Teampay Accountancy Suite Utilizes Bots To Manage Your Business Expenses
Will bots eventually take the jobs of accountants and bookkeepers? That’s the question posed on the Teampay blog this week. The gist of the blog post is that bots will save business owners time and money, but not necessarily rip paying jobs away from the calculator jockey just yet. Bots have a role to play in how business transitions further into the hyper-connected and AI-assisted business model of the 21st century, but for now, companies still have a need for flesh and blood pulling the lever on the accounting machine. That’s how it works right?
Teampay is not necessarily a simple bot, it’s a full suite of accountancy stuff — the bot part is just the interface, but it’s not looking to terk er jerbs. Rather, it’s an assistant for your business, residing in Slack (in which you already spend too much time screwing around) and specializes in handling expenses for a business. Or at least facilitating them. Let’s check the official company statement:
Teampay gives your organization an intuitive workflow and reporting for purchases. This adds security, accountability, and easy approval to a process that is usually hidden and opaque until the end of the month. We give you a clear trail of the entire purchase and payment process, as well as help group and track vendor information.
Then there is something about virtual cards which are really important — they’re actually super useful to businesses managing this sort of thing — they’re a card for each expense, so every single expense is controlled and cordoned off as a single purchase so people can’t go wild on the expense account; clearing up zombie expenses (like three people ordering the same thing every month instead of just one of the thing, something that is a money drain for companies) and constantly monitoring purchases for approval. Teampay CEO, Andrew Hoag, said in an email “up until Teampay, it has been impossible to delegate and track spending in real-time”. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but it appears Teampay does solve a pressing problem for businesses.
Yet, I think this overwhelmingly tedious feeling of typing words about some business bot type accountancy program speaks to where we’re at with bots and how they have successfully integrated into our daily lives, at work and home. Bots, like workflow software before them, are a better way of doing business and creating interactions with customers, both external and internal. Bots are normal now. Bots are niche now. Bots are expected and functional so writing about them is like writing about socks.