Ep. 233: Jesse Rubenfeld - Automation Unleashed: Reshaping the World of Accounting

The future of accounting is here, and it's automated! In the
latest episode of Count Me In, we unravel the world of accounting
automation, AI, and the exciting changes that technology is
bringing to the industry. From enhanced efficiency and
productivity to the ethics and potential challenges of
integrating artificial intelligence, this episode covers it all.
Our expert guest, Jesse Rubenfeld, CEO and Founder of FinOptimal,
will discuss the way accounting is being transformed, the new
skills professionals need to master, and the fascinating
possibilities that full automation offers. Tune in, level up, and
discover what the future of accounting holds!


Connect with our presenter:
www.finoptimal.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesserubenfeld/

Full Episode Transcript:
Adam:           
Welcome, listeners, to Count Me In. Your go-to destination for
insights into the future of finance and accounting. Today, we
have a special guest with us, Jesse Rubenfeld, CEO and founder of
FinOptimal. He is an expert in accounting automation and AI. We
delve into a conversation that may redefine how you perceive your
profession. How is automation shaping the accounting landscape?
What are the new skills that financial professionals must adopt?
And what does the full automation mean for traditional jobs in
the field? Sit back and join us in this exciting journey, as we
explore the transformation of accounting in the age of
automation.


 


****


 


Well, Jesse, we're really excited to have you on the Count Me In
podcast, and today we're going to be talking about automation and
accounting. And to start off, maybe, at a high level, we can talk
a little bit about how has automation really impacted the
accounting and finance industry, and what benefits has it really
brought to it?


 


Jesse:           
  Well, I think it's really been a benefit to the
profession, that's the headline. It's taken it from a place where
there was a lot of manual block and tackle. To an elevated role
where the accountant, the finance professional, can be a thought
partner and spend most of their time analyzing and adding value
to the message that they provide to management, to the CFO, to
investors, to whoever it is. Because they're spending less time
managing spreadsheets, or uploading things, or doing data entry,
and more time being smart.


 


Adam:           
Yes, they have more time to focus on other things. Maybe we can
talk about what are the specific kinds of automation, that are
really impacting those operations. You mentioned some things that
are taking us off of spreadsheets. But are there other things
that are really impacting it?


 


Jesse:           
  Well, in this situation I like to differentiate
between accounting practice automation and accounting automation.
Accounting practice automation involves task management workflow.
Facilitating review and approval of work papers, tracking time
spent on clients. It benefits the accounting firms, but it
doesn't, drastically, increase capacity. And it's only beneficial
for internal accounting teams, at a certain size.


 


Now contrast that with accounting automation, which involves
calculating and recording journal entries, reconciling
transactions, generating reporting. This benefits accounting
firms and their clients directly. It increases capacity for
firms, and it increases speed and accuracy so the clients aren't
sitting around waiting for answers. 


 


Internal accounting teams can benefit from this early on. One
person can benefit from this. One person can do the job of five,
whereas it's unlikely they'd use accounting practice automation
in a one-person finance team. We also like to distinguish between
automation and automation assisted. Automation assisted means
it's faster than fully manual, but it's still manual at lots of
parts. Whereas automated means one event triggers all of the
subsequent actions, automatically. And I like to illustrate this
with a side-by-side example.


 


Okay, let's say you're using HubSpot, the CRM, and QuickBooks
Online. You close a sale, you have to invoice for the deal and
then you have to account for it correctly. And deals, sometimes,
have different payment terms. "I'm going to pay all up front, I'm
going to pay monthly." And they have different agreement lengths;
annual, quarterly, month to month.


 


An automation-assisted process looks like this; a deal is marked
closed, one. Accounting gets an email, they fill out the details
in a spreadsheet that contains a revenue waterfall schedule. They
make sure the formulas are correct and then they copy down
through all of the columns, et cetera. And then once a month they
go book an entry in QBO.


 


Whereas automated, fully automated, means the deal is marked
closed, one, in HubSpot. Data flows from the CRM to QBO
automatically. The invoice is sent, automatically, and the
invoice is coded in a way that the revenue can, automatically, be
recognized in the appropriate periods. That's what we're doing
for our clients, full automation. Does that make sense?


 


Adam:           
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And, so, as you're describing
those two things, the full automation is almost eliminating
traditional jobs that have been in the finance function. So when
you were talking about this full automation. There are new skill
sets that are involved that are needed for it, and you've seen
lots of articles. But maybe we can talk a little bit about that.
What are some new skills that accountants are going to need,
going into the future? Because full automation is on its way, in
a lot of the functions.


 


Jesse:           
  Totally. Again, the headline here is it's
elevating the high performers of yesterday. So that today they
can do more, better what they're already doing. In terms of new
skills, it comes down to more systems and data analysis. SQL, for
example, in our case, Python, if you really want to go crazy. I
long ago went crazy. But I think that in the past, somebody who
could do the higher level work of managing, of communicating
financial pictures to important stakeholders like the CFO, the
CEO, investors, they would do that, but they'd spend a lot of
time preparing for those things.


 


It would be a major event to get ready for a board meeting. And
the amount of time that it took to do that right, was a barrier
to entry of competitors for their job. Whereas now they don't
have to spend that time preparing for it. Meaning they can use
automation to do a much better job, of keeping things ready for
the board meeting in real time, all the time.


 


But it also means that it's not as hard for someone to come along
with the same skills and replace them. Because they no longer
have the luxury of designing their own really convoluted,
excessively complicated process, that another skilled accountant
can't come in and replace. So it's a double-edged sword. But,
overall, it's making everybody more productive and therefore is
good for business and the accountant.


 


Adam:           
Yes, it is good for business because it helps your bottom line,
it helps get things done more efficiently. But I can imagine that
changi...