Why don’t we use AI?

We recently updated our service terms and conditions (link now available in our website footer) to better align with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) and Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) guidance (also to make them easier to read!), and part of that was to add a new clause about how we use AI.

The short version is…wherever possible, we don’t use AI in relation to the services we provide. Unfortunately, sometimes it is unavoidable as every software company now seems to be building it in to everything and the AI features can’t always be switched off or opted out of. A particular one I have noticed in Xero is in the Files Inbox section where it generates a description of the invoice, presumably to help with processing it, but from my perspective seems useless. You would still have to read the description to know whether it’s helpful and you can just as easily read the invoice instead!

Everywhere else where we can switch off the AI features, we’ve already done so. We don’t enter client data into AI tools, we don’t use them to summarise emails or write responses, and we don’t use them to do our reconciliations.

And it’s not because we’re scared (as apparently is a belief by the people who think it’s amazing). It’s more a matter of….principle.

It’s terrible for the environment, and it’s terrible for your brain, all for the result to generally not be particularly helpful or correct anyway so you still have to spend hours checking and correcting the output.

I recently took on a file where they had previously switched on auto-reconciling in the bank feed….oh boy. I’m still working through the clean up, but every transaction I’ve looked at so far was reconciled to the wrong account! These are transactions that if done correctly the first time…take maybe a second, but now we have to unravel them before we can even fix them! And let me tell you in case you were wondering, that takes MUCH longer than a second.

And sure, I actually enjoy the unravelling. But it becomes expensive when there’s a lot of it, and when it could have been avoided, it just doesn’t seem worth it. ESPECIALLY when that time could be better used on something else, like learning the business and the file. A big part of this job is recognising patterns and replicating those patterns, and identifying when something doesn’t match the pattern (is it correct or did something go wrong?!). Now if you don’t actually do the work and are just handed the end result, then you don’t know what went into it. My dad was a high school maths teacher, and he DRILLED into us to show our working because otherwise how is anyone (including yourself) supposed to know how you got to the end result. That philosophy has served me incredibly well in this job, and for a reason. I know what’s in your file and what you did last month, or six months ago, or twelve months ago. Because I did it. And I remember it. And if I’ve unravelled something, then I know how it all works together and how we put it back together (properly this time), and I’m HAPPY doing it this way. I LIKE keeping my brain active and working…while people think it’s ‘easier’ to use the technology to do it for them, it’s also easy for the people who know what they’re doing to just keep doing it! In case you were wondering, I do actually LOVE BEING A BOOKKEEPER!!! And I don’t want AI to do those jobs for me.

I also read a post on LinkedIn the other day, that said that all of the messy and tedious jobs that would have once been given to junior staff were now being given to AI. These are the jobs that help the junior staff to learn how to do stuff, and recognise when things are wrong and learn how to fix them, and they teach them how important it is to get things right at the bottom level so that the big picture actually makes sense. These jobs absolutely helped to make me the bookkeeper I am today, and I am SO grateful for it. So, maybe I am a little scared. Scared that these skills are going to be lost because our priorities have been skewed…and the end result for the consumer really is a lower level of service! Not something that any service-based business should be striving for.