Accounting bots help smaller firms save time

SOFTWARE scripts – also known as bots – are helping Singapore’s small accountancy firms save time and tackle manpower shortages, by taking care of manual and repetitive tasks such as transferring data between programs or converting files across formats.

The use of computer scripts to do predefined tasks, known as robotic process automation (RPA), has seen increased adoption by small and medium-sized practices (SMPs).

The Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (Isca) has tripled its RPA-related education – including continuing professional development courses, e-learning and talks – since 2018, when it introduced its first such course.

One RPA consultancy, Skybots, has deployed some 150 individual bots in about 20 accounting firms since it began operations this February, founder and managing director Daryl Aw told The Business Times.

RPA brings benefits such as increased productivity, lower costs and greater staff morale, industry players said.

In an average audit engagement of about 120 man-hours, RPA can save 10 to 14 man-hours, or about a tenth of the time, said Bernard Lee, founder and senior partner at mid-sized firm Audit Alliance.

Isca president Teo Ser Luck said: “SMPs with lean teams can benefit from implementing RPA to automate repetitive work procedures to increase their productivity, enabling their staff to perform higher value work.”

For instance, SMPs that use RPA in confirming a client’s account receivables can save an average of 18.5 man-days, Teo said.

Confirmation involves getting evidence about the accuracy and completeness of certain financial information. Usually, auditors reach out to third parties such as vendors and banks to independently verify the information.

Nexia Singapore PAC used to do such bank confirmations manually for each client, said managing director Chua Soo Rui. The firm, which has about 800 clients, sends out more than 1,000 confirmation letters to banks each year, as some clients have dealings with more than one bank.

Previously, it took two administrative staff about two to three weeks to prepare and send all the letters. The process is largely repetitive, as it mainly involves changing the name of a client and the corresponding bank in a boilerplate text.

With a bot that Skybots developed earlier this year, only one employee is needed and the same task can be completed in two to three days instead, Chua said.

“The accuracy is already about 99 per cent, and this is a more than 90 per cent time saving,” she added. The improved productivity has translated to less overtime work for her administrative staff, which has not only saved costs but also improved employee morale.

The increase in productivity has allowed Nexia’s administrative staff to be involved in higher value work like analytics and client engagement, Chua said. “Instead of getting them to just churn out the timesheet, now we actually get them to, for example, analyse the time spent by each partner for each project.”

Vetting clients

Another usage of RPA is in vetting prospective clients, said A Arunan, practitioner at A2 Practice.

As part of compliance and anti-money laundering checks before taking on new clients, accountancy practices conduct background checks on the company and its shareholders and directors, Arunan said.

This includes going through the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s business directory platform to download various corporate and individual profiles.

In the past, it took 20 to 30 minutes to download all the required documents for each prospective client, Arunan said: “With RPA, it’s done in three minutes or less.”

RPA can also be used for non-accounting purposes, noted Audit Alliance’s Lee, who uses a bot to automate the task of connecting with potential investors for the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice on networking platform LinkedIn.

Asked why firms rely on third-party providers like Skybots instead of building their own automation capabilities, Lee pointed to the efficiencies that specialisation brings.

Adopting such technologies on their own would mean spending time and resources on hiring and training employees with such skills, Lee said. Moreover, the management may not have the expertise needed to oversee the implementation.

In contrast, it only takes one or two working days for employees with no programming experience to learn how to deploy third-party RPA bots, Lee said.

“At the end of the day, we are accountants, not programmers”, added Nexia’s Chua.