Plugin Accountant already uses ‘the machine’ to remove 90% of the time spent in tax administration. This is a bold claim but is based on the real metric that Beany (our test bed and sister company) has processed 115,436 letters in the last 36 months on behalf of our clients. The old tax administrator role has been reduced from full-time to under 20 minutes a day.
All IRD letters come into the software directly from the IRD and are triaged and dealt with by software.
The letters function is relentlessly accurate and surfaces letters that need attention and sends them to the right person (accountant or client), files irrelevant ones and highlights anything unknown for the human brain to resolve (that’s the 20 minutes).
Plugin Accountant also integrates tax information from different sources to compile the most accurate ‘tax to pay’ in New Zealand. It’s clever stuff, but it’s just the start.
Where is this going? We are moving rapidly now into the bold new world of AI.
Next up….Large Language Models (LLM)
With AI, we can now pull information from even more sources and use large language models to communicate with clients.
We will be able to automate the provisional tax calculation and customise the accompanying letter to each client’s situation, offering solutions for them instead of being merely a de facto tax debt collector (which is how we are sometimes perceived by our clients).
As an example, if you are advising a client about a large tax bill, the software could check the bank balance in the Xero file and then offer advice on how to finance it (tax pooling, bank debt) with an analysis of their best option and advice on their cash flow and how it could impact their business, using LLM’s.
AI Insights and analysis
AI can also be used to give insights using a much wider range of relevant information than our brains can currently do, without spending more time than our clients are willing to pay for. These insights can be developed from a range of information – the trick is making sure that the inputs are the right ones!
We want to learn from our New Zealand team of accountants about how we can continue to build world-beating tech right here, right now. AI is the most amazing opportunity for our profession, let’s take it!
Do you want to join our early adopter group? Reach out to us at [email protected]
Author: Sue de Bievre
An intrepid entrepreneur and feminist with a penchant for disruption; spotting problems and rolling her sleeves up to fix them makes Sue tick.
