
The impact on bookkeepersĪccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 1.7 million “bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks” in the United States in 2016.


With its assisted bookkeeping service, Intuit is just filling the gap until the technology can catch up. It’s only a matter of time until artificial intelligence becomes sophisticated enough to do it all. Merriam-Webster defines a bookkeeper as “A person who records the accounts or transactions of a business.” If you aren’t recording those transactions, are you really a bookkeeper? Hence the need for in-house bookkeepers to help them figure out across tens of thousands of small businesses which part of the bookkeeping process to automate next. Their job is to ensure that transactions are posted properly by automated systems.Ĭompanies such as Intuit that have learned to automate many parts of the bookkeeping process know there is still much to be automated, but don’t necessarily know what that is.
Quickbooks proadvisor customer service how to#
Now, tech savvy bookkeepers who understand how to integrate applications hardly ever do data entry. Over the past ten years, the development of online accounting software, APIs, bank feeds, and machine learning has gradually reduced the need to “key in” transactions. They still entered transactions one by one, but categorized them in digital ledgers instead of paper. There was still a need to employ bookkeepers - just fewer of them. Quicken and later QuickBooks digitized those books.

Thus the term “bookkeeper.” A person who literally “keeps the books.” Prior to accounting software, businesses hired bookkeepers to record all their transactions in paper ledgers.
