Cloud, AI and Humans: Why do we call it Bookkeeping when we no longer use Books?

There is nothing to fear and a lot of work that is yet to be done. The loss of data entry by no means is a loss of required human interaction. AI is a marketing term. Truly what we have, due to faster processors, blockchain security and multiple datapoints, is automated machine learning. 

More time spent on review of incoming data and the decision on what to do with any given piece of data can be done by what was traditionally a data entry bookkeeper. Errors can be minimized by using machine automation yet often a human still has to realize and act on two types of failures, alpha failure: probability of failure to detect an error, and beta failure: false negatives.

Those errors can occur with AI as well as with humans. Think of all the intersection points that can occur in any given datafile in the cloud.  The intersecting data is typically the first point of failure. Put 3-5 apps on top of your GL and allow them to sync in real time. How many of us has just rolled our eyes on review and then dig in to fix allocations? And that is just review of simple write up. How many times have you had to split a transaction with varying amounts?  How often have you seen duplicate entries when multiple data points covering the same information came in through multiple apps? New bank account or credit card account? Business owner makes a personal deposit to their business and it automatically flows to income? Reimbursed expense income mixed with regular income? That is all initial surface stuff. We could go on and on with the problematic items that crop up when apps intersect.

Artificial Machine learning will adapt and improve over time. Along the way information provided by humans to check the failure factors will be critical to that improvement. However, that is all just binary level information.  The average small business owner most likely did not take courses in expense management, cost accounting, tax law, valuation, financial analysis or projections.  A machine will not take a call from an anxious or worried business owner late on a Friday afternoon and provide anything more than that binary support.

So as business support specialists it behooves us to; be flexible, collaborate, move along with the change and most importantly keep open the lines of communication with clients. The future is inevitable. How I approach and respond to it is a choice.