On Beyond, you can create a plan for your new financial year in two clicks, by basing it on your current plan.

First, click into your current plan and select ‘copy this plan’ from the menu.

This will bring up a form where you can pick a plan name, an end date, and choose whether the plan budget is already approved.

If you want everyone who’s contributing to the plan to submit their budgets to you for approval, leave this on ‘no’. This is useful if you plan with bottom-up budgeting – if you don’t have exact numbers planned out for each department and you want them to put together a plan of what they’ll need for you to sign off on. (Just remember, your plan will only be reachable from the ‘unapproved’ tab until you’ve approved everyone’s budget!)

If you’re giving everyone a set amount and leaving them to sweat the details, tick ‘yes’. If you’re planning with top-down budgeting, this will save you some time!

And – that’s it! Once you hit the ‘copy this plan’ button, a new zero-based^* plan will be created, modelled on the same structure.

The details – like budgets, forecasts, and – of course! – actuals won’t be carried across, but the structure of the plan will. Your new plan will be broken down into the same departments, teams, and budget owners. Though you’re free to edit and delete as you need, without affecting the original plan.

Best of all, the activities in the original plan will be extended into the new plan; this means ongoing expenses, like rent and utility bills, will already be accounted for. Any changes made to them inside the new plan won’t affect their numbers inside the original, but the two will be linked together; your team can quickly switch between financial years to compare and track numbers.

And any automatic rules you’ve set up on your activities will keep running – you don’t need to set them all up again!

All that’s left is to go through the new plan, adding the new budgets and making whatever changes you need to. You can delete plan sections and activities without affecting the original plan – while being able to quickly compare long, ongoing projects between them.

(Though keep your eyes peeled – we’ll be adding incremental budgeting options soon, so you can carry across the numbers you care about and make your new budget even faster! )

Try it now!

The post Feature spotlight: copying a plan appeared first on Beyond.

Coming for our data, coming for our jobs, and (if the more dramatic reports are to be believed) coming for our very existence.

Or are they?

Let’s pick apart the A.I. fact from the hype and see where the real opportunities lie for the future finance function.

They are already here

A.I. is already transforming core functions of a typical accountant. Repeated processes based on structured data are ripe for automation. Things like:

• Invoice chasing
• Matching and reconciling transactions
• Invoice coding
• Anomaly and fraud detection

After all, A.I. is measurably faster and more accurate than us fleshy meat-bags at these repetitive tasks. And besides, this work is pretty boring anyway…

They are getting smarter

Nerves start to jangle when we see the next wave of intelligence starting to be deployed. Recent advancements in natural language processing and machine learning helps A.I. deal with both the nuances of text and the ever-present ambiguity of a business’s finances. This brings a far greater swathe of traditional accountancy work into reach. We are starting to see:

• Fully automated bookkeeping
• Advanced report creation and statutory filings
• Analysis of legal and tax documents
• Deep predictive analytics
• Smart audit assistants

Certainly starting to encroach on some classic value-add activities of a typical finance function.

    [You don't need to see another generic yet ominous picture of a robot using a keyboard]

          (what kind of self-respecting robot needs to use a keyboard anyway...??) 

Expectations are changing

People’s beliefs of what technology can do for us is fundamentally changing. Across almost all industries, there is a growing expectation that automation will be bundled along with core services. As we shop online, we expect to see helpful recommendations; as we get into a car we expect it to direct us to our destination (and soon to take us there altogether); as we bank we expect to get smart alerts and reminders.

Accounting is no different. There will, of course, be adjustments needed as traditional tasks are commoditised and old revenue streams dry up, but this also raises huge opportunities. This is not a zero-sum game.

A prosperous co-existence

In a business context, A.I. is nothing without people.

While A.I. unlocks accounting superpowers, finance professionals are needed to put them to good use. Tool selection and setup, ongoing interpretation and tuning, and – of course – accountability are all roles which will need a human touch for the foreseeable future. After all, with great power comes great responsibility.

More importantly, as accountants’ time is freed up from menial tasks, they can shift their focus to a higher level, the strategic objectives of the company. Advisory services will become a fertile and lucrative hunting ground. Goodbye business policeman, hello business partner.

Power to the people

Vendors will often say you just need a smart new machine learning tool or shiny dashboard to gain a magical insight into a business. However, as any good A.I. engineer will tell you, an algorithm is only as good as the data it has access to.

This means, when trying to truly understand the workings of a business, you have to engage the real driving force – its people. Their knowledge, understanding of risks and plans for the future are always essential for true insights.

Here, A.I. can be an enabler – removing bottlenecks and giving people superpowers.

And ultimately it is a tool of empowerment – helping information flow more freely and enlightening decision-making.

Not so scary after all.

Bringing this to life

In order to build this deep partnership, it’s essential that your systems:

1. Truly understand the business at its most granular level – its people and the context of all activities across the organisation.
2. Always contain the most up-to-date data, link with all your tools, and can quickly flag issues, anomalies and opportunities as – or before! – they arise.
3. Enable the company to quickly act on the decisions that can be made from this data.

We’ve created Beyond around these exact demands, deploying A.I. in a way that puts people – not robots – at the centre.

This post originally appeared as an article on AccountingWeb

The post Rethinking the finance function in the age of robots appeared first on Beyond.