Episode notes
Cam turned on auto reconciliation in Xero back in July, then opened the file last weekend. Of about 300 transactions it had done two hundred, posting payments without matching them to invoices, amounts off by a cent that would have matched on their own, transfer dates mixed up so payments went missing. Hours of it, screens everywhere, working out what the thing had done versus what was actually in the ledger.
Bank rec was built around a person matching things up and using judgement as they go. Drop AI into the middle of that and it does not inherit the judgement. It inherits the button. So it gets very good at clearing the queue, which is not the job.
The line worth holding onto is reversible versus irreversible. Research, a marketing campaign, a first draft, all of that is cheap to get wrong and you just go again. A system of record is the opposite. Errors compound, they cost hours to unpick, and a green tick stops meaning anyone checked.
And it is not only accounting. The client turns up to the lawyer with the contract already written and says it is all covered.
Jez and Cam on the bank wreck doing the rounds, why a client's mess now takes longer to fix than if they had done nothing, and what an accountant is actually selling once the output is the easy part.
Five minutes. One thing that matters. We ignore the rest, so you can too.
Vibe CFO is Australian founded. An AI CFO for small and medium business, out of the box, governed and secure.
Vibe in 5.