0:08

Hello, I'm Gillian Bowen, Public

0:10

Affairs Manager at Chartered Accountants ANZ,

0:12

or CA ANZ. This

0:15

is Small Firm, Big Impact.

0:22

There's super powerful tools available, so

0:24

I want my team to embrace that. We

0:26

can use that to not only improve our productivity,

0:29

but but we can use that to improve

0:31

the relationships we have with clients. If we can

0:33

write better emails that are

0:36

explained, we were explaining accounting terms in

0:38

a more simple way. I think it can

0:40

create a great client experience too. So there's that

0:42

component. But then I'm worried about

0:44

the confidentiality, about uploading

0:47

things or my team uploading things that

0:49

they shouldn't to tools like Chat GPT.

0:52

So for me it's balancing that.

0:54

How do we set the guardrails?

1:01

It's the podcast giving you and your clients

1:03

the up to date information you need to do your

1:05

jobs. Each fortnight I share resources,

1:08

tools and expert advice provided by

1:11

CA ANZ and a range of people across

1:13

our profession. So make sure you're following

1:15

the pod in your favourite pod app and

1:17

if you've got an idea for the show email

1:19

[email protected] Today

1:31

my guest is Meryl Johnston, CA.

1:33

The topic accounting and AI.

1:36

But through the lens of practice

1:38

owner to practice owner, member to member.

1:40

What's going on out there right now

1:42

and how are members using

1:44

artificial intelligence or dealing

1:47

with it. Meryl Johnston welcome to Small Firm, Big

1:49

Impact.

1:50

Hey, it's great to be here.

1:51

Now I do like to get my guests

1:53

to do their own bios. It saves

1:56

me from getting something wrong. What's

1:58

your expertise?

2:00

I'm a chartered accountant. Started

2:02

my career at BDO in audit,

2:04

had a little bit of time in commerce.

2:06

And then about eight years ago, I

2:09

started my own firm Bean Ninjas.

2:11

And we do, we specialise in

2:13

the e-commerce vertical, so we do bookkeeping

2:15

and accounting for e-commerce brands.

2:18

I'm also part of Chartered Accountants

2:21

ANZ Council in Queensland

2:25

and I've try to be active within

2:27

the accounting community.

2:29

Okay, great. All right, this is good. So

2:31

we're going to be able to pick your brain effectively

2:33

I think. So what does tech

2:36

in an accounting practice look

2:38

like right now?

2:40

If I look at my own practice,

2:42

I think there's the tech stack that you

2:44

need to run your practice. Bean Ninjas started

2:46

as a remote firm, 100% remote

2:49

eight years ago. And so we needed to have

2:51

a cloud based tech stack where we could communicate

2:53

with the team, have access to files, communicate

2:56

with clients all remotely.

2:58

And that was built off the back of Xero.

3:00

We now also support QuickBooks.

3:03

So there's the practice management tech stack,

3:05

and then there's the tech stack to support clients,

3:08

as I mentioned, where we work with clients

3:10

in the ecommerce space. So we have a very

3:12

specific tech stack around using

3:14

Xero or QuickBooks A to X to

3:17

bring in data, decks to

3:20

capture information from bills,

3:23

gusto for payroll in the US.

3:25

So there's the client specific tech

3:27

stack as well.

3:29

It feels like the tech is getting smarter

3:31

and smarter by the minute, by

3:33

the day, by the month. Look with

3:36

that in mind, then, let's talk about some of the tools

3:38

you use and why.

3:41

Okay. Well, I'll do a little bit of rapid

3:43

fire just to list out a few

3:45

tools that I use.

3:46

We've got a time limit. So you're right. That's a good call.

3:48

Yep, yep. Love it.

3:49

We can dive in and explore any

3:51

that you'd like to use for

3:54

meeting minutes. I use a tool

3:56

called Fireflies.AI and

3:59

that records a transcript. But what I find

4:01

more useful is it creates a summary and

4:03

then also pulls out action items.

4:05

So that's I like that for myself. But

4:07

also if I want to share the meeting with the team.

4:10

Another tool is called DESCRIPT. We use that

4:13

for the podcast and

4:15

you can edit within the software,

4:17

just - it's text based. So you can just delete the text

4:19

that you want to remove. But the bit that I like

4:22

is that if I mess

4:24

up a sentence, I could ... AI will replace

4:26

my voice with a couple of words so I

4:28

wouldn't use it to record an entire

4:30

podcast episode. But it does save me having

4:32

to go back and rerecord a sentence.

4:35

So.

4:35

So it can it it regenerates your

4:37

voice.

4:39

Correct. Wow.

4:41

Continue.

4:44

A tool that, a lot of accountants might be familiar

4:47

familiar with is Expert. So that

4:49

that all has a it's got a huge

4:53

huge range of use cases.

4:55

One that I like with my audit background

4:57

is trying to prevent fraud and

5:00

it can flag if there's been a change of bank

5:02

account details, for example, with an

5:04

employee or a vendor. And that

5:06

is typically a common way that someone would

5:08

try and perpetrate fraud. So

5:10

it can give you an alert to quickly capture

5:12

that. It might also bring

5:14

up an alert if you're having a transaction

5:17

that doesn't have a receipt attached, that

5:19

that's that that's over

5:21

the threshold.

5:23

Where do you think AI could

5:25

be more helpful in the accounting space?

5:29

Well, if I look at the use cases at the moment,

5:31

I've given the one accounting

5:33

example, but most of my use cases are

5:35

related to marketing. I'm

5:38

using. I didn't mention Chat GPT.

5:40

That's probably a big one that that a lot

5:42

of accountants have probably

5:44

played around with a little bit. To me, most

5:46

of those use cases are marketing related

5:49

to help me write an outline for an article.

5:51

Would you recommend a headline.

5:54

Improve what I've written. Help me

5:56

write an email to a client

5:58

about a fee increase. So a lot

6:00

of that is to do with either marketing

6:02

or communication. But

6:05

where I see what I'd like to see

6:07

is having this embedded

6:09

into the tools that we're using. So we use

6:12

Help Scout to email our clients,

6:14

instead of having to open up Chat GPT to

6:17

say, Hey, could you please write an email?

6:19

I still use manners when I'm writing to

6:21

the AI. Me

6:23

too. Please can you do this?

6:24

To do that, I think maybe to be kinder to

6:27

if I'm kind. Love it. Yes. Yes.

6:29

Continue.

6:31

So if I have to open up a separate program

6:33

and then give the AI prompt

6:36

and then copy it back, what I would prefer

6:38

would be to open up Help Scout and have that

6:40

embedded within the tool. And I think that

6:42

is starting to happen. I watched a video

6:44

this morning from Canopy, which

6:46

is an accounting practice management tool and

6:49

they actually have Chat GPT

6:51

built into their emailing program

6:53

so you can give some prompts and within the

6:55

practice management software, you can write

6:58

or draft that email and then change the tone

7:00

to make it more friendly or more formal. But

7:03

to me that's one of the biggest improvements

7:05

would be to have it embedded within the tools we're

7:07

using rather than have to log into

7:09

Fireflies for the meeting minutes

7:11

or open up Chat GPT

7:14

to solve this, solve a particular

7:16

problem.

7:17

And look, let's get into practice management

7:19

in a tick. I just thought it's worth explaining

7:21

what chatgpt

7:24

is just in case people haven't

7:26

heard of it, which I'm sure they have, but just in case they haven't

7:28

or perhaps they haven't used it. So it is an

7:30

online tool. It's currently free.

7:32

It's powered by AI Tech.

7:34

That's essentially a chat bot. So

7:37

human like conversation responses, which

7:39

explains why Meryl and I are

7:41

saying that we feel that we need to be kind to

7:43

it. So you can type in a question

7:45

like say you would on Google, but it answers

7:48

you like you're having a conversation rather than

7:50

just presenting you with a list of website

7:52

links. And you could also ask

7:54

it to help you write an email as Merly suggested,

7:57

or code or a speech

7:59

shopping lists. It'll debate big

8:01

ideas with you, and it uses

8:03

information from the internet, websites,

8:05

books, news and more

8:07

to generate its answers. But

8:10

the information that's been loaded in there,

8:12

there is room for error because it only

8:14

has information in it that's up to

8:17

the year 2021. But

8:19

beyond questions, you can also put in

8:21

your own information and then ask

8:23

it to analyze what you've pasted in.

8:25

So I'm thinking if you've pasted

8:27

in confidential company information and

8:29

and then asked it for a summary, it will

8:31

summarize it. And I mean,

8:33

I've, I have to admit I did get a

8:35

bit of help from ZDNET.com

8:37

and a wonderful article that they've written up

8:39

on Chat GPT to help me explain that

8:42

in a way that will help our

8:44

brains come along for the ride. And I'll put a link

8:46

to that in the show notes. And it's

8:48

also worth keeping in mind that the program and ones

8:50

similar to it, are constantly

8:52

evolving. So thinking

8:55

about then if you had, I guess

8:57

the best way to describe it would be an in-house

9:00

ChatGPT function.

9:02

How would that work when

9:04

it comes to practice management

9:06

beyond just generating an email?

9:09

Meryl.

9:10

Yeah, that's a great, great question and might just

9:12

expand on a couple of use cases with

9:15

Chat GPT as well. Before

9:17

answering that broader question, I think you've given

9:19

some great examples of how it can communicate

9:21

backwards and forwards with you. It's like chatting

9:24

to a human. I think it's

9:26

better than Google for searching

9:28

for something because Google you search

9:30

and it comes up with a lot of biased posts

9:33

that have been ranked. Someone's been trying to

9:35

rank them for SEO purposes so

9:37

that it feels like there's less bias in

9:39

the answers that are coming through. And

9:42

you could you could use it for things like

9:45

looking at a list of unreconciled

9:48

transactions. As accountants, we

9:50

often are dealing with that. What what's this

9:52

purchase? What's that? You've got the merchant name,

9:54

but not much else. You could put

9:56

that into Chat GPT and it can

9:59

give examples of what that could

10:01

look like. So it's very powerful. But

10:03

when we think about practice management,

10:06

I think back to, to what I mentioned

10:08

earlier about having it embedded within

10:10

the tool. And so there's

10:12

different elements of practice management. There's the

10:14

billing side, there's

10:16

the conversations that you're having with

10:18

clients is all of the file storage.

10:21

And at the moment, tools like Chat GPT,

10:23

you can't actually post

10:26

or ask them, ask it to read

10:28

a PDF or ask it to read a word

10:30

document. You have to copy and paste that information in.

10:33

But I imagine in the future

10:35

that all of that information

10:37

that's captured within your practice management, the files,

10:39

the documents would, would be able

10:41

to be read and then you could ask questions.

10:44

So instead of having to ask

10:46

a client and ask multiple requests

10:48

of the same thing, you could quickly ask, have we requested

10:52

these lease document from the client and

10:54

it could reply back to you? Yes,

10:56

Jason asked this on this date and

10:58

it's stored here so that you don't have

11:00

to ask that client again or

11:04

this piece of work is out of scope.

11:06

Has the client paid for it? And you could probably ask

11:09

the AI could get back to you to say,

11:11

yes, we've received payment. It's fine to go

11:13

ahead and start work. And all of that

11:15

would be within the practice management system

11:17

rather than these disparate systems. I

11:19

should add a disclaimer, I'm no AI expert.

11:22

I've been playing around with it myself, so I'm

11:24

describing what I would like, not

11:26

not necessarily with the technical expertise,

11:29

expertise to know when

11:31

that might be possible or if.

11:32

If it's and that's the point of having this conversation,

11:34

because I'm sure there's lots of

11:36

members listening along who are having

11:38

these conversations already. And

11:41

that's why I thought, well, it's actually worth speaking to

11:43

someone who's in a practice and going,

11:45

Well, how are you dealing with dealing

11:47

with this at the moment as it's evolving?

11:49

How are people within the practice saying, Hey, have

11:51

you heard about this? Have you seen this? We should get this?

11:54

What are the next steps here?

11:56

Well, I can share the next steps that I'm

11:59

thinking about with my practice. So

12:01

on the one hand, I want my team..it's

12:04

super power, there's super powerful

12:06

tools available, so I want my team to embrace that.

12:08

We can use that to not only improve

12:10

our productivity, but but we can use that

12:12

to improve the relationships we

12:14

have with clients. If we can write better emails

12:17

that are explaining, we were explaining

12:19

accounting terms in a more simple way,

12:21

we're using the make this

12:23

user more friendly tone so that we're

12:26

always communicating in a nice manner. I

12:28

think it can create a great client experience

12:30

too. So there's that component. But then I'm worried

12:32

about the confidentiality about

12:35

uploading things or my team

12:37

uploading things that they shouldn't to tools

12:39

like Chat GPT. So for

12:41

me, it's balancing that how do we set

12:43

the guardrails so that we're learning

12:46

and experimenting without doing anything

12:48

that puts client confidentiality or

12:50

our firm's IP at risk.

12:52

And so something that I'm I'm actually

12:54

running a training session with my team this

12:56

week around productivity. And part

12:59

of that will be around AI

13:01

and some examples, but also training

13:03

around well, what not to do. So

13:06

with the example I

13:08

gave before of explain

13:11

helping Chat GPT,

13:13

helping to describe what a merchant transaction

13:15

is, don't put the client name, don't put the date

13:18

of the transaction. Just give the minimal information

13:20

required to answer the question.

13:22

And it sounds like then that there's

13:25

room or the need then for

13:28

practices such as yours to

13:30

be writing a policy on how

13:32

you do and do not engage with generative

13:34

AI.

13:35

Absolutely. And I'm not there

13:38

yet. So we don't have a policy

13:40

yet. But the first place I went

13:42

was to an accounting Facebook group

13:44

to to start chatting with other

13:47

accountants about how are you solving

13:49

this problem? Do you have a policy, actually I

13:52

back up? The first thing I did was put that into Chat GPT

13:55

and asked, What

13:57

did it say? What should I?

13:59

Well, I actually found it quite generic

14:02

in terms of things like not inputting confidential

14:04

information. It was not very

14:07

practical in that case. So

14:09

I'm hope, hoping that I can

14:11

get some advice from other accountants, which is a bit more

14:13

practical and specific about what

14:15

you can and can't put in. I know CA ANZ

14:18

has a guide that they've written

14:20

that it has some useful things. I think it's probably

14:22

more directed at big firms, big,

14:25

the big four, mid-tier and

14:27

also big business. But there's

14:30

it was still interesting reading, reading that

14:32

report as well.

14:33

Well, and what I'll do is I'll whack that in the show notes

14:35

and that's the whole point as well as this of this conversation

14:37

is literally just to have a chat about

14:40

what it is that's going on out there right

14:42

now. What are people experiencing?

14:44

What have they learnt so far? Let's

14:46

all start a conversation so that we

14:48

can talk about it together and

14:50

come along for the journey because it's always,

14:52

ever evolving. And with that in mind,

14:54

I did want to give an update because there's obviously

14:57

members listening along who'd be wondering about the

14:59

impacts on education in particular

15:01

when it comes to the CA Program, which chartered

15:03

Accountants Australia and New Zealand runs, of

15:05

course. And we've actually communicated

15:07

with candidates about where they can

15:09

and can't use Chat GPT.

15:12

We've told them that after some testing

15:14

of the capability of Chat GPT

15:16

on existing program assessments,

15:19

we're confident that the authentic and

15:21

applied nature of our assessments will ensure

15:23

that A.I. alone will not produce

15:26

a pass grade. And further

15:28

to this, the use of AI in completing

15:30

an assessment must be appropriately referenced,

15:32

and failure to reference will give rise

15:34

to a plagiarism case against the candidate

15:37

of academic misconduct and

15:39

for assessment in the form of

15:41

invigilated online exams, AI applications

15:44

will not be accessible or

15:46

permissible during the exam

15:48

and as an organisation, CA ANZ

15:51

has been looking at the productivity

15:53

benefits but also the risks of

15:55

using generative AI and

15:57

whether its use is in line with IT

15:59

Policies which were updating to reflect

16:01

the governance controls around the permitted use

16:03

of generative AI, such as prohibiting

16:06

the uploading of confidential and sensitive

16:08

information into AI programs

16:10

such as Chat GPT.

16:12

So it's an evolving situation

16:15

for everybody, not just accountants.

16:17

And Meryl, we've talked a little bit about

16:19

this already, but are there any

16:21

other sort of alarm bells

16:24

that we haven't mentioned that you think would be

16:26

going off for accountants

16:28

using tools such as these?

16:31

I think it's mainly around the confidentiality

16:34

side of things. So being careful about

16:36

what you upload, knowing that that

16:38

might be used to train the model

16:40

and you could be giving

16:43

away your IP. So I

16:45

think that's the main concern. I mean, probably

16:47

the other if you're an accountant

16:50

speaking specifically to accountants is just making

16:52

sure that you stay on top of technology

16:55

changes. This is a huge change.

16:57

It's powerful and invest

16:59

the time to play around with it. It doesn't have to be a

17:01

lot. It could just be an hour here, an hour

17:03

there. But make sure you invest the time to learn a little

17:05

bit because it could really help with your own

17:07

personal productivity and that of your firm.

17:10

Yes, the productivity aspect of it and

17:12

helping increase what it is

17:14

that you can achieve in a day. And that then

17:16

makes me think about that idea of there

17:18

has been a lot of chatter on LinkedIn about

17:20

AI replacing accountants.

17:22

What's your reaction to that?

17:25

No, I think it's a

17:27

nice tool that we can leverage, but

17:29

I don't see it replacing us. I mean,

17:32

some of the AI experts may may say

17:34

to me, well, I'm not obviously understanding the

17:36

power, but to me it feels

17:38

like, yes, it can help us. It's a tool we

17:40

can use, but it's not going to replace

17:42

us.

17:44

I don't think so either. Well, and that's what you'd

17:46

hope I would say. All

17:49

right. So we've got this a few. There's a few action points

17:51

really from here, isn't there? It's to familiarize yourself

17:53

with the conversation. Check out some stuff

17:55

that we've got on the website and

17:58

from your perspective Meryl,

18:01

what else do you think is is kind of the next step

18:03

from here?

18:05

Yeah. Think it's educate yourself. Make sure

18:07

that you've got a policy or some guardrails.

18:09

If you're giving your team access

18:12

to AI and then learn,

18:14

learn, learn and explore. Um,

18:16

related to that, in preparation

18:19

for this podcast, I did a whole bunch of research

18:21

and have been playing around with different tools

18:23

and I've written up some of my notes

18:25

and they'll be available over at the Lifestyle

18:28

Accountant show. So

18:30

feel free to, to read that,

18:32

but also feel free to reach out to me. I'm really

18:34

interested in this space and having conversations

18:37

with other accountants about AI.

18:39

Great. I'll put a link to that in the show notes because it's

18:41

a conversation we're all having right

18:43

now. Tech It's incredible to think how things

18:46

have changed in what really feels

18:48

like a few short decades.

18:50

That is all we have time for. Give the podcast

18:52

a follow in your favorite pod app. Engage

18:55

with us on LinkedIn. Feel free to get in touch

18:57

if you have a topic you want covered. The podcast

18:59

has an email [email protected] Let's

19:03

start a conversation we definitely

19:05

started one ourselves. Thank

19:08

you Meryl Johnston for being my guest on

19:10

Small Firm, Big Impact.

19:12

Thanks for having me.

19:12

Bye bye.