Using AI & Automation In Accounting - Case Study

There's 10 hats to every business. If you're looking at, you know, operations, sales, marketing, finance, it, all of these different hats, every business has them and usually it's the business owner that's wearing every single one of those hats. The only way that you can stop wearing one of those hats is if you put processes in place and systemize things so that someone else can take over that hat for you.

Okay, today we're going to be exploring the topic of process re engineering. We'll be talking about becoming an AI first company. And how do you introduce this to your team and how they might respond? I think we're going to be covering a range of different topics when it comes to business systemization. Recently I just met our guest who I'll introduce in a moment and she was sharing how she was able to dramatically reduce the time that her team was taking to complete some of the critical processes in her business. And I thought it'd be a great case study to inspire and share with other business owners on what's possible and talk about what are some of the changes that are happening as we're seeing in small business. So before I get ahead of myself though, I'd just like to introduce Shannon Schmidt from Smart Business Solutions. Maybe just to start, Shannon, if you can introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the work that you guys do.

Yeah, great. Thanks very much for having me. So I'm Shannon Smith. We're an accountant, accounting practice, financial planning and mortgage broking. I seem to keep adding more services as I see pain points in my clients. I actually think, okay, well we'll do that service as well. So literally a one stop shop from a finance perspective, I guess I could say. And locally here on the Mornington Peninsula.

Yes. It's rare for me to have a conversation with someone who's just up the road, so makes the time zones very easy. You mentioned about having the financial background. I find a lot of people in finance consider themselves systems people or automatically gravitate towards systems. Did you see yourself as a systems person?

I think I've always been quite structured and organized. Those people that do fall into finance or accounting do, as you say, have that kind of personality, I guess. Also while I was at school, I worked at McDonald's and I actually thrived on their systems and their processes. So I can actually say our business probably looks like the systems and processes we used to have at McDonald's with the walkthroughs and all of those documents. So I have always liked that logic and following the Systems and processes. And knowing that, I guess once I document a process, there's a sense of relief that comes across me on that process is now documented. Someone can follow that. If someone's away, there's, you know, there's a backup plan.

Yeah. So it sounds like you probably had this idea of systems baked into your way of thinking early on. I hear a lot of stories of people who go through McDonald's and fast food franchises and they just get it because they see systems at a much larger scale. And then you just take chunks of that and then apply it to small business. It can be quite a game changer. And how did you come across Systemology? Because it sounds like you obviously already had a firm understanding and appreciation of systems.

Actually probably Google. And it was quite a number of years, years ago when I actually came across it because I think we've been using System Hub Easy 6, 7 years or something quite a long time. And it was quite surprising for me to find out that you were based here in Australia because I just assumed it was, I think back then you had it in US dollars. But we, you know, I just found it and we had everything on at that stage, kind of previously on Google was where our processes were. And I was just looking for a systems system that I could put all of our training on, our internal processes and making it easy. So that's. Yeah, I just was googling and kind of found it and then tested it and have been using it ever since and had no idea until recently that you were actually on this part of.

The world, just around the corner and with your team as you've built this systems culture, is that something that was easily adopted for them or. I know we're probably going back a little bit now because you've been using System Hub for some time, but at the start, what was that like?

So I guess a lot of the systems when I first started, I mean, because originally I started my practice now 17 years ago, um, and it was just me at that point. And then now today we've got just over 20 employees. So you've got to as you actually have those processes in place and it is about encouraging the team to actually put a system in place and how can you expediate recording that system? And I always say to them, because sometimes people think, oh, is that going to be, you know, replacing my job if I give away all of these systems and processes that I'm doing? But I'm always encouraging them. At the end of the day, they need to be able to make it so that if they're away on holidays, no one needs to call them because they've got a system in place that enables us to actually progress as a business. But not only that, it's an opportunity for them to start kind of excelling. And so there's always opportunities in our practice to move even from an administration perspective. You know, front reception may then expand to other parts of the business. So if you've got systems and processes there, they can train up the next level of person. So it has become now a culture of where someone will say, is it in System Hub? Is it in System Hub? And part of that also is to actually enable each other so that you've got a situation where we might still explain something in person to someone as well and we'll say, and it's in System Hub. It gives that person that's learning the opportunity when you get a new person in that they can watch the videos and read the process two or three times and not feel like they're pestering someone to do that. You know, we had an administration person of nine years leave recently. Smooth transition, Smooth transition to the next person. It's all in System Hub. Everyone's looking it up and, you know, the clients probably wouldn't have even noticed that we've had a change in that administration.

Funny, when I see businesses that have process versus those that don't, it's a night and day difference. I can't imagine doing business any other way. Now you're coming into contact with a huge variety of different businesses. Obviously with the accountancy practice is this. Do you see the result of four systems in business and how they manifest? Like, obviously it's one thing to just say, oh, the business is missing process, it's another to go. And this is the result of that. I don't know if you have any insights on that.

Well, I probably. I should become your business development manager because I think I refer so many clients to go into System Hub. I show them our System Hub and say, this is how we do it. When I look at it is those that actually have systems in place or my most successful clients have systems in place. It enables them to grow and enables them to scale. Sometimes it is overwhelming for them to, because often they've set up their business, they're growing and before you know it, they've got a heap of staff or things going and then the wheels start to fall off because no one does it as well as they did it. And there's all of these issues. So I often say to clients look, there's 10 hats to every business. If you're looking at, you know, operations, sales, marketing, finance it, all of these different hats, every business has them and usually it's the business owner that's wearing every single one of those hats. The only way that you can stop wearing one of those hats is if you put processes in place and systemize things so that someone else can take over that hat for you. So that's what I'm often talking about to clients, that you can't do that all overnight. But how can you slowly start to systemize? And a lot of people think, oh, it's just easy for me to just quickly do it and just quickly do it, you know, no, create a system. Yes, they might not do it as well as you the first time, the second time, the third time. But definitely my most successful clients are those that have systems in place. And you, what you see is the business just goes along and then they have these systems and processes and then they grow up here. So, you know, and I use that as an example, I use my own business as an example when I'm talking to clients to actually say, well, look at, you know, when you come to smart, you get that, you know, everyone raves about our client service. That's because we have the systems in the background to make sure that we don't let things drop through the cracks, that we make sure that we can spend the time on client face, face to face client interaction rather than, you know, scrambling on all of these, these aspects in the background that I think a lot of businesses do.

One thing that I like, because I'll often have a discussion with a business owner and we'll agree that systems and processes are important. I don't think I've ever had a discussion where someone's gone no aren't important. So the challenge I always try and face when someone's first getting introduced to the idea is how do we make this a priority? I don't know if you've got any thoughts on when you're talking to clients, how you kind of let them know, hey, this is something that you've got to start work with. And you talked about this idea of at least starting slowly and it building over time, which I love. It's about getting on the path and staying on the path and you zoom ahead five, six years down the track for you and you're starting to be able to reap the rewards of that decision way back when. But in the moment, you don't always see that return straight away. You Put a process in place and it's not going to equal, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars in your bank account immediately. So I don't know if you've got any thoughts on how you would approach that.

Yeah, I think you need invest in those systems and processes, breaking it down and maybe it doesn't give you that money back straight away, but it ultimately will or it will give you back. So as a business owner, often when I say to clients, well, in 12 months time, if you don't change what you're doing, you'll still be doing what you're doing now. And you know, you're wearing all 10 hats. You're trying to get those, those systems and processes that you're not doing. So what are the key systems? If you walk into your business in 12 months time, what are the key things that you're spending time on that are low value tasks for you? You know, if they, if they're, you know, an engineer, they should be spending all their time on their engineering aspects. You know, maybe doing their bookkeeping is not the best use of their time. Maybe dealing with other aspects of their business is not the best use of their time. Maybe that should be an administration. So I always say to clients, what is your low value and your high value tasks? And if they're low value, how can you like systemize those so that someone else can do that for you so you're not doing it, so that you're managing it and monitoring it. And then often people say, oh, I'll do that. And then you speak to them in three months time and they're like, oh no, I've just been really busy. Okay, well what can we do in 3 months time? What systems are you going to have in place? And now let's focus on, in three months time those systems are going to be in place. So I want you to set aside two hours every Friday afternoon. Probably not your most productive time. So I want you to spend two hours, look slowly going through all of those systems that you need to systemize. So sometimes I find when I'm working with clients, I might be having to break it down for them and say, okay, you know, let's look at your bookkeeping or invoicing process. That might be something they've been doing. Your administration can do that invoice because they've got their quote that you've done, they've got all these other aspects. How can they do that? And then systemize that, record your loom video, put it onto system hub with the videos so you've got the whole explanation and just breaking it down. And so sometimes I might be mind mapping with a client the different processes and under each of those processes, what are all the different systems they're going to need and then getting them to tick them off as they go through and making deadlines and sometimes just I guess you could say hassling them, keeping them accountable to do it. Because otherwise in 12 months time and I can speak from experience otherwise, I did it myself, it was just easier. One of the last processes that I systemized was my own bookkeeping for smart, you know, because it was easy. I just quickly do it on a Sunday night and a Monday night and a bit on a Tuesday night. Before you know it, you had all of this time. Now I systemized all of that and I had a full time assistant finance manager working on all of that. She recently left. She wanted to go and study her master's full time. And so you think, okay, what am I going to do now? I am looking for someone else. My university son who's studying to be a pilot. Not even an accountant. Clearly smart, but not. He's been doing it for me. So he has been following the systems and processes and since the 1st of May, since she left, he has been doing it. So I haven't found the right person, but he has been doing it and just working extra outside of uni and has been following systems and processes. He is not an accountant and he is managing the bookkeeping for three practices.

Yeah, I love that. I love the way that you're able to continue to innovate and evolve. It's almost like step one, when someone's first getting started, let's make what's seemingly invisible visible by documenting it. Like it's invisible because it's in someone's head and they're just doing it. So we'll document it and make it visible. And then I love the culture that you've built in your organization to continue to innovate on that. And that was one of the reasons I reached out because I saw the way that you're thinking about and re engineering process. I'd love to kind of dig into that a little bit more. Is this like how especially all of the innovations we're seeing with AI and things like that, how are you able to kind of build a culture in your organization of continuous innovation? Is that something that you're doing or other team members or everybody?

Yeah, that's an interesting one. So with the everything that's going on with AI, I know all of us actually. I remember when ChatGPT first came out and I thought, oh, that's just going to be a phase, I might even skip that phase. And that lasted in my thought for about an hour or two and then I thought, no, maybe it is worth looking at. And I'm really glad I did keep up with is funny because I often joke that, you know, I'm one of the oldest in our business, you know, over 50, I'm one of the oldest, but I'm this always been into tech and what's going on and what's new. I guess everyone's always looked at accounting and said accountants are going to be obsolete. It's going to be automated through AI and robotic process automation. And so I look at that and say, well actually a lot of processes have, if we look at a zero accounting software, a lot of processes that people used to have, say a lot of Filipinos doing the work for them, they don't anymore because Xero is actually doing that for them. So there is a lot of this technology and changes going on. And that's why I always say in my practice we need to have client service needs to be absolutely not just oh, we're great client service. No, we really need to be great with client service. We need to be really with our clients and supporting them. But we also need to be technically brilliant and we need to keep our smarts up as much as possible because ultimately anything that is a mundane process, it will be replaced at some point by robotic process automation or AI. That is going to happen and we've seen so much change and those that don't evolve are going to be left behind. So I think that sometimes that can be a bit overwhelming for some of the team. You'll have half the team who will, you know, when I first actually and I we're actually now working with developers to put a robot in place. So the robot actually the robot is live and it's undertaking processes. So when I first talked about that September last year, so just under a year ago, and I said to run, we're going to look at robotic process automation. I learned a lot then about the difference between robotic process automation and AI. I think a lot of people think that it's the same thing. So the more research and so working with the developers now in that first meeting, when I explained that to my 20something staff, I can tell you half the room were like, wow, this is going to be amazing. And the other half I think were like, oh my God, what's going to happen? To my job. So you had those two parts of that. So the way I looked at it and presented it, especially in my industry, accounting is something that, you know, there's been 50% less graduates in accounting in the past 10 years. It's hard to find staff. So the way I've been approaching that with my team is at the end of the day, there is a shortage out there and there is work that is not the best use of your time. If it is mundane, if you find it boring, because you're taking numbers from one spot and you're putting them into another spot and there's no value add there, that's what our robot should be doing. Our robot should be doing that so you can spend time talking with your clients and actually doing the more, you know, using your brain on it and the more exciting type of work. So as we've gone through that mindset, it was interesting at the very beginning, I could see some people were a bit hesitant to. Now we have a list and everyone just says, oh, I hate doing this part, it's so boring. We put it onto the process for the robot. So working with the developers, we actually give them access to our System Hub. So even though in working with the developers, we have to then do a full walkthrough, which can take for hours and go through, I give them all the different processes, I group a few of the processes and I actually share that with them and say, can you automate this process? And they watch the videos and the process and go step by step and say, yes, a robot could do this. Great, excellent. Let's have a look at that. So that's where the process is. I guess you could nearly say we've taken it to the next level on. We've had all of those processes there. If anyone can follow the System Hub process that we've put in place and they're following it, well, a robot can do that too. So there's step by step. So if there's no, I guess where the AI and this will be interesting to see where that links. If there's no. If it's. If it can be methodically put out, then a robot can do it. Obviously with the AI, that's going to bring that next level in it. So that's been something that we've been looking at. What are the processes that take us quite a bit of time. So one of the processes we've automated we looked up in the past 12 months. We'd spent 998 hours in the year on that particular process. So on, you know, and doing that now that's been replaced. One of them which was a very much an admin process which used to take two hours every day for administration. That's gone now. So we've gained 10 hours a week. And so what's interesting is even with that administration person of nine years leaving and so my other administration, I've got one who's been here 10 years, one that's for you. So I had the three. The team was the core administration for the accounting practice. One's gone after nine years through the robot and refining our systems and looking at all of those. We haven't replaced that role now. Yeah, that role has been replaced by the robot.

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now. I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video. This is extraordinary. I. I love that you were able to spot this back in September because I think that's another key takeaway for someone listening to this. There's a lag time from when you make a decision to when you start to reap the rewards because you have to learn and have the discussion and introduce it to the team and go find the developer or the team member and make the mistakes and then through that process. But was there something or how did you spot this opportunity 12 months ago? Like when. What made you go, hang on, I. I need to embrace this. I can see where this is going because that's. That's quite some forward thinking.

Yeah, I think where that is and there should be a lot of businesses that take it going to kind of take a step and actually think this as well. They should take a step back and have a look at it. I looked at it and said, okay, we are in a situation where it's really hard to get accountants and we need them to be doing high value added services for the clients. And so I was looking at it going, okay. And the market for wages is. There's a lot of pressure on wages. So you know, my clients are not going to keep paying more for their accounting services. I'd love them to, but there's also this, you know, there's this challenge on that side. How can I afford to pay my accountants the right, you know, the right wage so I can be market competitive, have them working on the high value added and then also, you know, identifying and finding those people. So if I can replace, and I guess if I was the Filipino government, just saying hopefully this doesn't all get all political out there and things but if I was the Filipino government, I'd be really worried about all of my BPOs and where my whole or my whole country's workforce is going to be working. Anything that is being done that is a methodical and logical and following process and no thought coming into it, which has been my experience with some of the work that I've had done over the years. I used to have accountants over there, I don't anymore because Xero does it all. So you've got that. I would be concerned because they can all be replaced by a robot. So as I talked about the assistant finance manager, the reason I was going to identify someone, I was looking at it. I kind of toyed the idea for a month or so, convinced my son to do that work for me and he's as happy as anything on it. But we're going to replace that whole role with the robot. I grave my programmers, all of the system hub, these are all the processes that get done daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. And they're writing programs now to replace that role. Now it's not going to replace the thought process around it, but it's that mundane part of it. And so you do need to invest up front. And so I looked at in two ways that if I can have a robot within the business performing services that are not value added in the eyes of the clients. Unnecessary unfortunately. So you know, this unnecessary, this necessary evil type thing has to be done, not a high value and it's taking away from valuable time. My team could be working on other aspects with the client that the client sees as valuable. Then it nearly was a no brainer. And so it is something that I will say we're already seeing now the benefits of it. The team are really happy. I mean we're now the team are proactively looking for other processes that they can get the robot to do because they're not value added, they're frustrating processes.

I can already see that you're on the pulse for the changes that are going on in the industry because you were looking at offshoring and I know they're know whether it's the Philippines or India or South Africa, there's depending on where you're located in the world. We did see a lot of back end finance jobs go to emerging economies to have this kind of, you know, wax on, wax off, just follow process type tasks. And then accountants needed to go, well how am I going to add my value on top of that? Because that part of the business is just getting commoditized. And really this is the next wave after that, which is okay, well AI is about to come in here and potentially turn this on their head. And you've clearly identified the difference between the two with the process automation which is well having very set instructions that a robot needs to follow. And you kind of like programming. And I often say that the systems that you document today will become the programming of the machines tomorrow. And where AI now starts to bridge the gap is AI can make intelligent decisions and fill in gaps where a process might not be able to like previously. That's the part of the human, they kind of connect the dots. Whereas I will get smarter and smarter at filling those gaps. I know just recently you and the team checked out the AI first master class that we ran. Was there any big takeaways or what stood out for you as you know, big takeaways from that session?

Yeah, well, I'd have to say when I first watched it I actually my head hurt by the end of it actually I was blown away with where everything was going. My head was hurting because I was trying to, I was thinking so much about it. It was interesting watching my team actually watch it. Half the team then were inspired about hey we can especially on the insurance side of our business. We can actually get it to read all the PDFs of all the different insurance and imagine what we can ask the question. So we're not reading all of those. I think the other half of the team, their initial gut reaction was wow, that's going to take my job. So the bit that as I guess as a business leader, what I'm looking at it saying no, it's actually not going to take your job because ultimately people still need people. And that's what if I look at our business, you know, we've got over 20 people. I don't have any offshore accounting accounting people, all my accountants are sitting here and that's what actually our clients like about it. But I can still offer a cost effective service because I've got other aspects of the business being automated, you know, and so that's where I've got that benefit. But I think people are still going to buy from people and want to deal with people. But we need to embrace what's happening with technology, technology and use it to our advantage. So we're just starting with Copilot and getting the team embraced on co pilot. And what can that actually mean from the business? You know, looking at, you know, the Excel and Copilot is just incredible what it can do. And so it's actually really half of our training. We have training every Monday as a team. We have an hour and a half every Monday as the whole team. And sometimes we break off into our technical sections. We know with accounting, financial planning, mortgage broking. But I have to say in the last 12 months, more of it has been around like your masterclass. A lot of these other skills that people would say they're soft skills. And I look at it and go, well, actually these are some of the most important skills that people are going to need going forward. So I think there was a lot of overwhelm when people saw what was coming and what these changes are. But the more they're actually embracing it, the better and the more we can stay ahead of what's going on. Because those that don't are going to have the. I think the challenge, I mean, I look at it now also, what's going on with robotic process automation and AI? I mean, this is one of the biggest changes we've had since, I nearly want to say since like when computer first started happening. And remember when computer came out and Internet, you know, some people didn't embrace it and others did. I feel like that's what's happening now because the change is so quick that yes, my hurt, my head hurts at times, but it's, you know, we have to keep going. We have to keep going, I think to stay ahead of the market.

Yeah, that embracing of change. I think, you know, we talked about some of the steps my brain can't help but default into. Okay, what's the step for this? Like, I feel like step one is the documentation of process because that helps you to bring the invisible visible. It gets you to identify things that are going on in the business and we know they're critical tasks and they're getting done. So we don't spend our attention on things that add no business value. So that's the key part of it. Then we kind of move into that step of, well, where do you identify after that, where to start around automating of process. And I think part of it is understanding what's possible, which is things like the masterclass help with that the next. And you said something where you're like oh we'll, you know, you have visibility and understanding as to which tasks are taking which time. So you can go oh well that's 900 hours or that's you know, a couple of hours a day and then that like what do you use to, to guide you to say there's low hanging fruit here or what are you bringing to the programmer to, to say this is something that we should work on.

Yeah. So when I started, when I first tried to identify it, I wanted to have a return on investment. I mean obviously being an accountant I need, you know, if we're going to get this robot and get the programming, so what's going to be a big bang for our buck. And that was like one of the systems where I actually was worked out that it was going to be nearly a thousand hours a year that it would save if we actually had that automated. So I thought well that's a big win. Straight away. When you think the average full time person is available to work 1650 hours a year, that's a big number that that robot can replace on that. And it's work that you know, was, was kind of not the best use of people's time. But I think that once you identify that every time one of my team will bring up an idea now and we've got our kind of board going of everyone just keeps adding and even on a Monday in our morning meeting we say anyone else got any ideas? And then we try and quantify. So it's well, how many hours does that take you a day or a week? How many hours? So what would it save you if that was to actually be automated? And so then we're really looking at the bigger chunk of time and saying well what, what? And we literally sort it by the amount of hours that it's going to save and that that becomes our priority of when we do it. We escalated some of the admin processes as a result of the admin leaving. So we actually said okay, well with looking at these, what can we actually add on to a robot? And also it gives you an opportunity to go well just because we've kept doing that process and that process has happened for so many years, do we need that process? So we back went back into all the processes were documented in System Hub and we actually started to challenge as you were allocating some of those processes out to the other two administration team members. We actually challenged do we still need to do this process? Because sometimes people just keep doing something because it was part of the process. So we did actually eliminate some of the processes because they were no longer relevant. No one was using the output of that process, so let's get rid of it. So we did do that. And then what processes? We escalated some of those even though the hours may not have been the same as some of our other processes we had identified. I escalated those with the programmers because I was like, well that means we don't need to hire another admin to do this. And it's being automated and systemized. So that's what's worked really, really well on that side. And then just trying to look at it from a. I guess I think now the culture has become very much like this is not the best use of my time. This if this was done and automated and then the robot flicked because the robot flicks tasks to people, you know, it's so funny. It then flicks it to a human, it's done its bit and you get a task in the software we use, you get a task from, from the robot telling you're ready to go for your next part of the process. And so the team like that because they're like, well that takes an hour, an hour and a half on, you know, every single set of the clients accounts because I can tell you, fixed asset register. Every client screws up their fixed asset register. If they're using Xero, they just do it. And that can take us an hour or an hour and a half to every single client to fix it up. Because it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Well, from a robot perspective, robots love that. They find they go through their processes to work out where is that needle in the haystack. It frustrates my team every time. Well and as a client, clients don't want to pay because they say really, how would I have, you know, I've just entered my transactions. How did I screw it up? Why is that a problem? So that's something, you know, quick and easy one that now is team are happy the systems are being done. And it's something that, you know, that actually clients didn't even realize that every time they coded things wrong and then they moved it, it actually was causing issues like that. So ye, those ones, some of those which are quick wins out of frustration. I'll get those done. Because now people are getting, you know, annoyed when they're doing things that is not the best use of their time.

Yeah, you mentioned something that the astute listener might pick up and it's a key to really making a lot of this work is this idea of human in the loop. As you start to program things, you put in steps where the machine does its bit and then it passes it back to the human to do the double checking or to fit it into the bigger deliverable or whatever it might be. I think that's definitely someone who hears this will be able to take away what, what are some other examples of processes that you have been able to automate? Like obviously you think in terms of finance, which is actually your deliverable, like that is your operations department as well as your finance department because it's the same. But yeah, I'd love if there's a handful of use cases where you're like, hey, reconciling or I don't know, where are some of the places you've used it.

Yeah. So obviously on the reconciling with your, you know, whether it be even with the Xero, the reconciling, looking at our own finance situation, but anytime you're actually repeating something. So on the administration side, the process I talked about for two hours every day that we got rid of, we have. And it's funny, there's a lot of softwares out there that, that say they're going to save you the world of time because they've got all of this AI in it. So we have one software that basically takes all of the ATO correspondence for the day, in the morning, it sucks it all into. This software automatically creates the letters to go to the clients so that we can then email it out to the client. Now you can actually set that software because it's apparently so smart. You can set that software to just automatically email out to Dave and say, hey, here's your PAYG notice. Now there's a problem with that. The problem is, and I discovered afterwards, why is the team, you know, checking every, every single one of these emails when it should be able to be automated? Because that's what the software said they were going to solve all of our problems and save us so much time. Now the reason for that is the ATO can take up to two weeks. They issue you a notice, but it can take up to two weeks to get out of the ATO systems and to you. Now you may have already paid your tax in that two weeks time period. So when I go to send you a letter two weeks after the fact saying that you owe this Tax. We started getting phone calls when we were automatically doing what the software told us. Oh, you can just send it out to clients and now you have no touch and it's life is so much better because of their AI. Well, it actually wasn't as bad because we were then getting heaps of phone calls from clients saying, I already paid my tax. Why did you just email this out to me? So then my team started to look at the draft emails and open up the ATO portal and delete literally every second one of those emails because we don't want to annoy a client because then they phone us, then we're looking things up. So you can have software that does these amazing things, but it just misses this one part. So we've had a program that actually now our robot gets the draft letter, logs into the ATO portal checks. You know that the letter dollar amount owing is still owing on the portal as at today before we push send. If it's not it, it actually will then delete it and off it goes. So we've got all the parameters, save two hours a day of non value added time. But that two hours I guess meant that we weren't having frustrated clients 101 phone calls and things like that. Well, now we've got a robot checking it instead of the team member. So anything on the administration? The way I look at it with the team, anytime you are doing something that takes data from one spot to another spot and you're not thinking or you're thinking, okay, I take this data and I put it in step one, step two, step three, or in these different spots. That's what a robot can replace.

Yes.

If it's non value added, you know, it should be doing it.

Yeah. And how did you go about like finding someone? Like, I can't imagine that you're a programmer, you're an accountant. So how, how did you approach that step? Like is this someone that you looked local or offshore? Was it like a full time, part time or a contractor? Like how did you go through navigating to find someone who could help solve it?

I actually went for, it's kind of a larger company. I saw them actually on LinkedIn. They'd done a lot of work for some of the big accounting firms. So they've been doing this with some of the big multinational firms and they're based there in Australia, but in America as well and that. So I actually invested in that rather than just a developer directly, mainly because it was going to be such a. It is going to be A critical part of your business in the long run. Having a robot is not something that I'm skilled at to be able to take it over if I was frustrated with what they were doing or something, I don't know. So I wanted a company that, you know, they're going also into my system. So I wanted a company that had, that was a decent size, that employs the programmers but you know, has all of that framework, you know, around them to make sure that if they're accessing my systems we have the security around it, especially in the industry I'm in, but that they've got, we've got the security and all of those requirements as well. Plus it may be they will cost me a little bit more than maybe if you've got someone else, you know, just directly offshore or something like that. But I guess my concern was around our data and security and also I see this as a long term solution. For me, I don't see this as just something I'm going to quickly do. So I want to get it right up front and get the programming. You know, there's a lot of people that go and build their own little robots and I look at it and I think how is it that they're building their robots? Because they've just gone on to a YouTube and they've looked at how to do it. I think what we're doing in investing in a developer and doing it like this is we're covering all the what ifs. You can potentially build your own robot, but it will do, you know, only in the straightforward situation. So we're tailoring it to our software. It's got an email address I can log into, it's kind of a dashboard and watch the mouse going as it's actually working and doing things like that. So to me was around, you know, security, I guess security, the reputation, the fact that they've done it with all these big accounting firms as well, that that's what was important for me to make sure that I got it right, you know, especially additional systems and processes of your internal business.

So yeah. And is it a user contact point? Like I know you're systems lover, I don't know. Do you have someone else on the team as well that you've identified as a systems champion or are you the systems champion or is it a. How do you approach it or is it organization? Everybody's a systems champion.

Get everyone. But I think sometimes people gravitate, some people gravitate more to systems and that, you know, you might ask some people to record a system and they literally just record themselves doing something for an hour and rambling on. That's not a system. That's not a system and process that someone can, can follow. So I do have an operations manager, which is a role that we actually created 12 months ago to basically take some of the hats that I'm wearing and make her wear them instead. So she's very much embraced it now. She has a financial planning background, but she doesn't know accounting and she doesn't know mortgage. So she asked the right questions of those team members. So on the accounting side, each process we do, we identify a system champion for that process and the same on the administration. So they will be working with the developers. The developers come up with, I guess acronyms are pdd, but they come up with a full process documentation. And so we have one person that is the one that's walked through it and that they actually kind of ultimately sign off on it, but other team members review it as well so that we're kind of making sure that we're not missing things. And then they do the testing. The testing goes on for about six to eight weeks where they test it a lot to make sure. Are there any little bugs that we need to refine as well? But I think it comes in our culture of. And you would love it, if you walk around our office when you hear people say, is it in System Hub? Did you check System Hub? That's the culture that it's created that everyone, if it's not in System Hub, it doesn't happen. So it needs to be there so that when we, if someone's away, someone else can jump in and, and do what it needs to do. And then now, now we're taking that technology and bringing it to the next level to work out, well, what can the robot do? What is it that they can do? The AI bit is going to be that next part. I mean, copilot playing Copilot at the moment, obviously I've been playing in chat GPT and been loving that. But, you know, just looking at some of the confidentiality on chat GPT, that's the bit. Whereas Copilot, we have our copilot within smart, so it's only within the smart world, which means I can play with it a lot more than say, chat GPT because I can use data that I may be playing with as well.

You know, So I love it. Your stories. Yeah, just right on point from a business owner who's gone all in on systems, gone through the, the journey Stayed on the path, documented process, experimented with automation, embracing AI. Like yeah, if people want to keep an eye on your story and the work that you're doing, I'll put a link over to the smartbusinesssolutions.com au is that the best place to see what you guys are up to?

Yeah. Yeah.

And yeah, I don't know if maybe just you might have any final words of inspiration for the business owner who hasn't yet embraced systems or thrown their hat over the fence with AI. I don't know if there's anything that you can say to them if they're still sitting on the edge that having taken that step and you get to see in so many businesses now, you'll see ones that do and ones that don't. And yeah, I don't know what you might be able to leave someone with.

Yeah, look, I would actually say look at the most the processes that you're undertaking now and the things that you say, oh, I'll just quickly do it. It takes an hour, two hours of my time. I will just do it. If it's not the best use of your time, look at creating a process, record the process, go onto loom, record the process and then get someone else to do it. And you'll find if you can do that, it'll just be so liberating. You'll have more time to spend on things that are probably higher value add than what you're actually doing. And just start with one process. If you can get one process done by someone else, you've just got yourself an extra hour away.

Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much for your time and inspiration, Shannon. No problem.