Tag: AI

Posted on

£15,000 of bookkeeping errors! £3k of tax errors! 

That’s what happened when a small business client set themselves up on software and let the AI and their own inexperience guide them. 

Usually we set up the software and provide training videos but this client slipped through and decided to do their own thing. Fortunately, before we start the year end work, we run a few bookkeeping healthchecks and full balance sheet reconciliations to pick up any major discrepancies.  If the client had submitted their own tax return the company would have underpaid nearly £3k of tax. (Unfortunately all the corrections increased their tax bill, but at least they will withstand a tax investigation so the client can sleep at night.) 

A timely reminder that AI can help accountants, but can’t replace our professional judgement (yet!) 

As a bonus, with the time that we save using technology in our business we are able to advise clients on how to grow their businesses. Clients on full business advice packages get the best value but even our no-frills clients receive general advice and reactive telephone/email support. 

How are you using technology in your business? Reducing costs or providing more value for the same fee? 

If you’d like to discuss our business growth packages just drop me a message. 

Posted on

“Your success in life depends on your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, in that order” Sir Patrick Winston 

Professor Winston is a computer scientist and director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 1972-1997. Somebody renowned for the quality of his ideas, and yet he promotes communication over this. 

And I have to say that I agree. We need good communication, whether on a stage or in a book, to demonstrate what we know. It isn’t much good if we can’t share our ideas in a way that others can understand and act on. 

I’ve worked in companies, and with accountants who appeared to believe that ‘knowledge is power’ and kept everything to themselves. But that only gives power to one person. Let’s find ways to share our good ideas with those who need it. Not regurgitating unsolicited advice for our own ego but because we are genuinely able to help. 

If you’d like to learn to speak then I recommend Toastmasters or I know several good speaking coaches such as Scott Johnston. 

If you’re already comfortable and speaking regularly and want to do this professionally then I recommend joining the Professional Speaking Association

Writing is harder but AI can help to improve your writing.  

  1. Draft it 
  1. Pop it into AI along with the tone of voice, intended audience, and purpose eg please (I always say please because, who knows, it might make a difference when machine rules the world 😉) rewrite this draft in the tone of voice of Della Hudson FCA for an audience of accountants/business owners wanting to grow their business. 
  1. Re-edit it back into something a little more human and in line with something that you might actually say. 

Have fun experimenting with the right AI prompts for you.

Posted on

Limitations of AI 

At risk of sounding like a luddite: AI is not the answer to everything. 

AI has the potential for so much good but people really don’t understand the limitations.  

  • The main one for accountants is that information put into the free version of ChatGPT is not confidential. For this reason we use Copilot as our default sand other Ais as needed so that client information is never accidentally compromised. 
  • The free version of ChatGPT is only based on information available up to a certain point in time so it excludes more recent updates and data.  
  • AI is the answer to all the problems that you never knew you had! Originally AI was developed as a solution to certain problems but now developers are busy creating solutions to problems that don’t really exist … until their product team tell you that they do. 
  • AI is only as good as the user. As with all technology, garbage in = garbage out. You need to train your AI in exactly the same way that you would train a new apprentice in your organisation. 

The biggest problem is that LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT are prone to ‘hallucination’. They extrapolate the known data in order to fill in any gaps. Like the accountant’s nightmare ‘Dave at the pub’, who tries to help everybody with doubtful tax advice, hallucinating AI is about as reliable as a toddler with a face full of chocolate denying that they’ve been stealing Easter eggs. 

One AI quoted from my talk at an accounting conference earlier this year. It was probably a great talk but … I didn’t speak at that event! If a journalist was to report this badly they would be out of a job and probably laughed out of their industry.  

I love AI and use it regularly in my businesses but please remember to approach with caution. 

PS If the conference in question would like me to do a talk on this topic I’d be happy to oblige 😉