How to replace an accountant with a robot?

Today is Friday! Congratulations on this event and invite you to watch the interview with our partner, Button service. The guys create robots that are already replacing accountants in large companies. Do you believe that only programmers will be needed in the future? Join the viewing. Well, under the cut text version.



By the way, recently the guys talked about life a year after the introduction of robots .

Series of Digital Transformation articles

Technological articles:

1. Start .
2. Blockchain in the bank .
3. We learn the car to understand human genes .
4. Machine learning and chocolates .

A series of interviews with Dmitry Zavalishin on DZ Online :

1. Are developers needed in the future?
2. How to replace HR-a with a robot?
3. How to replace the restaurant director with a robot?
4. How to stop spending a lot of time on shopping?
5. How to replace HR-a with a robot? Technical part.
6. Future single B2B marketplace or technology game?
7. How to replace an accountant with a robot?

Who is the interview with?

Dmitry Zavalishin is a Russian programmer, author of the concept of OS Phantom, organizer and member of the OS Day conference program committee, founder of the DZ Systems group of companies. In 1990–2000 he took an active part in the creation of the Russian segments of the Internet (Relcom) and Fidonet, in particular, ensured the transparent interaction of these networks. In 2000-2004, he was responsible for the design, development and development of the Yandex company portal, created the Yandex.Guru service (hereinafter Yandex.Market). You can read more on the Wiki .

Andrei Zavyalov - Managed the sales of Internet projects Elba and Dyadok in SKB Kontur. In 2013, together with other leaders, he invented and made a Button. Established partnerships and integration with Alpha and Sberbank. He has an MBA degree and extensive experience in b2c and b2b sales. He knows everything about: sales and marketing, solving complex and non-standard issues, financial, management accounting and cost planning, taxes and optimization schemes, complex negotiations and partnerships.

Interview

I understand correctly - to expel all people, everywhere are robots? And do I understand correctly that in accounting, although it is very regulated, there is still some creative part? How does this happen? If we catch up with robots everywhere, then soulless robots will not tell us a lot, somewhere they may not understand the brilliant train of thought of gender. Or is it nonsense and everything is algorithmized?

The answer to this question can be approached creatively. In fact, I am not the only ideologue of the button, and not the founder of it - I am a co-founder. We have a team, and I'm not alone there. I am proud of her. We are like a multi-headed dragon - each of our heads knows how to own. And this is great. There are conventions, but it's great that there are people who are well versed in each of their industry. But from the point of view of accounting and some kind of chemistry - my partners and I once worked for SKB Kontur. She was one of the pioneers in introducing electronic document management with the tax inspectorate.

It would seem that the electronic document management is amazing: the accountant is sitting at the computer, prepared a tax report, pressed a button, sent it to the tax department, and a protocol came from the tax office. The protocol states right or wrong. If it is correct, then everything is great. Awesome! But there was a rather difficult difficulty in the implementation: not all bought it. Why? Began to find out.

It turned out how it was before? The accountant came to work in the morning, went to the general’s office and said: “Good afternoon, Vasily Ivanovich! Today I'm in tax. ” He is like this: “Do we have a reporting period?” - “Of course, we wrote a declaration yesterday!” I took my handbag and walked briskly towards the tax inspection. She already knows where to go, why, why. I passed everything in the window, did everything, then a manicure, pedicure, garden, some business. And she used to live like that. For her, when a new innovative company comes and says: “Now you will not go for a manicure,” she immediately fails in the program.

You say even worse: "You are not needed at all."

Yes, we say even worse: “You are not needed at all.” Initially, Button as a business was not created as a company that would make robots, neural grids, something else. We sat and thought that the entrepreneur actually needed. That's what hurts him? We acted as a diagnostician - we saw what it hurts. In fact, an entrepreneur has two simple things. First: he does not want to know about accounting.

In general, the state is obliged to take taxes, to support the army, pensioners, etc. It is there, it must take money somewhere, and it says to the entrepreneur: “You are obliged to keep accounts, give us taxes”. But it gives pleasure to no one. And in general, any gender, if he had the opportunity, he would have said: “Don't! Can it be beyond the periphery of my vision? I don't want to do this. ” We began to promote this topic. Now I speak more crystallized, but then we looked, thought, looked, how to make so that the entrepreneur did not really think about it? And we came up with a story that we now call Button. This is a back office for a small business. This is not even outsourcing bookkeeping, but back office.

Immediately question. As far as I understand, the Russian accounting scheme is rather confused. Are you not afraid that the state will somehow simplify it, and you will become redundant?

I think it will most likely be a little different.

Complicate, and you will become more in demand? Anyway, simplification somehow happens.

I will perform a little as a futurologist. Now we go in and pay taxes as individuals. Everyone has a car, an apartment, a dacha, something else. You open "State Services", there the amount is written - entered the card number, clicked, paid.

“Fuck you, take it,” yes.

You even know about how much you will pay with the cost of a car, with horsepower. If you are written off a second time, you will understand. But in general, somewhere someone counted you a tax, and you say: “Okay, accepted”. I pressed the button, the money went away. I think that most likely the state will do about the same.

In relation to the business?

Yes. It has already translated a lot into electronic form. Electronic document management is developing strongly. Everything related to, for example, transactions with VAT, all payments with VAT, companies on a common system - this is all translated into electronic form only. VAT return cannot be brought to the tax, it can only be sent in electronic form.



Paper already can not?

Paper is no longer possible, because the tax is also a robot, a machine that checks: how much this indicated VAT invoice, how much this one. I simplify. Last innovation: online cash desk, 54-. This is what all payments go to the state cloud, etc.

Roughly speaking, when the cash becomes non-cash, it is immediately recorded online.

Yes, roughly speaking, it turns into a figure. One documents are driven into the figure. Nal is driven into the figure. With banks, they were always all good, non-cash was already in the figure. Therefore, by and large, you have documents, you have cash, you have non-cash. Generally, if you abstract, the work of an accountant is a constant reconciliation. You have a flow of money, there is a flow of documents. They must fight. If they fight with you, everything else is a calculator, this is a matter of technology. Therefore, I think that the state may complicate the calculation of tax or some kind of scheme, but it will still make it easier for the entrepreneur in the end. Now, for example, the patent system is developing. If you write sites, you can buy patents. You do apartment renovation - bought a patent, paid the money in advance and that's it.

But still, there is a certain picture of the world in the head of a good accountant. I know by myself. He comes, says: “Listen, this counterparty has to pay you this way now, and if he makes this payment a month later, there will be less taxes here.” This is not exactly the scale, but it is some kind of money, the effectiveness of this process. This is a living person. We from such robot will not wait?

I think it will all be. I heard that in England the guys are doing such a startup - not really about accounting, but about the legal part. They created a car, a bunch of servers where you can load any contract, and the car analyzes this contract according to the legislation of forty-five countries, and issues recommendations on how in this country the contract passes, does not pass, risks. Almost in digital form. How much will you lose if you do not fulfill the conditions of this contract.

Also seemingly mega intellectual work. In accounting, it is even simpler: there is a PBU, accounting rules approved by the Ministry of Finance. I will not load smart phrases, but nevertheless all this is. Of course, there is variation inside. But, by and large, this variation arises when one counterparty did something wrong, and the other also had something wrong. And a kind of gluing begins. If everything is good there and everything is good here - the question is removed.

This is all after the fact.

Bookkeeping is after the fact, yes.

And what I am talking about is some kind of conditionally preventive process. An accountant may participate at an earlier stage, say: "What you have in mind, it will not be profitable for you because of this, because of this." This part? Of course, as long as you live in a very small business mode - roughly speaking, you have a couple of million turnover a month there - all this is not essential. At a substantial transaction volume, financial performance becomes noticeable.

It may bring you an additional 3-4%, but nevertheless, on the scale of the company's marginality, this is quite a money for which it makes sense to fight. Do you end up somewhere as a tool? Where is the spectrum of your client - from zero to some level?

It turned out two questions in one. Yes, first of all we are working on the small business segment. Roughly, from a million to ten per month. These are 5–50 employees.

And up to a million you are not fit?

We are good, but we have a minimum tariff - 9000 per month.

And, it turns out to be expensive.

Yes. And in general, now very many banks make free solutions for very simple IP at six percent. And in general - why go to us? Although many still come to us, because 9000 is not so much. You get much more than just a calculator - that very consultation.

So you still have it?

Yes. We provide advice.

Manually?

Yes, by hand. Interestingly, we have such a specialty, “robot teacher”. We have accountants who sit and train the robot. They advise, increase the rules, train the neural grid. Accounting profession as such will not die. We already have people who sit and continuously train the robot.

It will not die, it will just be very few of them, and they will be teachers.

Absolutely right. If we talk about a slightly higher segment: take, for example, the company “Russian Railways”, several hundred thousand employees - they have a unified service center, which employs about eight thousand accountants. In a very large part of these eight thousand accountants perform a lot of routine operations.

But you can replace them too?

Here we can replace them. Of eight thousand, we can replace two or three. But let the others work. Naturally, there will be four hundred people who do accounting for IFRS, something else is there. This is all possible. In general, accountants have a very interesting thing. I do not understand them, in a sense, I admire them. It seems to me that when an accountant begins to practice his profession, he is told at the first lesson: “Dear accountant Anya! Bear in mind that every three months of your life you will leave work at the wrong time. ”

They really have a very unlimited working day. What surprises me is that they are generally mentally ready for this. As railroad workers are ready for their work schedule on New Year's Eve: they understand that they can go to the shift from December 31 to January 1. They live with it. I myself somehow worked on the railway, I know. Accountants also know that if the reporting does not go - they are sitting at the weekend, everything is fine. In fact, all these things related to the routine, in a sense, will allow accountants to work from 9 to 18. They cannot even imagine this, but it will most likely happen!

This is precisely due to the fact that in the manual accounting some run-offs still occur, which in the end have to be reduced. And if it is automated, then it is constantly reduced, yes? It is always at zero, the final figures are always in balance, and therefore he goes home on time.

Yes. Absolutely right.

So what about Russian Railways? Are you already trying to sell your services to them and replace two thousand accountants?

Not yet.

Why?

We have never thought before that the technologies we use at home can be used elsewhere. Usually what do they do? Small business is trying to outsource. An average business recruits 10-15 accountants or goes entirely to outsource to large companies. The biggest one would like to go to the outsourcing, but is afraid to let go of control. Imagine that the accounting department of "Russian Railways" is not in the "Russian Railways" is strange. They are trying to do something there, muddy, connect.

But in general, we never thought that the technologies that automate the routine here can be applied there. We just recently thought about it. Now we are looking at how this can be done. It seems that it causes a certain interest in those to whom I tell about it. True, one of the companies with which we communicated directly said: “Listen, we are not ready to give large ones, we are not ready to give to KPMG, although they would like to take it with pleasure. Firstly, there is a large price tag, and secondly, we still want to keep the accounting department. But we want to reduce it and improve the quality of accounting! ”Again, how to improve the quality of accounting? Retain twenty cool accountants who will again sit at the meeting and think preventively, but they do not want to do anything else.

Do they want to engage in exactly strategy?

Yes, engage in strategy, something else to suggest. But to sit on bringing together five documents for this payment, and under this document five payments - excuse me, the technology is already in a position to do this. Therefore, we think both here and there. We have experience in small business, there are customers, already the second thousand customers. And in large yet. I hope that we will go there somehow.

If interested, I can tell you how we appeared. When we were making the "Button", we thought: we decided the pain of a small business, that's great! There was one work model, an accountant, a lawyer and a business assistant worked for each client, such a mini-team. Then, with an increase in the number of customers, oddly enough, the number of errors increases. Very strong human factor. We began to think what to do with it. It turned out that you need to go into automation. Now I am telling you that this is cool, it reduces costs, these are new technologies, new markets.

In the beginning, you did not understand this?

Not. It seems to me that the first thing that was in my head: guys, you need to do something so that there are no mistakes, so that the accounting is transparent, so that you can see where people can make mistakes. And we began to see what and how. There is such a thing in programming called extreme pair programming. This is when two developers sit down for one monitor, for one keyboard, and together they write code, they think, they discuss it in the process. It is effective.

This is a very beautiful legend, in life I have not met.

No, it really works for us. Moreover, it worked in “Contour”, and it works in “Button”. But now we have gone further - we have extreme accounting programming.

Are there two bookkeepers?

No, the developer and accountant. Remember, I said, as an accountant: "Everything, I went to the tax"? And in fact, as it turned out, a lot of things are atypical. This accountant thinks: “Well, it’s impossible right there,” because he needs to justify his own value. And the developer is a terrific person, he sits and says: “Listen, I don’t understand, but what’s so complicated?” He presents the world as a number. He takes everything out of the accountant, this problem - where, what, how, where - puts it into binary code, that's all! The work of the programmer and accountant allowed us to understand how this can be done: how, what, where, where to attach the neural net, where to attach the automation. That's the thing.

Anyway, you in this place can not get rid of all the problems? Similarly, there should absolutely be mistakes at the previous stage.

They are.

In the contract they wrote one, they wrote another in the invoice, they sent a third amount. How it all beats, where it is glued - not one damn leg breaks. In order to return all this later, it is necessary to reach the people who signed these contracts, did this work, exhibited these acts - why did they write so much? “And this is because we made him a 1.5% discount, because he is a regular customer. It seemed to us that it was necessary. ” And I do not have to beat the numbers. How to deal with this?

This is one of the things that we just recently decided. We even have a name, I will not say it.

So funny?

Yes, we all have fun.

The “robot-searching” is generally impressive.

Yes, the robot-raskukozhka, the fence of documents - the fence in the form of a fence. We love these words. The point is that if the moment associated with this act, at a discount, arises later, much later - this is a problem. If you immediately begin to reduce the document with the amount ...

That is, since you are constantly monitoring, you will find out earlier?

Absolutely right. How does an accountant in ordinary life do? He has been playing solitaire for two and a half months. Then the next two weeks: let's go! On the embrasure. And it starts working 27 hours a day. Accounting with accounting goes to the battle: who has a discount, who has what where. And if you start doing all this regularly, then you have such problems becomes much less. We even have such a term: “rehearsal reporting”. We say to the accountants: “Guys, imagine that today is April 25,” and in fact, on January 25. And we begin to make statements as if tomorrow. And we are ready, we show the client.

We have learned to show him automatically: here are the documents, here is the money. We constantly post it to him. First laid out, once a month he was shown, then once every two weeks. Now we want it to be almost online: he threw the document, saw that there was a question with money. When this is solved immediately, when you left the supplier, or saw the receipt of money - you explain what and how, in a second. And after three months everything is already forgotten.

What happens to management reporting? After all, it is clear that the same Gender is not primarily concerned with accounting reports, about which he really would like to know nothing, so that she herself somehow happened and flew into tax, and it is desirable to say: “Today we saved you one and a half million taxes ", - well done, bonus, go from here. And the management is also tied to this, and it is completely different. And you cannot do anything with it, you cannot provide it to them. But you can give them the primary organization. Is there such a picture happening?

In general, with management accounting is a very interesting story. Quite a lot of customers want us to keep management accounting. But as soon as we tried: “Want? Okay, 5,000 rubles a month ", -" What are you, I still lead her myself! "That's the whole point.

Businesses do not even want to pay 5,000 rubles? This is ridiculous!

Do not want. And why? Because they actually want parallel management accounting to be checked. , , , . . , , . . , , , . : , , - . - – , Iiko R-Keeper. , , , - …

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