< Intro >

– Welcome back to Count Me In.

In today's episode, we have
Graham Stanton

and Edgar Thomas,
the co-founders of Avise.

A company that provides 
accounting technology solutions.

Both my guests have
seen many pain points

that accountants face daily,

and have worked hard to build solutions

that address those pain points.

Despite the available innovation,

practitioners still use the same
tools from 15 to 20 years ago

because of the lack of
penetration by newer tools.

Both Graham and Edgar share their vision

of making an accountant's job easier

and reducing manual processes.

Join us as we discuss how
technology can help accountants

and the challenges they face,
adopting new technology.

< Music >

– Graham, Edgar, I just
want to thank you both

for coming on the podcast, today.

We're really excited to have
the co-founders of Avise

on the podcast with us, today.

And today we're going to talk 
about accounting technology.

And I figure we could start off

by discussing what is the 
current state of the market

for accounting technology,

and the status of the industry, today?

Because it's constantly
moving and evolving.

– Yes, thank you, Adam, really appreciate

you having us both on, today.

And, yes, it's a topic

that we both feel very passionately about.

For me, as an inactive CPA,
but a practitioner

that has worked with a lot
of accounting tools,

I've seen it from both sides.

So, right now, as an entrepreneur,

building a solution that solves
a lot of the pain points

that I saw in the marketplace.

But also the pain points that
we're getting feedback

from our current clients
and prospects of our own.

It is an exciting time to be looking at it

because there is a lot of 
innovation going on today.

But quite, frankly, practitioners, today,

are doing a lot of the same thing

and using a lot of the same tools

they were using 15, 20 years ago.

Because there's been
such little penetration

by the tools out there, today, available.

So when I was practicing 
as an in-house accountant,

a lot of the tools I found lacked the vision

or the understanding of what 
a practitioner needed to do.

So they were focused more on FP&A

and other finance functions.

But didn't really focus on improving
the lives of the core accounting suite.

That the accountants had
to do their jobs in

on a day-in and a day-out basis.

So if you go and talk to an
in-house accountant, at a company,

and they talk about their close.

And they say that
it's five days, it's 10 days,

it's 15 days, or maybe even 30 days long.

And when you, actually, dissect
the things that they're doing,

you immediately see opportunities

for improvement based on the
tools that are available today

but are not available
to the accountants, yet.

So that's one of the things that

I feel very passionate about.

Changing that and making it so that

the accountants benefit
from a lot of the tools

and a lot of the innovation
that we see elsewhere

in the finance tech stack.

So when it comes to tools

like the ones we're building
at Avise it's really focused on

how do we make the
accountant's job easier?

To close the books,
report out the information,

the financial data more accurately,
and in a timely fashion,

and reduce a lot of the manual processes.

– Yes, I'll add to that a little bit.

Obviously, Edgar and I share
this vision here,

and when we were getting started

there's a lot of real pain coming
through in our discussions.

I previously worked
somewhat cross-functionally

and had a lot of experience with the tools

that the marketers get,
and that data engineers get.

Ultimately, FP&A was starting to get,

and, for whatever reason,

the accountants have been
at the end of the line.

And there's been a lot of attitude
of, "Well, accountants are paid

to do this busy work,
so what's the problem here?"

And it's unfortunate,
and thankfully accountants

are starting to wake up

and saying, "Well, it's 
the year 2022, almost 2023,

we don't need to put up
with this anymore."

– And I think sometimes the biggest thing

is that if it's not broke,
they don't want to try to fix it.

We've been doing the same thing

and using the same technology

for 15, 20 years, as Edgar was saying.

But why change things up and mess it up?

What do you guys think
is the biggest problem

with the current technology,

the state of the technology as it is today?

Edgar mentioned some of those things,

people are trying to cut down the close,

and those are some of the big problems

that they're dealing with.

But what's the problem
with the actual technology

that you think is causing them to
not adopt it as fastly as possible?

– Yes, I can take this.

I like the way your insight there
is that, for a lot of folks,

they accept this status quo,

as like "This is the way
things are and should be,

or will continue to be."

One of the things I really 
enjoy about my job today

is that as we show our tool to folks,

the response is very common one.

Where it's just like, "Oh, I didn't 
even know that that was possible,

or I didn't even think
about how much time

it took for me to do that task."

So a simple thing like a reconciliation

month in and month out,

may take an accountant 30
minutes, an hour, 2 hours,

and it's just an accepted part of the job,

"My job is to reconcile an account."

But then when you reimagine
what a reconciliation is, 

and you automate a lot
of the components

of that reconciliation, and reduce that

from 30 minutes down to five minutes,

a light bulb goes off.

It's just like, "Okay, these 
are minutes, hours, of my life

that I can get back, and I 
can do more value added things

for the business besides
a lot of these things,

which are, quite frankly, busy work."

So one of the things that 
we've come across is that

there's a lack of knowledge.

I've never seen this before 
among my accounting friends,

I've never seen something like this before.

And then it's like maybe a hesitation,

like you said, "If it isn't broke don't fix it."

If I know the system has
been around since 1970

and, literally, my predecessors 
have been doing this,

I know it works, and I will
continue to do it.

So it is a really exciting journey

that we've been on at Avise.

It's showing people you can do
things in a different way, 

and seeing that light bulb go off.

And literally seeing people saying,

like, "This has changed my life.

This has given me back time

that I didn't know was possible."

– Absolutely, we view technology
as an enabler, really.

We say we're looking
to unlock the potential

of the accounting team,
of the accountants,

and that's what we're seeking to do.

But really any good software made

should be automating the busy work.

As we both said, it should be
making things more efficient.

But it's not doing the accountant's job,

and I think that's exactly what
that light bulb moment is.

It's the realization that the job

isn't to do the busy work.

The job is to use your brain

because accountants tend to
be pretty smart people.

Who know the businesses
they work in really well

and have a lot to add.

And, unfortunately, so many of them

are just stuck manually 
entering data into the system.

Often the same data multiple times,

entering it into the GL,
entering it into Excel,

comparing the two to see if they match,

that whole flow could be automated

just with some human review.

But, yes, the point is to
free up the accountants

to use their brain, use their insight,

use their creativity,
and do what accountants

have historically always done,
help the business.

– Mh-hmm, and they
can become a stronger,

strategic business partner

as opposed to just a number cruncher.

– Exactly.
– So when we think about

the accounting team
and how they are evolving.

As they start to apply
these different solutions

that you guys have been describing.

The accountants, what we just said,

stops being the number cruncher,

they become the business advisor.

And as we look at these solutions,

we've talked about some of the problems.

You guys have discussed

the current state of the industry.

Maybe we can give some
examples of some success stories

that you guys have seen,

as teams have applied these principles,

and become successful

by applying these solutions
for their accounting team.

– Yes, I also had a few here.

We try to follow our own principles

and look for the best tools out there,

and to make our own lives easier.

And as Edgar mentioned earlier,

there is innovation in
and around the space.

So our payroll system
and HRIS is Rippling.

I haven't used all the solutions out there,

but I have, in the past, used
some of the more established

software providers in the payroll space,

and I can say they have a lot of
busy work built into them.

So we've been happy with Rippling,

them taking a modern
approach, cutting that out.

And then on the AP side
and corporate cards

we've been using both Glean and Ramp.

And both, in different ways, have cut out

the manual process of reading receipts

and transcribing them
into the general ledger.

Which is something a computer
is very well suited to.

– Yes, and I would add there 
is that with our solution,

and with other solutions
that focus on helping

the accountants do
their job more effectively.

We've seen people reduce their close time

from 30, 20 days down to under five days

and using tools that allow them

to collaborate a little bit better.

Put their close into a state
of perpetual closing

where the system is
alerting them to things

that maybe may look fishy.

Like the variance analysis it's spitting out

versus an accountant poring
over all of the data, all the time.

Or like Graham was
talking about, essentially,

entering and reentering the same data.

I remember when I first
left public accounting,

and one of my jobs was
to export from QuickBooks,

the variance analysis tool,
and do a variance analysis.

And whenever an entry
was booked in QuickBooks

and the numbers would change,

I would have to go back
and re-export that data

and redo everything, and that
was a waste of time.

I should not have been doing that.

But, unfortunately, a lot of folks

are still doing those types of exercises

that are not really best 
utilizing their skill set. 

I have a master's in Accounting
and I'm a CPA.

Those skills that a CPA learns,

both academically as well
as in the workforce,

allows them to be a huge asset
to any organization alone.

And if that skill set has been utilized

to re-export again and again,
every day, the same thing,

I think, that's a waste of human capital.

– For sure, you sit for a CPA exam,

or IMA has the CMA exam,
you sit for these exams.

And you put the time in,
you put the work in,

and for your job title to be to sit there

exporting something and looking at it.

It can be too much after a while.

– So what you're saying is that

this isn't the content of the CMA exam?

– No, it's not the content.

There's maybe one, little,
page of the CMA exam.

Edgar, you brought up
something like QuickBooks,

and it makes me think of small
to medium-sized businesses.

Those are the ones that that's
the tool a lot of them use

for keeping their records.

Now, how can these solutions

help small to medium-sized businesses?

Maybe connect to things like QuickBooks

and connect to those smaller tools.

So that they can help their accounting

because if you're a small business,

you don't have a big accounting team.

It may just be one person
doing the CFO work,

all the way down to staff 
accountant work, all in one person.

– Yes, definitely, and there are
a lot of tools out there.

I think it does become a point, now,

where people have to make
decisions like the accountant

or any other person that makes decisions,

"What do I want my tech stack to look at?

What are the pain points?

Let me kind of tackle the 
pain points and get solutions

that integrate with QuickBooks."

I think QuickBooks is a great tool,
at a great price point,

for a lot of businesses,
and that's why people use it.

But I think as your business grows,

inevitably, your business
is going to outgrow

a lot of the capabilities of QuickBooks.

So when you look at the progression

of just QuickBooks alone,
going from QuickBooks Desktop

to QuickBooks Online.

To, now, you have
a QuickBooks Marketplace,

and you can literally go to 
the QuickBooks Marketplace

by pain point, and look
at this point solutions

to help augment what you're doing.

I think it's awesome, and that 
really helps the accountant,

the entrepreneur, get a handle
over their books,

and over their close process,
and over their reporting,

in ways that you couldn't 
do ten or 15 years ago.

For our tool, that we're building,

we integrate with QuickBooks,
so it's very easy.

There's no long implementation 
period to adopt our tool.

A lot of these other tools which take time.

So, I've been through an ERP
migration that took several months.

It was several months
beyond the original deadline,

which is a waste of time.

So it's really exciting that 
technology now is at a point

where you have open
APIs that, essentially,

you can do these integrations
much faster,

and you can get people up
and running much faster.

And then you can tackle
depending on your pain points.

So if a business is a small business,

but it's acquiring another small business,

all of a sudden, you have to think about,

"How do I consolidate those two entities?"

And right now you would not be able

to do that in QuickBooks Online.

But there are tools out there
that will help you

consolidate those two entities,

and report on them
as the combined entity.

One of those tools happens to be Avise.

– And to pick up on that,

we joke that ERP migration
that was a few months behind.

It might be the most seamless 
ERP migration I've ever heard of.

I went through one that was,
probably, two years behind

and just involved countless 
people and consultants.

People we had to hire, in-house,

just to help manage the consultants

help manage the migration,
and then the system.

And in, particular, for small
and medium-sized businesses,

growing ones, where the
business is getting more complex,

but the team is not that large, yet.

The old model of software really
designed for bigger businesses,

where you need more people
to operate the software.

It's the exact opposite of what you want,

if you're trying to be lean, and nimble,

like a small and mid-sized business.

You want software that
frees up your time.

That enables you and your existing team

to get more done as
the complexity goes up.

And rather than making it
so that actually you need

to hire more people
just to operate the software.

Which is an antiquated
way to look at software,

and it's a very big company thing
where the assumption is

you're hiring so many people, anyway,

of course, you're going to operate it.

So as Edgar mentioned there,

we've built Avise largely based
on our own frustrations.

Aimed at smart accountants
to leverage their own abilities.

A few shouts outs to some
of the software we use,

and it's a modern software
across the board,

largely, outside the accounting
function today,

has had that attitude, where it
should be increasing efficiency

and unlocking the ability
of the people using it.

– For sure, yes, and when I think
about mergers and acquisitions.

You have to have everything in line,

in order before you can
even cross that line.

And having the technology,

we've been talking about, in place

to get your foundation in order

seems like a very important thing.

And it seems like if you're 
interested in getting into mergers

and growing your company
through that way,

putting these technologies in place

would be your first step 
to getting things in order.

– Yes, that's a very good call-out.

I mean, for sure, if you're 
merging with other companies,

if you're acquiring other companies,

that just greatly increases the complexity.

But the complexity shouldn't 
be one plus one equals five.

It should be one plus one 
is something less than two,

in terms of the difficulty
of managing the two.

But, yes, if the systems aren't in order,

then, for sure, it could 
be managing two companies.

And then doing the consolidation

is a lot harder than
doing them individually,

the right systems make it easier.

And, yes, for the flip side,

if your company is going to get acquired,

that's something we've come across a lot.

Where people say, "Yes, I 
didn't really appreciate..."

maybe tech company
founders, or whoever it is, say,

"I didn't really appreciate the 
importance of good accounting

until I went to sell my
company to Salesforce,

and they had expectations that things

would be totally in order beforehand."

– So as we wrap up the conversation,

as we look at the future
of accounting technology.

I want you guys to look in your crystal ball

of all the experience you've had,
throughout the years, 

and tell us where you think
things are going?

– Yes, at the end of the day,
the accountants, their jobs,

to Graham's point,

the technology is going to 
enable accountants to do

and empower them to do 
their jobs more effectively.

And then giving them more time

to do more value additive things

for the business, which is really exciting.

One of our values, at Avise,
is we look to Luca Pacioli,

who is the godfather
of double-entry accounting,

and he was a monk,

and quote-unquote, "Invented 
double-entry accounting."

Which, essentially, allowed merchants,

who were trading internationally,

be able to maintain their books

and really understand, "I sold this amount

and I bought this amount,"
and balance their books.

And that really just allowed businesses

to achieve so much more complexity.

And we're in a really exciting time

that we believe where this technology

is really going to be embraced.

And in the next 10, 15 years,

businesses are going to be
able to do a lot more,

a lot faster, and feel confident that

what they're looking at is accurate,
in terms of the numbers.

I've been in places, I worked
in a few different companies,

where it's just like day 30 is the day

that we say "We're comfortable

with the numbers from 30 days ago."

And then the CFO cannot
operate relying on data

that's 30 days old because
that's so stale in today's world.

You need stuff now
and you need it accurately.

So, yes, accountants are going
to be empowered by the tools.

I think for any young accountant

or a prospective accountant
who is thinking about it.

I think, it's a very exciting time

because technology is going
to make their lives

much better than what mine was,

when I first came out, which
is really exciting for them.

And then it's going to be
a challenge to them

to be real technologists.

To really learning the newest technologies

that are coming out, understanding
the advantages of the new tools.

Integrating those tools so that they have

a very coherent tech stack.

And at the center of it, we believe firmly,

is that you need a GL.

You need a single source of 
truth for an organization

that can ingest all of that data

and that can be relied on.

And that's one of the things
that we're really excited about,

we're building personally, at Avise.

But in general, I think that 
the future is very bright.

– Yes, I don't think I can add much to that.

I mean, I really go into Luca Pacioli

to answer the question of
what's going on in the future.

But, yes, that's exactly it,

even just to tweak that last bit a little bit.

Because there's been
innovation in software

outside of the accounting team.

We're in this weird point in history,

where business decisions are being made

based on data that doesn't 
come from the general ledger,

that doesn't come from
the accounting team.

Because it's a lot more up-to-date,
it's faster, it's often wrong.

And it often has all those same problems

that were present in 15th-century Italy,

before double-entry bookkeeping
became widespread.

And we're excited for the
accounting software to catch up

and for accountants
to retake their places,

to actually providing the information

that drives the business.

– And it's all more important
for the accountant

to have the technology in place.

So that they are not sitting
there, bogged down

by doing this menial work.

Having the AI take care of those things

so that they can be the business partner,

be the storyteller, and help drive

the strategy with the
actual data that's there.

– Yes, and that's exactly it,

the AI can't think for the business,

the AI can't think like an accountant.

But the software, at least,
driven by whatever

the latest advances are,

can take on the role of busy work.

– Well, Edgar, Graham, thank you so much

for coming on Count Me In podcast.

We really appreciate having you on

and sharing your expertise with us today.

– Thank you, Adam, really appreciate it.

It was great being on.

– Yes, thank you so much,
I enjoyed the chat.

< Outro >

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Providing you with the latest perspectives

of thought leaders from the
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If you like what you heard,

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