From the sheer quantity of data available today to the pace of technological development, the future accountant will likely look very different from the accountant of years gone by. In this series, I conducted a series of interviews with accounting and financial professionals to find out what they think the future of accounting will look like.

In this article, I’ll share insights from my interview with Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape and Sage Business Partner.

Traditionally, accountants have gone through historic financials with their clients. However, in the future, this will likely not be the case. According to Jeff, "The expectation of an accountant, especially in a small business, is no longer just about giving clients financial statements." Already today, clients are looking for information that is as close to real time as possible.

“And what clients really want from an accounting perspective is to know what that means for their business? How are they going to move forward? How can they leap-frog their competitors? How can they be agile and re-adjust?” - Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape

In other words, clients expect more business advice from their accountants.

Across the different kinds of accounting, from bookkeepers and accountants within small businesses to the CFO at a big multinational, there’s one consistent theme: advisory and insights. In Jeff’s opinion, the question every business should ask is: “How do we actually use this data that we have available to make very valuable business decisions?” And that is where their accountant, bookkeeper, or CFO steps in.

With increased focus on real-time data, Jeff anticipates that the future of accounting will revolve "around using the data that we have available for insights as opposed to just reporting." And with this shift towards business advice and data insights, accountants’ will be required to pick up some new skills.

Jeff notes that there’s a long-standing joke about accountants not having personalities. Now is the time to truly break that stereotype. As Jeff says, “the reality of accounting now is very much centered around client interaction and understanding client needs”. Being able to communicate effectively and deliver value to clients in terms of their specific needs is vital.

As Jeff notes, accountants need to be able to be “both technical and have the ability to translate financial information into ‘consumer speak’, especially for business people who don’t understand accounting jargon”. Moreover, accountants need to have a firm understanding of industry specific financials for their clients.

“One business's metrics are not the same as another business. You can't cut and paste one ratio for another ratio. You've got to have that technical skill to understand what the ratios are and what that means for the business.” - Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape

And then you need to be able to translate this information for your clients so that they will be able to apply it. Jeff emphasizes the word “translate” as that is what the future accountant must be – a financial translator.

This struck me as remarkably similar to Thrive CFO’s Luan van Rhyn’s description of accountants as financial storytellers.

The biggest challenges that accountants are facing today are likely to become more prevalent moving forward. These include the following:

For small businesses, it’s become a competitive market. And the ease of use of various accounting tools has facilitated this environment. As Jeff says:

“You might find that the qualification to become a CA is still quite hard, but you don’t necessarily have to have that to be an accountant. You can still support businesses without that. You can just do a BCOM Accounting and not go through the full CA accreditation. And because the tools are so simple to use, there’s a lot more support that you can get from someone who doesn’t have that higher qualification and you can get it at a cheaper rate.”

So, as small businesses begin to realise that they don’t necessarily need a CA to do their accounting, it’s become a lot cheaper for them to hire someone for this role. To stand out from the crowd, accountants need to have something additional to offer.

Previously, the CFO and CIO have played two separate roles in big organizations. However, the CFO is increasingly needing to have a good understanding of software solutions. The CFO of a company needs to be working closely with the CIO in order to acquire the right technology to make informed decisions and guide clients and stakeholders accordingly. And in some cases, the two jobs may simply be collapsed into one.

Similarly to the case of the CIO and CFO, there used to be a lot of segregated roles within a business, such as a debtors’ clerk and creditors’ clerk, whereas, in the future, many of these can become dual roles because of permission controls. And the efficiencies within accounting systems make it much easier to do that.

The ease of use of accounting software has changed accountants’ relationships with their clients. Now, rather than charging clients for every service, Jeff and his team set up software for them and then leave the clients to do much of their own work on the input side. This means that the role of the accountant today – and in the future – is much more about relationships and added value than specific tasks.

“Your role is no longer about manual tasks. It’s around insights, looking at data, doing trend analysis, pulling in data from other systems. I think where Syft plays quite nicely in that space is the BI and intelligence. And I think that is a growth area for a lot of accountants - understanding how they combine that data they’ve got from a very powerful system into insights.” - Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape

The digitization train has left the station. Those who don’t get on board soon will be left behind.

If we can already see the ways in which technology is changing the accountant’s role today, how might this change even more in the future? According to Jeff, it’s all about systems integrating with each other. The key is to have different systems in your app stack that speak to each other, rather than working in isolation.

“There’s a heavy investment in how to get the systems to talk to each other, share the data, so you get overall insights, not just accounting insights.” - Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape

Jeff outlines a critical process for system integration as follows:

AI and machine learning can enhance the insights you have, but if you don’t have the platform to begin with (part one of the process), you’re not going to get what you need out of that information.

The essential principles of accounting, such as debits and credits, haven’t changed for hundreds of years. However, there are new kinds of accounting that could pave the way for the future, such as what Jeff calls “dimensional accounting.” To explain dimensional accounting, Jeff uses the following analogy:

"Say you tag every transaction like you would a Facebook picture with your friends." On Facebook, you can connect to their profile as well as the geographic location where you took the photograph. In dimensional accounting processes, you could tag a transaction with things such as:

You could save this transaction for later use. As a result of the extra dimensions added to the transaction, when the system generates reports and dashboards for insights, it will be very easy to pivot that data or drill down into the detail underneath it. And this would fundamentally shift how your accounting system is developed.

The future looks primed to revolve around the combination of different kinds of data and how that combination can offer more detailed insights.

“Where the power comes in a tool like Syft is if you are bringing in information from other data sources and combining those logically.” - Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape

Today, common data models are becoming more regular. These models bring together common categories across certain industries. That sort of collaboration is really powerful as it enables high level reporting in standardized categories across businesses.

Jeff Ryan, CFA is the MD of AWCape and Sage Business Partner. He is a financial services and technology expert, with extensive international and varied industry experience through many medium to large-scale strategic initiatives. His experience includes solution architecture, business transformation, business process re-engineering, software development, cost modelling and forecasting, IT audit, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Jeff Ryan, CFA

Jeff has a passion for growing businesses and achieves this by ensuring strategic enablers are identified to drive changes required for real transformation and growth. He also believes in honesty, integrity, teamwork, and professionalism in the workplace and tries to foster real relationships with anyone he interacts with.

​