[stevievee]

We are still really, really far away from near full automation in accounting.

If there was a universal API for financial data exchange between companies then maybe it would be accelerated (starting with Accounts Payable Workflows). Would be my dream to work on a project like this. As for the non-data entry part of accounting, we are even further away in terms of automation.

Software engineers will come along without domain expertise saying "how hard can it be?" They inevitably hit a brick wall when they realize why it's difficult. Even the incumbents with new solutions are selling automation snake oil right now - looking squarely at Microsoft and Oracle.

[Tarsul]

We don't need 100% automation to have a giant effect on employment. We can get to 90% automation and cut a lot of the workload of accountants which means in the long run less accountants overall. My expectation is that big companies will employ less and less accountants because for them it is worth it to invest in RPA (and better tooling) to cut their accountants workload (even with all the outsourcing that happens. e.g. some big companies in Germany like to outsource adminstrative tasks to eastern europe, there are quite a few eastern europeans willing to learn german for those jobs). For small shops with a handful of employees it's a different numbers game and I think the change there will be a lot slower. I don't know how the landscape of adminstrative jobs in offices will look like in 20 years but I think it's very important for (would-be) employees to have more skills than just being able to work as accountant or doing other adminstrative tasks at the PC. Actually, it scares me a bit (not so much for myself, yet, but for society and for the ability of the masses to get good jobs).

[wenc]

I doubt full automation will ever happen, but I believe "mechanization" is already happening with RPA on workflows that are stable and reproducible.

Commercial AP automation solutions (SAP ARIBA, etc.) exist today but afaik there's no universal standard for electronic invoicing portals, so companies trying to invoice their clients find themselves having to manually enter data on different invoicing portals depending on which software their clients have implemented (there is even a processing fee at times). The burden is borne solely by the invoicing party however.