective, it gives coaching points to the staff and the team and key things and questions that they’re answering. So, you know, if you’ve got a large team and you’re trying to coach a large team, which can be quite difficult, Gong and tools like that are are super good at helping you pick out those core points. And, also, they can write follow-up emails, which is, you know, a win win for me. Charles, over to you. Yeah. So, my five are some of them are very accounting specific, and some of them are much more more generic. So the the ones that really jump out in terms of accounting, payroll, wealth management, and anything in that world, DataSnipper, I’ve mentioned, I think that’s a really powerful tool for the OCR and scraping of documents to get get kind of words from from an image. Another that comes to mind is Expensify, which has a bit of a kind of personal use case as well for tracking receipts if you’re doing kind of time and expense capture, but but equally really valuable as a bit of a clue as to what can be done when clients are sharing documents with their accountant or their tax adviser. Another one is Alteryx, which I know I’ve mentioned already, but this is all around how you can build bridges between different datasets and build proper data automation parts as part of a workflow. That’s really universally applicable. There are a few players in that area as well. And then the last are the big two that I’ve I’ve mentioned probably twice already, which are Microsoft in terms of Teams and Copilot and everything that comes with it. And then Salesforce is the main place to hold your kind of client data and build that view of them in order to drive better relationships, cross sell, upsell, etcetera. All of the above have competitors, but those are the ones that came to mind. Yeah. The I think the, the points around CRM and CRM management. Right? Like, I think that’s that sometimes is a weak spot in in practices and and using AI that can drive and and stream like that is is super important because I think, you know, we forget accounting firms historically forget that CRMs, while seen as the very salesy thing in general, actually, you know, if you’ve got a a business of clients, a CRM is an essential tool and, you know, whatever flavor or color that CRM may be. Absolutely. Billy, over to you. Thank you. I’m really glad you mentioned Salesforce actually. It wasn’t on my list, but they are advertising heavily on just normal TV and everything at the moment. And a lot of accountants are moving towards HubSpot that doesn’t really have these these AI capabilities. And it’s it’s always really important that accountants check out the competitors even if they don’t use it so they can have conversations with their account managers of what’s going on elsewhere. I’ve tried to go up for something that I didn’t think would get mentioned. Obviously, we’ve already discussed ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, which is brilliant. Something that I’m seeing a lot of practitioners do is introduce chatbots to their website. So, one, idea here would be a website called Chat Thing. You get three chatbots for, like, two hundred and fifty pound a year or something, and you can have sort of one for software support. You could have one where clients could come on to your website and say, what’s my UTR number? And the idea here is as well is that you’ve got somebody that’s available to answer questions or somebody. It’s a it’s a robot. Answering questions twenty four seven, which is when your clients, probably asking these questions eleven o’clock when they’re scratching the head at the dining table, and the accountant obviously isn’t available. Expert is one that I’ve already mentioned. Now Expert has such a range of capabilities. I actually think they’re probably a bit ahead of the time because I think there were so so many use cases for it. Some accountants are a bit like there’s so much going on. And but if you genuinely wanna get ahead, I would definitely say check them out because they’ve got some really great ways of checking that data that’s within the general ledger products. That leads me on to the general ledger products. We’ve got some of our members that are signing up to the beta programs of the likes of Just Ask Zero, Sage Copilot, Intuit Assist, those type of models. So now we’re seeing more ways of creating invoices and, again, kind of creating those time savings, which is super beneficial. A few ones to watch as well. I just wanted to throw a two in at the end really to watch. One is is called vinyl, and this is gonna be built as a note taker. It’s gonna be launched at Daz. And this is gonna be a note taker specifically for accountants that is gonna be able to then feed into your practice management systems in your CRM. So you’ve got all the notes in one place. And another one is called Briefcase, which is I presume also launching it does. But, again, another product that is in specific accountancy market that is built predominantly on AI. It’s not just a buzzword. So those are mine. Can I just add one last bonus point, though, is please, please, please look into getting an AI policy in your practice if you’re adopting any of these tools just to make sure that your team are aware of what’s to be inputted and not inputted and making sure that you all as a team are on the same page of what’s going on? Yeah. And and, Joel, that’s a really interesting point. And, you know, even for us as an AI tech company, we have a very stringent AI policy, what we can and can’t do, a tool policy where we have to check legal, where data is held, what happens to it. You know, We’re very, very cautious about the tools we use internally, because we appreciate that we have client data within our business as well. So, you know, and we we’re using client data. So, actually, the AI policy is something that is so important to kind of moving forward and kind of making sure that you’re doing this right. I’m hoping now you can see a slide of my screen. Am I right in saying that? Perfect. Look at this new technology. It’s It’s going well so far. So now I just wanna give you a little bit about Silverfin, who we are, because some of you might not know, and then we’ll kind of wrap the webinar up at the end. Don’t worry. This is not gonna be a twenty five minute in-depth pitch session. Right? I just wanna give you a little bit about our manifesto, and we believe accountancy firms should say goodbye to the mundane, so endlessly downloading, reuploading of documents, consistently verifying that accounts, working papers match, an endless email change. The manual, so verbatim copying of data between system processes that vary from one team to team and office to office. And, of course, the disconnected inconsistent workflows across jobs, data, and work tracked in silos. And and kind of this is the solution that that ultimately Silverfin offer. So, look, you know, obviously, it’s it’s always good if, you know, people are interested a little bit. Whilst I kind of wrap up the webinar and kind of bring us to to some kind of closing points, I’ve got one last poll to launch. And this is just a little bit about, obviously, you’ve you’ve kinda sat here and listened to myself and and my great guest talk a little bit about AI. But we’d love to know if if any of you would like to kind of find a little bit more about us. Yeah, if you’d like, I’d like us to reach out and kind of tell you a little bit more about what we’re doing, please feel free to just to kind of answer on the poll, and then we can pick up with you, post the webinar. But whilst that’s happening, I’d love to to kind of just to say, Charles and Billy, thank you massively for your time today. I genuinely think we’ve delivered something that that that kind of delivered on the promise where we said, yeah, there is some kind of amazing tools out there. And what we wanted to do was give people an idea of some of the things that they can actually take away from today. So rather than just kind of sit here and talk about chat GPT for an hour, I think we avoided that well, but actually kind of answer some questions, give some use case, and give some tools that people can take away. So I think, hopefully, we’ve done a lot of that. Charles, Billie, do you wanna kinda just sign off, yourselves and just kinda give let people know where they can find out a bit more about you and if they wanna reach out and ask you questions? Yeah. Absolutely. So, twenty twenty website, we we have a a specific area for Tech Talk. If you want any more information on that Or alternatively, just find me on LinkedIn, Billy McLaughlin, ACCA. And as I said, get those roundups every Friday. Just five minutes to listen to me ramble about AI. But, hopefully, it’s useful. It’s it’s very useful, and, I’d say that your ramblings are are are always, entertaining and informative, which, you know, is most important. So thank you, Billy, and thank you for joining us. And, obviously, you know, Billy, you can join Billy on, listening to Billy on the podcast as well. Charles, over to you. Similar from me, Phil. I think if anyone wants to contact me, you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m, doing more and more kind of conferences and events, so I expect I’ll see some of the people on this webinar in person as well in the coming months. Thank you. Excellent. And if you’re interested in in finding more out about AI, and, I’m gonna keep the poll open for another minute. If you haven’t voted, it’d be great to just get your thoughts on that. But if you are interested in finding out a little bit more about, AI in general, we’ve launched a podcast called the Silver Linings podcast. And across the eighth episode first season, entitled, AI friend, foe, or fad, we talked to eight well, nine, actually, nine amazing people, from across the industry. So from businesses as diverse as Sterling Bank, Sage to, Genesys to, Visma and everyone else. And we really explore kind of AI in multiple different use cases. So not just for accounting, but kind of what AI looks like in general, what the future of AI is, how accounting is gonna work, and AI is gonna work within accounting. And and then, you know, at the end, a a really interesting podcast about how we are taking the approach at Silverfin around AI and and everything else around that. So, you know, if you are interested in podcast, if you’re a podcaster, then you can always, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. I think we’re on Pocketcast as well. You can scan the big QR code on the screen. Each episode is also under thirty minutes, which I think is, personally a great time for an ad for, for a podcast. I think anything, more than that you know, I always think the ideal podcast is that average journey to work, which is just under thirty minutes. So, hopefully, listening to that, I can assure you some of the guests and the conversations are genuinely fascinating. So that’s, something you can listen as well. So, it goes without saying we are pretty much over the hour now. Apologies, if you’re still here. Billy, Charles, thank you so much for your time. It’s been great to talk to you today. Thank you all for tuning in and listening. Please subscribe to the podcast, and, we look forward to speaking to you in the future. So thanks, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Bye. Thanks. Bye.