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The Connector Podcast - DFS Digital Finance Summit - Autonomous Accounting Intelligence: How SevenYoken Is Revolutionizing Financial Management
SevenYoken is revolutionizing accounting with autonomous AI that performs an accountant's days of work in minutes, delivering comprehensive financial reports and professional insights. Tom shares how their system evolved from a certified autonomous bookkeeper to a digital financial officer that can interpret balance sheets, process transactions, and even provide opinions and follow-up questions.
• Creating autonomous accounting intelligence that delivers financial reports in minutes
• Transforming raw financial data (balance sheets, invoices, bank statements) into comprehensive analyses
• Developing a "certified autonomous bookkeeper" that handles repetitive transactional tasks
• Building on 15 years of accounting data to train AI with real-world financial scenarios
• Using the persona of a Digital Financial Officer (DFO) to bridge the trust gap with users
• Running entirely on open-source models deployed in Azure AI cloud
• Launching einvoiceBE platform to simplify compliance with upcoming e-invoicing regulations
• Providing solutions for small businesses and enterprises with legacy systems through APIs
To learn more about SevenYoken's accounting solutions or their new e-invoicing platform, visit their website or contact them directly for customized solutions to streamline your financial operations.
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Koen Vanderhoydonk
koen.vanderhoydonk@jointheconnector.com
#FinTech #RegTech #Scaleup #WealthTech
Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Cohen van der Hooydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another podcast here live from fintech Belgium in Brussels. Welcome to another podcast here live from Fintech Belgium in Brussels and in collaboration with ourselves, the connector. I've got Tom with me with a very special name of his company, Seven Joken Tom, what do you do? What is your business?
Speaker 3:Good afternoon. Well, our business that we are creating an autonomous accounting intelligence to provide actually an accountant's days of work in just minutes. So basically we say Seven yoken accounting done in minutes.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Can you enlighten us a bit more about what that exactly means?
Speaker 3:Well, for example, to have the example of fintechs and banks banks today when they want to allow their company to have a credit, they need to do a few financial health checks, and so, basically, you need to have an accountant's view to calculate if this loan is proper to give, and our API can just understand the data. You give him, for example, a balance sheet, or it can be in Excel or in PDF, and we are going to give you a report, like an accountant would give you. So it would be the standard report with your basic KVIs, but also our opinions, our remarks and, for example, some additional questions that we would ask the company about their balance sheet. So that's one of the tools or the results that our API can deliver to a person who is in need for an accountant but cannot have an accountant.
Speaker 2:Can I say that this is a bunch of accountants that's behind this API, or is it like fully autonomous? I'm putting it black and white by purpose.
Speaker 3:Well, the results, and so we are clearly okay, what is the purpose of the API. But in the background, of course, there is an AI accounting intelligence model and basically we are going for the autonomous AI accounting because he needs to know what to do based on the data it gets. So if we put a bank transaction to the AI agent, it's going to see okay, I need to check what's the amount, can I find a supplier? Is it already paid? Where's the invoice? What is it about? And is going to then check. Okay, which APIs can I talk to an ERP system, an accounting software? And is going to execute his task.
Speaker 2:So the application itself, 7Yoken, goes as far as actually executing. So you built a whole accountancy firm out of the box well out of box things.
Speaker 3:We started with this id in 2022 and then back then we it just has to uh, to accept the limits of the models, um. So we started first to create what we call a certified autonomous bookkeeper. You can compare it with a junior accountant, so basically it's all the bookkeeping tasks, so the transactional data, so the processing of the invoices, the bank statements, accrual basically doing all the manual repetitive work. That was the first level. Then, of course, we need to add some more knowledge about corporate tax law, vat law and, specifically for Belgium, because I also own an accounting office, so we are using it in my accounting office. That was my next question.
Speaker 2:You steal my questions, tom, sorry. No, that's fine.
Speaker 3:That's the reason I was fortunate enough to have a good friend, willem, who is actually an IT and cybersecurity guy, and so, basically, my IDs, he executes them in AI and development. And, of course, if you need to, if you want to make something like an autonomous accounting intelligence, you need to have the data. And, yeah, fortunately, since 2012, to make something like an autonomous accounting intelligence, you need to have the data. And, yeah, fortunately, since 2012, I was trying to automate my dad's accounting office and so we have a lot of data from invoices, from from emails. We have seen we have seen almost everything.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to say that we don't have new situations, but we have seen a lot in this past 15 years that I'm working there. So, yeah, the data is important and knowing what is happening in an accounting office, and then you can reach new levels of an accounting intelligence. So we first have the certified autonomous bookkeeper, but then now we are growing to having this autonomous accounting intelligence. So, basically, you can just give invoices, you the bank statements, and we will create a P&L, a balance sheet on the fly.
Speaker 2:So you literally go from what was maybe one directional now is output. So do you go, as output, as far as filing those things to the authorities as well? What's?
Speaker 3:the next step. Well, the next step is the step we want to take, because an accountant has different tasks, so now we just focused on the tasks that, for me, needs an employee, so I was looking for what can give me the most ROI. But, of course, if we would focus ourselves on having a fully automated personal tax model, we would be able to do this.
Speaker 2:And you said a few times, it's something you do in Belgium. Is it something that you can lift and shift into other countries, regions, whatever continents?
Speaker 3:That's basically the difficult part, because, for example, if you want to apply Portuguese accounting first, of all, you need to have the knowledge Portuguese accounting.
Speaker 3:First of all, you need to have the knowledge. So I rather see it that we are going to provide more the situation where a company has a location in Belgium or in Europe but also has an acquisition in, for example, argentina, to give a real-life example and the problem is there that you don't want to change the whole ERP system in Argentina, or also not possible but you do want to be able to communicate like you would with a Belgian person, and so, basically, the first added value is not going to be for the accountant, but for the business owner, who just wants to query the accounting data in Argentina without having to access the ERP system, knowing the language, and he basically is going to get the same reports like he would have in Belgium, but then from the accounting ERP system in Argentina, and that's really a powerful tool.
Speaker 2:So you actually go beyond just having invoice information, but you literally go like financial information that comes into the system.
Speaker 3:Well, let's just say the information that is needed to take the right decisions, and this doesn't always have to be accounting data, but most of the times it's somewhere in the accounting data. So, yeah, you have different. I mean, if you want to, for example, if your core business is about a supply, then you really want to focus on these KPIs of the supply. But as an account you most of the time are not really always capable of knowing the details of this kind of industry. But the information lies in accounting data, in the invoices, in the bank transactions.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely In our preparations. You also mentioned the notion of a digital financial officer. Can you explain a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3:Well, so instead of a CFO, we're going to have a DFO, or we have a DFO. So basically, this autonomous accounting agents needs to have a persona because he still needs to, or is still required to, talk to a human for now. And so, yeah, yeah, that's true, and so that's why we get the persona of an dfo, and so, basically, the evoke and you can just chat with it like we know, we can email with it, but you can also just deliver reports. So basically, you can say, okay, I want to report an excel pdf and yeah, we don't need any ui for this, you just want the result. But we needed to create a persona to be able to. Okay, how can we talk or how can we put some hue in the loop?
Speaker 2:you don't want people don't trust, of course, and that's true the, the fully autonomous agent well, I guess the reason why you don't want to have a full autonomous agent is because the notion of hallucination, and specifically with financial data. So how do you marry both elements?
Speaker 3:Well, in accounting we are very fortunate that accounting always actually means a framework and I don't want to talk too much about the accounting details, but you always have a debit and a credit, so it means that there's always some kind of checkpoint that you have to see if the LLM is right or wrong.
Speaker 3:But indeed the biggest problem is if he would hallucinate or if he would not understand or grasp the idea of accounting. He needs to actually have the notion of the parts of the accountant. For example, he has to know the notion of a chart of accounts. He needs to know, okay, what's the difference between cost of goods sold or depreciation. He needs to know this kind of concept and if he doesn't know this then it can really be a problem because then he starts to hallucinate. But of course this you do by benchmarking and using test data done. He starts to hallucinate. But of course this you do by by benchmarking and using test data. But indeed let's just say that we are lucky that we can have checkpoints and, of course, a lot of data. So we see that that today the models that we use are not going to hallucinate about their notion that they have of chart of accounts, for example I think also the notion that the models are changing rapidly.
Speaker 2:So how would you actually ensure that you as a company sort of stay ahead of the new innovation that happens within the LLM?
Speaker 3:space. Yeah, well, the part that we already like finished, like the certified autonomous bookkeeper. For this we use only open source models and it's also only in our Azure AI cloud, only open source models, and it's also only in our Azure AI cloud. So, yes, we currently are able to run completely actually on open source models and it's and I'm happy for this it's only getting better. Um, as you know, a few weeks ago, deep seek released um, so we're getting in like a new wave of um of this thinking, uh, llm, um, but for for now, the tasks that we need to do or that we want to do, we can use completely open source models.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that, then, the advantage of being in bookkeeping, which is a very old and traditional profession? That sort of processes are clear, flashed out if you want very true, but also it's worldwide the same concept.
Speaker 3:If you would call to india and ask for the business expense, he's going to give you a business expense. Um, and apart from from differences in in accounting for example, you have a belgium gap of, you have an eis or efrs they're all following the same balance sheets or annual accounts. Across the world, it's the most the same thing. So, yeah, that's the lucky part.
Speaker 2:And while looking at innovation in our space, I mean a lot of innovation or has been claimed as innovation is, for example, pebble. Do you see that as innovative thinking or the next steps, steps, and how do you deal with it in in your company?
Speaker 3:now you're asking a funny question to me. Uh, because, actually, um, I you know tone van acht from very well, everyone does well, uh, we start talking with each other in in digital finance Summit and basically we have started together. A new company so 7yoken and databe. A new company, einvoicebe, and we're actually launching next week.
Speaker 1:And the reason why we.
Speaker 3:Exciting Yep, indeed, exciting, it's true. And the reason why is because, indeed, our problem today is actually that we can only have a capable account accounting intelligence for your company if we are able to have the data data in rubbish, in rubbish out well, let's just say that, uh, an accounting software today? Um, it actually, it's a. It's a. It's a limited version of all the data. For example, you just need a few data points from an invoice, but you don't need to know all the details and you don't need to know the exactly.
Speaker 3:Just say that if your car goes to maintenance, it's just going to be one chart of account saying maintenance of a car, not going to say, okay, we change the wipers, we change the tires, no, exactly, but this is data that we need to create the context, because otherwise, how would I know that it's going to be a truck, so a different business expense or a portion.
Speaker 3:So this is the stuff that we need. And, yeah, when we were talking about this invoicing people, well then, um, then we are at the source. The incoming invoice is outgoing. We're also going to connect with the bank account and, yeah, these three parts, together with our AI accounting intelligence, is going to give also a lot to the business owner, like pre-accounting information without the need of going to have to contact his accountant or having access to his accounting software. But, basically, the first step is to make sure that our experience in normal invoicing is going to reflect on our invoicing platform, which means that we're going to make sure that our our goal of invoice is that you can just do the same as you are doing today so for example we have made and uh, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:I know that a lot of people who have a small company still work in excel or invert pdf, which is not doesn't matter. So we have made a converter, for example, so you can just stay working like you are working. And for the incoming invoices, we're going to make sure that you're going to receive the invoices like you used to be like, for example, through mail, but also we're going to make sure that it's going to be human readable, because an invoice, the whole point is it going to be machine readable?
Speaker 3:and so invoice is just a text file, plain text file, so that means that there's not going to be a logo anymore. I mean, most of the people um have the habit of of putting trust in things that they already saw.
Speaker 1:But if you're going to.
Speaker 3:If going to open an invoice from, for example, insurance, nothing they're going to say that's going to be again insurance, just, for example, aga Insurance. Nothing is going to say that it's going to be AgA Insurance, just no logo, not the usual feeling. So we are going to make sure that, because it's not obligated to add actually the PDF as a binary, so you don't need to provide the human readable. So we're going to make sure that we're going to let the people have always the same feeling as they had before by by giving it the same feeling for yeah and the, the yeah it's. Let's just say um, we are really, um, yeah, eager to see how it's going to evolve because for the first time, I think now belgium is going to be the first one who's really going to obligate um, but today we still need to onboard more than a million companies.
Speaker 2:Big work ahead of us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also we still need to find out what the pain points are going to be. And, for example, if you receive an invoice and you want to inject it immediately into your accounting software, what if the person sends three times the same or also sends it by email? So this is also going to be practical issues and that's why, also, we want to create this platform to make sure that we're going to capture these problems and solve them.
Speaker 2:Wow, super cool. Tom, thank you very much for sharing all these insights, and it's nice to hear that there's Belgium companies that are so far ahead in sort of using AI and thinking about how to combine all different data sources, so I was very pleased to hear that. Maybe one last question before we close this podcast of today who should contact you? Who is your ideal future customer?
Speaker 3:For e-wordsbe. Let's just say that our first profile is a person who has a small company and like, for example, a management company, and just want to just work like he used to be. We also provide an API for the people who need. For example, you have people, companies, that have one of their departments in Belgium but just don't want to adjust their whole as a pay system just to assure the compliance for Belgium. So we offer for ERP, we have an API and basically we offer for all kinds of companies a solution for the current problem, and most of the times we see that their problem is that they have kind of a legacy system because they are having a production company. They don't want to change this, and we can provide for them the solution with an API or a customized solution.
Speaker 2:Well, great. I wish you all the best of luck. Thank you, I'm sure we're going to see much more about this in the press anywhere, yes, but for now, thank you very much for sharing your information with us. Thank you also to the audience and stay tuned for more news from this podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of the Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to wwwjointhekonnectorcom or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.