Entrepreneur Jaanus Põder: ‘Accounting is becoming invisible’

Jaanus Põder, the creator of accounting software Envoice, talks about how automation turns accounting into a smooth process taking place in the background, which helps the entrepreneur focus on growth, not paperwork.

How was the idea of Envoice born?

When you become an entrepreneur, everything looks exciting and new. But soon you discover that entrepreneurship is not just about creating a product or offering a service: it also means routine activities, purchase and sales invoices, checks, payments, and other endless little things that someone has to do. And if this someone is you, time is slowly starting to disappear somewhere.

Ten years ago, we created Envoice with one promise: a person should no longer be required to do what technology can do better and more accurately. At the time, years before the rise of artificial intelligence, this vision seemed idealistic. However, since the end of 2023, when AI tools became truly available and they could begin to be trained in one's own systems, this promise has begun to be fulfilled at an exponential rate.

Currently, Envoice is able to make every readable purchase invoice or cheque machine-readable, automate data entry, manage verification and posting, organise archiving, and also automate payment.

Thus, the entire journey of a purchase invoice – from receipt to payment and to the archives – is automatic. No more Excel files and 'Has this invoice been paid?' type mess.

What does the cooperation between LHV and Envoice mean for an entrepreneur in practice?

If you use an LHV account for businesses, you can use Envoice to do everything that used to consist of several steps and for which different online environments had to be used.

In English, this system is called pre-accounting. In real life, this means the vast majority of accounting. Even though the final data arrives in the accounting software, it is the preliminary process that can be automated most effectively.

Envoice has so far been able to automate the entire lifecycle of a company's purchase invoices, from the receipt of the invoice and making it machine-readable (or, as we used to say, digitisation) to confirmation, posting and archiving, and sending valued document data to the accounting software.

There was just one link missing from full automation: payment. Freeing an entrepreneur from time-consuming manual work in this stage is also the core of LHV's cooperation with Envoice.

Thanks to the payment interface built between the two companies, it is now also possible to send an invoice directly from Envoice for payment. All you need to do is confirm the pre-filled payment order(s) in the bank. There is therefore no longer any manual work, uploading or exporting of files at this stage. The interface also allows you to get automatic account statements, and everything happens safely and automatically.

Where is the future of accounting heading and what role will people play?

In Estonian, there is not much difference between the English job titles bookkeeper and accountant, but the content and role of these people in the company is very different.

While in the past, bookkeeping meant a lot of data entry and control, we are now moving into an era where the role of such a craftsman will disappear. They will be replaced by a thinking accountant, i.e. a person who interprets data, advises the entrepreneur and helps them make decisions.

Artificial intelligence and automation do not take away the work of a thinking accountant. These free them of minor actions so that they can focus on creating value for the entrepreneur. Accounting is becoming invisible, not because it is disappearing, but because it works in the background without the entrepreneur having to notice it.

Envoice is already used by nearly 6,000 companies and more than 10,000 people carry out accounting transactions in the program every day. We place a high priority on helping the client.

Our customer support is not a chatbot, but real people who are there for real clients. Much of our customer support time is spent not on implementing Envoice, but on advising clients on how to further automate the flow of their purchase and sales invoices and cheques.

The automatic flow of payments, statements and records is only the beginning. In the future, the system will already proactively provide recommendations, identify risks and help the company grow.

If you have a company, know this: you don't have to do everything yourself, and neither does your accountant. There are good solutions available that take care of your company's finances, so you can focus on your business.