Accountants are rare and often overloaded with work. How can you convince them that the time they invest in new tools now will save them valuable time later?

AI can provide an answer to various accounting challenges that accountants are not yet aware of. When new AI solutions are offered to address future challenges, accountants tend to be reluctant.

The Yuki accounting platform provides software for accountants and continually introduces new solutions to provide an answer to tomorrow’s accounting questions. “With Yuki we try to find solutions to problems that the accountant didn’t know he needed,” says Ellen Sano, managing director at Yuki. The rather conservative attitude within the accounting world makes the spread of these new (AI) technologies somewhat more difficult. As a SaaS company, Yuki faces its own challenge in an unusual way: convincing accountants of the added value of new (AI) tools.

Online accounting platform

Yuki is an online accounting platform for accountants and entrepreneurs in Belgium and the Netherlands. The platform offers support for administration and accounting based on digitalization and automation. This allows accounting firms and SMEs to improve efficiency, gain real-time insight into their numbers and waste less valuable time.

The accounting platform has two pages, one for the company and one for the accountant. “For the accountant, it provides an overview of all their files and tasks and gives them insight into how and where they can automate. On the other hand, the entrepreneur has insight into his current finances based on his accounting. And all of this in understandable language,” explains Sano.

Together with Visma

Yuki is part of the larger Visma. It operates as an independent entity but is supported by Visma based on all kinds of insights on AI, data protection or new developments. Visma, for example, has 80 ethical hackers under its wing. Visma now includes more than 180 companies spread across Europe and now also in Latin America.

Today, Yuki’s accounting platform runs entirely in the cloud, on AWS servers, but exclusively in Europe. “Each client has their own SQL database within the platform, so Yuki is not dependent on the size of a particular accountant. This allows each entrepreneur to maintain their own strength and speed,” explains Sano.

AI is playing an increasingly important role at Yuki, but the company does not yet have a team of data scientists under its wing. Thanks to the integration with Visma, Yuki has access to various existing AI models and experts.

Proactive advice

Accounting is a profession in itself. One of the challenges Yuki faces today is transferring accountant knowledge into software. “We try to think ahead and offer solutions that the accountant doesn’t yet know he or she needs,” says Sano. According to Sano, proactive advice is very specific to the accounting industry, but also presents other challenges.

“When we introduced the automation process for invoice processing years ago, it initially seemed like an unnecessary new feature to the accountant,” says Sano. Nowadays this is ubiquitous and most accountants use such automation processes.

It takes time to convince the accountant of the added value of a new position. “Accountants don’t immediately feel the need for new tools or simply don’t have the time for them,” she says.

AI in accounting

Just as many years ago with the advent of automation that many accountants didn’t know they needed, the same goes for artificial intelligence (AI). “AI offers many possibilities in accounting, but it must provide added value,” says Sano.

They need to be smart about new AI capabilities and give accountants the confidence that they are providing effective value. It’s our job to convince them of this.

Ellen Sano, Managing Director at Yuki

Yuki already integrates AI for certain automations, but also internal processes. Yuki developers mainly use AI to simplify tasks or extract anomalies. “I strongly believe in AI as a means to facilitate certain processes and not as an end product,” says Sano.

Personal approach

Accounting is a bottleneck profession. “In many companies there are very few accountants,” says Sano. As new tools become available, accountants must invest time in mastering them, time that is not always available to them. “This means that evangelism takes longer,” says Sano. Yuki wants to respond to this with a human approach.

We try to focus on a personal approach, which may sound atypical for a software solution that runs entirely in the cloud.

Ellen Sano, Managing Director at Yuki

Every accounting firm has its own challenges, speeds and teams. Some teams are already further along in their thinking than others. “At Yuki Belgium we have a team of around fifty people who focus exclusively on these offices. You guide them, create plans and organize training to ensure that the transition occurs internally at the team’s pace. “In this respect, we are an atypical SaaS company, where the personal and ‘tailored’ nature is our strength,” says Sano.

In addition, Yuki attaches great importance to learning from each other. For example, Sano and her team already organized a Yuki event where various accountants came into contact with each other. “It’s nice to see that accountants can continue to learn from each other and help each other with certain problems,” she says.

“It is important to us that auditors understand what we stand for and how we want to move in the market. With our personal approach, we try to guide accountants at their own pace so we can reassure them that the time invested in new tools will save them time later,” concludes Sano.