Staff shortages in accounting: what automation does and does not solve
Vacancies stay open for months and student intake is falling. Where automation returns capacity, where it solves nothing, and how to reinvest the hours.
The short answer
Automation does not solve the staff shortage in accounting, but it does change the question: you need fewer people for processing and gain room for the people you already have. Routine work (data entry, reconciliation, standard checks) can largely go to software. What cannot go to software is judging, advising and carrying responsibility, and that is exactly where the labour market is tightest. The realistic strategy is therefore not to shrink through automation, but to grow without having to hire proportionally.
The labour market, without invented numbers
The situation can be described without percentages, and every firm will recognise it. Intake at accounting programmes has been declining for years, while the profession is ageing: a substantial share of experienced staff and partners is approaching the end of their careers. Vacancies at junior and relationship-manager level stay open for months, and the candidates who do exist can pick and choose. Firms that do find someone pay more than a few years ago and then invest well over a year in onboarding.
Meanwhile the work keeps growing. Clients expect faster numbers and more guidance, laws and regulations are not getting simpler, and the firms that shrink rarely do so by choice. The result is quiet rationing: new clients are turned away, services are narrowed, and the existing team structurally works too many hours, with attrition as the next problem.
In that context, automation is not a buzzword but a capacity question: where do you find hours you cannot hire?
Where automation returns capacity
Routine work
The largest block sits in processing: recognising and posting purchase invoices, reconciling bank transactions, monitoring reconciliations continuously instead of rebuilding them periodically. This is exactly the work for which people are hardest to find right now, and it is also the work that drives new hires away fastest. A firm that automates these flows wins hours precisely where the shortage is most visible.
Peak load around deadlines
The shortage does not pinch evenly: it pinches in January, around VAT deadlines and in year-end season. Automation flattens those peaks, because administrations are continuously up to date instead of being caught up in deadline week. An administration that is already processed on the first of the month turns filing work from a sprint into a check. For planning, that means less overtime in peak weeks and less dependence on temporary staff who cannot be found anyway. How to organise that continuous processing is covered in Managing work in progress at the accounting firm.
Less repair work
An underestimated item: the hours that vanish into fixing entry errors, investigating differences and reconstructing what happened. Consistent automated processing produces fewer of these errors than variable manual entry, provided it is properly reviewed. The review costs hours, but fewer than the repair work it prevents.
What automation does not solve
Honesty belongs here, because the sales pitches in the market promise more than the technology delivers.
Advisory. The conversation about an investment, an acquisition, a liquidity problem or a departing business partner: this work grows as clients expect more, and no software takes it over. At best, automation frees up time for it.
Review and judgement. Someone has to assess whether the automatically processed administration is correct, whether the exceptions were handled properly and whether the file supports the conclusion. That reviewing layer becomes more important as more happens automatically, as set out in What robotic accounting means for the junior accountant. Firms that use automation as a reason to shrink review capacity build up a risk that only shows itself once it is large.
Responsibility. The signature under the filing, the compilation report, the accountability towards the client and the professional rules: those stay with people holding the right authority and experience. No system takes over liability.
The shortage of experienced people. Automation mainly replaces junior processing work. The shortage of experienced relationship managers and signing professionals remains, and even worsens if firms cut the entry-level roles from which those experienced people once grew. Keep the learning path intact: have juniors review the automated flows instead of no longer hiring them.
Reinvesting the freed-up hours
Hours that come free evaporate if you do nothing with them: they dissolve into slightly quieter days. Deliberate reallocation works better. Four directions, in the order most firms need them:
- Backlogs and quality. Files in order, checks that were left undone, the administrations that have been "waiting a moment" for months.
- Advisory for existing clients. The clients are already there, the numbers are current, the conversation was never had because there was no time. This is the fastest revenue opportunity, and with a matching revenue model a structural one.
- Training and coaching. The hours needed to bring juniors into reviewing work. This is the investment that determines the shortage of experienced people five years from now.
- Growth. Only once the first three are in order: taking on new clients with the capacity that now exists.
Growing without hiring, not shrinking
The promise "automate and you need fewer people" sounds attractive for the budget, but rarely holds in practice. The work that remains is the heavier work, the labour market is not supplying replacements for departing staff anyway, and a firm that makes shrinking its goal first loses the people it needs most: the good ones leave first.
The realistic framing is different: automate so the firm can grow with the team it has. More administrations per employee, deadlines without structural overtime, room to leave a vacancy open for three months without the service falling over. That is not a shrinking strategy but a resilience strategy, and it is one you can explain to the team: the software takes over the work nobody chose this profession for.
For firms starting down this road, continuous monitoring is the logical first step: Giroo\'s virtual controller flags anomalies and open items across all administrations, so your team focuses its attention on what deviates instead of checking everything. That way the scarce time of experienced people is spent where it makes the difference.