No Accounting for Taste ep216: P&L filing from proposal to final form

Speaker A: Shall we begin? Let's begin now.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of no Accounting for Taste with me, Matthew Ort, and the familiar voices of Accounting Web's managing editor, Richard Hattersley.

Speaker A: Hello.

Speaker B: And, uh, technology editor, Tom Herbert.

Speaker C: Hi, Matt. Hi, everyone.

Speaker B: Now, I say familiar voices. Richard, let's address the elephant in the room. People may well have forgotten what you sound like, as we weren't actually sure if you were ever going to join us again.

Speaker A: How many weeks has it been since I last was on the pod?

Speaker B: Oh, three or four episodes, Tom.

Speaker C: Indeed. Yeah. Good. A good month and a half, I'd say.

Speaker A: Crikey, it was almost at the point where I was going to be replaced by someone else.

Speaker B: Yeah, early, uh, early negotiations are ongoing with producer H.M. molly. But you've. You've stepped in at the right time, you shall be relieved to know. Well, it's, uh, it's a pleasure to have you back in the room. And it's a glorious day for it too. As, before we get into things, I want to say that at the time of recording is less than 12 hours until England play Croatia in the World Cup. After my appalling audit prediction at the start of the year, I've been waiting for a moment to turn the tables and ask you both to make a prediction of sorts. So, Tom, predictions please for this evening's game.

Speaker C: My goodness. I'm going to say a fairly drab one one. Um, lots of sideways passing, the Croatians getting a bit tired towards the end, and then, uh, England snatching a late equalizer.

Speaker B: Yeah, what a truly horrendous affair that would be.

Speaker A: Goodness me, Richard, one of my most infamous articles I ever wrote for a county web was about the Monte Carlo simulation. Um, kind of how you go about doing it on Excel. I had literally no idea what I was writing about. It's probably one of like the first pieces I wrote for AWeber about 10 years ago, so I may even consult that very article. Run a Monte Carlo simulation. And by the time I've worked out what Monte Carlo simulation is, the match will be over. So who knows? So I'm just going to go follow Tom's lead and go one. One.

Speaker B: Oh, good. Two predictions the same. Lovely. That's what you like to see. I'm going to go with the Bold 3 one. I'm going to go over the Bold 3 one. And by the time this goes live, one of us might look like some sort of wise guru. Like you remember the, um, uh, octopus, Paul? The octopus that made all those mad predictions a Few years ago. What an absolute dream scenario that would be. It's a shame we don't have more animal based predictions for these kind of tournaments, isn't it?

Speaker C: We could roll it out for accountancy. When will the audit reforms come in and uh, get some kind of mystic uh, cuttlefish to uh, come up with the answer?

Speaker B: Well there's no natural segue from a psychic octopus to Richard, so I will just dive straight in. More trade news story on Accounting Web over the past week was the government's confirmation that small companies and micro entities will have to file profit and loss accounts with Companies House. It has been quite the saga. It has.

Speaker A: And I must preface this by saying that Tom, you picked up the story. You picked up the breaking news for us on aWeb. It's a story which I've closely followed and one which annoyingly the story broke just as I was walking out of the door to jump on a train to go to an event. So Tom, you picked up the story.

Speaker C: Oh indeed, yeah. It wasn't as bad as you being up Snowden for the mini budget. If you had Snowden on your uh, AWE podcast bingo card then you can tick that off now. Yeah, no indeed. Both of you are sworning off to the big smoke and uh, leaving me in producer Morley to handle the breaker. So yeah, there you go.

Speaker A: And this is Matt, why you asked why you have not been on the podcast for the past month. It's a Snowden abuse.

Speaker B: You needed a bit of time, bit of time just to pull yourself back together.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Well this has been a big story. It kind of really. I'm going to go through the timeline, we're going to talk about just kind of what's happened, why it's happened, a big debate that's happened in between and also the implications of specifically when it's landing in 2028. More on that later. But before we get to that on that point about it being the most read story of the week, I might even go as far as to say, and I'm going to get everyone's thoughts on this. I think it might be the big story of this half of the year. Obviously at uh, the time of recording. We're coming six months into the year and it's always a good time to do some reflections. What's happened, what's, what's kind of the big stories. There's a few big stories that's come up at this six months point and uh, I'll be interested to get both of yours opinions on where you think this Sits now to me, I'm going to make the case why I think it might be the top story but there's a few others which I've scribbled down as being like the biggest story of the half the year. But I don't know. Open forum at the moment. If anyone else wants to put any other suggestions of the most defining story of 2026 part one, that company's house

Speaker C: security blunder that Dan Needle uncovered. I wrote that up for the site and um, that's the only one I can think of.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the biggest. Biggest is a funny term, isn't it? Because is it the most range or the biggest impact? I think the, the audit reform bill getting officially canned. It's one of those because did people see it coming? I obviously didn't with my road prediction but that was a, that was a biggie. That was a bit of a milestone because it's just fallen flat since then, hasn't it? But yeah, I can't think of many that would sit above, would sit above

Speaker A: this one audio form that's obviously quite a defining one, the company's house security one. Um, the other ones I've scribbled down, launch of mtd, which in itself is a big moment, although probably the bigger moment will be happening in the second half of the year. So I'm going to probably say that's kind of more of a uh, intro, more of a prelude to what could potentially be the biggest story of the year.

Speaker C: I think with mtd it's that sort of the rolling nature of it that uh, you know, not only is the sort of causal submission element there but it's also the fact there are penalties involved in it. So I think it's, it's going to be a fairly, a fairly soft landing. Uh, the incline isn't quite as steep as it could have been but yeah, the only other big tech story that sort of rivals that has been around when uh, ACCA pulled the plug on their remote exams.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: Right at the beginning of the year. So it's kind of five months, five months ago. But yeah, I think because of all the AI based cheating, um, they decided to go back to majority uh, in person exams. That's all I got.

Speaker A: That was a big news story. I'll do the rundown in a minute but that's obviously a big one. The other ones I scribbled down was private equity continues to be a massive story. If you haven't signed up already, come along to the Decision Line newsletter, subscribe there and kind of follow that as a big story which I've been covering there on our sub stack. And I think the moment this first half of the year was the, the news of the collapse of the Xenodin cell and just a ripple effect of. Anytime you talk to any kind of big consolidator, any big firm, it always often comes up that uh, as an example, there was obviously loads of reasons behind why it didn't go ahead, but it did kind of shake the nerves slightly of some of the big firms. So that was there. Um, and obviously the growing influence of AI with kind of anthropic being kind of integrating software as well. But I think that's kind of more to come on that one. I think I agreeably Tom, perhaps, yeah.

Speaker C: Every week there seems to be a new model or a new way of connecting that model to the accounting softwares. I'm not hearing masses from the frontline at the moment. The Xero and Claude partnership for example, I mean I've spoken to Xero about it but you know, it'd be great to actually find um, an early zero user who's, who's actually using it in a meaningful way. I think I've got a chat lined up in a week or so, but it's fairly minimal at the moment. You know the potential is huge but you know, we're interested in boots on the ground I think.

Speaker A: So if we're purely looking at uh, the biggest story of the year being the one which creates the most impact on AWEB within our uh, world. Looking at the top 10, Tom, you mentioned the ACCA remote exams being in there. Definitely in the top 10. Just throwing out some of the other big stories of the year. The company's house blunder is also in that top 10. But there's two stories in that top 10 which I'm going to talk about, which both are, uh, to do the profit and loss filing company's house. Both of those are in the top 10. Which goes to show one, how big of a story it's been and kind of the engagement from the accounting community. But also how there's been two stories that have bookended this first half of the year. One being the reforms were essentially put on ice. And then as we found out, uh, over this past week, suddenly it's all go, the green light's been given. So let's have a quick timeline about what's actually happened then. So this past week we heard the news that the government is going to go ahead with its plans for small companies and micro entities to File their profit and loss accounts with Companies House. Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's kind of the optional element for it to be public or not public.

Speaker C: There's a button you tick to opt out. I mean, I kind of feel there should be a button to tick to opt in, but that's the decision they've taken. So. Yeah, which I think, uh, I think is a sensible compromise candidate, given the backlash. You know, what did they call it? Like a sort of snoopers charter or whatever.

Speaker A: And looking back over the timeline since the moment that this was announced, way back in March 2022, when we first covered it, as hard as I believe it's been around for that long, when it was introduced, I think soon after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Companies House had a number of these big kind of efforts to increase, uh, security, increase the kind of clamp down on suspicious activity and all this that was kind of happening. But this was the one big change that kind of jumped out and kind of stood out for, uh, our readership quite particularly. And it was that reason which you mentioned, Tom, the concern about kind of people snooping into other companies and looking into what they might be up to, which that kind of continued soon after that. I remember doing, uh, a webinar soon after, and it was, it was debated quite, quite passionately from both sides of it. But I think those who had concerns about people snooping were the ones who were slightly louder in the debate. It was kind of tipping slightly in that favor of the majority of people. Only slightly, maybe. Might be 60, 40 from my memory of those kinds of webinars. But those were the ones who were most concerned. The kind of quotes at the time, people saying this was too fat, zero. People were concerned that the proposal, uh, would just kind of cause, um, external people to look at this information, get the wrong end of the stick, and then come to conclusions which the conclusions might not be the correct conclusions. Dan Healing, a friend of the podcast. Hi, Dan. I remember I did a webinar, uh, with him way back in 2022. And he said at the time, HMRC already has this information. They can talk to Companies House. We don't need this information out there for all the commercial world to see. For me, that main point is not achieving what is meant to, which I think essentially is kind of what we got back round to in the end. It just took a few years to get there. But over the course of those few years, then we had on, um, any answers, um, a frequent topic that came up now and Again was practitioners weighing up whether they should disincorporate in order to, uh, avoid being caught for this particular reform. Which just goes to show just how passionately people felt at the time. Uh, one person said, I really do not want to publish my P and L. I work on my own and am intensely private. I probably earn less than some would assume and more than others, but I don't want to have this information publicly available. I really don't want my clients and neighbors knowing my numbers. I'm therefore considering Disant Court Corporation. So it got to the point where people really considering just what they should do next. And then in July 2025, that's when a slight change happened. That's when obviously the, the new labor government came in and after a year in power, suddenly they, they, um, wanted to be friendly a little bit more to business. And there was that infamous quote, Tom, which you quoted within your piece from an ally of the then Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, who leaked it to the Financial Times, saying this would not happen as long as Johnny is in place. It doesn't fit our plans to cut regulation. Now, this was all kind of happening at the same time as the employer Rights bill was going through, which obviously was adding further kind of bureaucracy and further strain. If you ask any business, it happened at a time just as Companies House announced a timeline of what was going to be happening. So there was an awful lot of confusion when I think we published on accounting web Companies Houses timeline, this broke like a day or two afterwards and suddenly no one knew what was happening. There was confusion. The message was not kind of unified across everyone. We approached the Department for Business and Trade and a spokesperson said the government is committed to avoiding undue burdens on businesses as part of our plan for change. So at the time that wasn't a full throttle U turn, but it did kind of suggest that something was brewing. And then we got to January of this year and that's when the government announced that small companies and micro entities would no longer be required to file their profit and loss accounts for Companies House from April 2027. They essentially said it was on ice. That was at the start of the year. So that's what we thought. And then they did say the reforms are still under review and a final decision would be announced shortly. And the company was received 21 months notice to prepare. Then that comes to this past week when suddenly another twist in the saga is back on. We've suddenly got P and L filing back on the menu, only this time they can opt out of publishing information. So it's been quite a wild ride over the past few years with plenty of debate either side on it. And the reform is going to be coming ahead in 2028, which then does mean it's a super busy 2028 because if you look at the calendar, we've got MTD expanding for taxpayers with income over 20,000. This past week we learned that the mandation for payrolling and benefits would be a phase introduction. So whilst we initially thought would be coming in from April 2027, part of it will, but then other benefits will come in in 2028. So that's been kind of kicked a little bit into 2020 as well. Kind of get the picture. A lot's going to be happening in 2028. So it's been quite a wild ride. So I think for us to have the beginning and ending of this story in a sense happen at the first half of this year, hopefully. I made the argument that in my mind it has been quite a defining story so far of 2026.

Speaker B: I think it has, I think it has. It's certainly, certainly uh, the bread on the first half of 2026 sandwich, isn't it? What's been the reaction from the profession to this latest change of pace?

Speaker A: I'd say mostly welcomed. It's a difficult one, I think, some people throwing up their hands kind of saying, how did we get to this point to begin with? I think some people just see it as another layer of bureaucracy in that they have to provide us information that they already provide to hmrc. So there's that element obviously that, that we're reading on the counterweb as well.

Speaker B: Do you think this is it so far as twists and tales go in this, in this saga? Might we not hear anything for the rest of the 2026 or you just never know?

Speaker A: I mean, uh, I feel like a decision to be made, a full stop's been added to this now and I think we're now at the point where we made a decision. We can move on and plan accordingly, but maybe have to consult the Monte Carlo assimilation and see if anything else will happen. But at least it then gives space for another story to compete as like the big one for 2026 in the second half of the year.

Speaker B: This is it. Yeah, let's give, let's give someone else a chance for goodness sake. Lovely stuff. Well, thanks as ever for the insight, Richard. Tom, um, what have you got for us from Technology Corner this week, AI or mtd?

Speaker C: Well, regular listeners will be delighted to hear that it's not directly about AI or mtd, which I've been talking about an awful lot lately. No, instead it's about an HMRC policy paper. Wait, come back. No, no, no. The tax authority has slapped down a missive to agents, uh, reaffirming that uh, what it's calling screen scraping, browser automation or robotic process automation technology isn't allowed under the terms of its government gateway, regardless of whether that data's being read or written. And they've threatened that uh, if they catch agents using these types of technologies, then they don't have the power to sanction the vendors, the technology vendors, but instead they will block agent access for accountants using that screen scraping technology, which, uh, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, uh, or our listeners is pretty serious.

Speaker B: And before we get cracking on this one, Tom, can you just give us an overview of what screen scraping actually is for those of us in the room who aren't too sure? Sure.

Speaker C: I mean screen scraping or uh, web scraping as it used to be known, has been around for almost as long as the Internet. It's basically the software equivalent of a member of staff logging into a page with credentials. So hmrc, a bank, whatever system, really opening those pages up and then copying the figures into another system without you having to manually do it. So firms using that first wave of cloud accounting software in the early 2000 and tens, screen scraping tools were essential to get hold of bank feed information. So you had vendors like Yodlee or Tink, they'd hook up to the banks, scrape the data and then pump it across to Xero or um, QuickBooks Online. Those worked to a point, but they brought in lots of duplicate transactions, missed out data. And so certainly in the uk, open banking replaced them with uh, what we call application programming interfaces, APIs. So these are uh, digital pipes that connect accounting software to third party apps, bank, uh, feeds, HMRC Companies House, et cetera. Rather than the screen scrapers, these APIs are more stable. They give users safer ways to share data rather than handing over your bank login to third party tools. And with APIs you don't need to share those login details to access the information. You just need permission at either end, as it were. Uh, I guess for tax, the equivalent shift has been HMR's move towards the software to HMRC submission under the making, uh, Tax Digital program. Little callback to the earlier story, um, as well as the P and L filing. I think Companies House confirmed that from 2028 you were going to have to use third party software to file from. Then your web and paper based filing systems are going to be closed for accounts filings. Nothing else, just accounts filings. But anyway I've, I've digressed there. McD for VAT brought in the concept that VAT returns had to be submitted through software rather than your manual web entry. Um, and MCD for income tax um, is coming down the line as well.

Speaker B: So how and why are firms using screen scraping tools then Tom? How have we got here?

Speaker C: I mean every firm's different but I mean in terms of why it's the old favourites, it's time and workload. Everything about compliance has become more digital, works become more frequent. So I mean making tax digital as an example with those quarterly submissions and ah, just generally firms are under a lot more pressure from clients. Digital means of communication means their communication is more regular. They're under pressure to monitor, you know, provide more client data, spot problems earlier and reduce manual checking. So I guess it's not surprising they've turned to tax automation tools. I mean there are potentially thousands of firms I've spoken to who are using these types of tax automation tools and they're needed essentially because HMRC's tech ecosystem is nowhere near complete. So for example accounting firms can't use software to pull down client details like uh, penalties, uh, interest or specific balances on account. So it can't access the information via software and it can't aggregate them. So in other words if you're not using technologies like this then to get a full picture of your client base up, uh, to date picture should I say? You either have to manually piece this information together or you fly blind and hope for the best. You can't do these things uh, at the m moment via API because HMRC hasn't built the API access that allows the software to in their view sort of safely draw down that information like you're not able to get a client list, um, as it were. So reaction to this has been a bit frustrating on LinkedIn when I posted firm owner Daniel Lieperman pointed out that uh, in, in terms of development, HMRC is repeatedly ignoring the needs of agents and to then with this uh, particular proposal blocking them from working around the problem.

Speaker B: So what's been the actual problem with the screen script and tools then Tom? What's the, what's the fuss?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean HMRC is pretty categoric about them and to be fair they've been pretty consistent on these tools. They view it as a security risk. How much of a risk That's a good question. I mean, I asked if there had been like a specific breach. I mean not, not asking for names obviously, but just to confirm whether there had been a breach involving one of these technologies. And they, they didn't get back to me on that one. I guess from their point of view, if agents are uh, handing over their HMRC credentials, their login and password details to a third party software provider, then those credentials become a target. If that software vendor gets uh, hacked. If there's a breach there that could expose access to all tax records for all your clients. If you're using APIs, that's more locked down, the details are more granular, the software doesn't receive or use the user sign in details. So I guess it's a control risk. With API access you can be clearly more authorized. You know, you can monitor what's going on and you can revoke access as and when. You know, if you give a software company your HMRC login, they've kind of got it. So um, yeah, that is an issue. And I guess also there's a client relationship risk. If a client says, well, why did your firm expose my details to a third party tool? When HMRC says giving agent login details to a third party isn't permitted, you're going to struggle to answer that question. I think so, yeah, there is a risk. But I think the fact that accounting firms, I mean often they know about these risks and they choose to, to use the tools anyway. I mean that should tell you everything that you need to know about what's happening at the moment. Richard talked about it earlier. You know, MTD companies, house changes, payrolling and benefits, anti money laundering changes, pressure from clients. There is just a lot going on and uh, firms are trying to sort of look to tools to ease the pressure on that. I'd say the vast majority of agents just want to do a decent job that is within the rules. And I think if HMRC is able to provide a few of these services for agents so they can see, I mean, heaven forbid that they can see what tax their entire client base owes across the board. I mean, I think HMRC would find a lot more tax being paid on time if they provided that.

Speaker B: So sticking with hmrc, then how do they know that firms have been using screen scrapers?

Speaker C: So I think they can see them based on behavior patterns. So if a firm uses a tool to monitor client tax positions across, I don't know, a thousand clients, if HMRC sees that every day at 3 o' clock in the Morning, that firm is logging in to HMRC using the agent account, goes into every single client record, checks, balances, penalties, interest, and then copies the figures. Well, I mean, that's fairly easy to spot.

Speaker B: And at that point, what happens if a firm is actually caught doing this?

Speaker C: It is unclear the exact process. I did ask. I guess HMRC wasn't keen on talking through their entire process with me. But you know, they said they'd deal with each firm on a case by case basis. Worst case scenario though, they'll have their agent account blocked. Feels kind of vague. For how long? How did they get it back? How will they know in the first place? I mean, when I've, I've spoken to agents who've had their agent accounts blocked over the years, and I think a letter kind of drops through, you know, you're not able to access it, and then about a week later a letter arrives, um, at your registered address, which obviously isn't ideal. I mean, for an accountancy firm, having your agent account access blocked is pretty catastrophic. You know, you, you lose the ability to check client positions, file returns, manage your authorizations. You know, it's, it's pretty disruptive to the legitimate work you're doing and obviously can cause some problems reputation wise and cash flow wise as well. I mean, it's one of those things. HMRC says these are the terms and conditions you signed up for when you're using the government gateway. So you should use software that's in line with our policies.

Speaker B: So what should firms do then, Tom? What's the kind of, what's the big answer to it all?

Speaker C: Well, there isn't a list of approved or non approved product like for mtd. So I think firms, I mean, if they're worried about it, they should, uh, go straight to the tax software vendors and ask barely direct questions. You know, does the product collect and use HMRC sign in details. Does it log in through the government gateway on the firm's behalf? Is an HMRC API available? If so, are you using it? You know, uh, does the tool comply with HMRC's terms and conditions? So, yeah, those are some fairly fundamental questions. I mean, more broadly, the medium to long term brings HMRC into the equation. If the information agents need, uh, isn't available through APIs, you know, manual checking. Ah. And sort of that gray area automation just continues to fill that vacuum. I know HMRC have published these rather vague transformation documents talking about expanded external integration, but I think firms need more than these vague commitments. You know, they need a published roadmap for these agent facing APIs, you know, they need, ah, clarity and a sort of safe route away from these workarounds that HMRC is clamping down on. I think HMRC is right to be worried about agent security, particularly with the cyber attacks we've had over the last sort of 12 to 18 months. But if the front door's not wide enough, people will keep looking for the side entrance. Right. The challenge is to shut down that access without making ordinary compliance work even harder for accounting firms.

Speaker B: You said there needs to be a published roadmap, Tom. Um, any optimism at all that that might be coming? Any kind of nods in that direction, or is it just on the wish list?

Speaker C: I'd say it's on the wish list. Uh, part of publicizing this and, you know, I made a joke about an HMRC policy paper being fairly dull at the beginning, but part of shedding some light on this is, is to try and focus minds. I realize there's a lot going on, but I think this could be. We talk about productivity, right? I mean, you know, it's a fairly woolly measure at the best of times, but I mean, a massive engine of productivity gained our agents themselves, you know, because of the, the sort of flywheel effect of, you know, making agents more efficient will make their clients more efficient in the long run. And it's frustrating that HMRC can't see that.

Speaker B: I think the line of there's a lot going on is always. It can very easily be thrown about as well, can't it? That's why, that's why there is a pin put in audit reform. We're not gonna do that. Cause there's too much happening. Well, there's always stuff going on. And if you don't, these things aren't prioritized. They're just gonna run and run and run. And these people seem to love a saga, it seems.

Speaker C: It's a funny one, isn't it?

Speaker B: Well, thanks ever for the insight, Tom. Fascinating story. And one which won't end there, I'm sure. I want to see us out this week with a look at a, uh, skill set that finance leaders are finding themselves having to have more and more. And it's one which AI just, just can't do, or at least at the moment, but you'd like to think it will. It will never become part of their, part of their makeup. There was a time when FDs and CFOs could build careers on their abilities, just handle compliance, reporting, risk management. They did the numbers and that was kind of enough. Soft skills, they mattered a whole lot less. There was an element of it, of course, but it was far from a core attribute. And now, as is the case with several elements of those rules in 2026, it looks a little different. I spoke to Alton Utah recently, fab speaker and finance and operations director at, uh, Geocoustics. But a few topics, because there's a lot going on in the world of the finance leader. But soft skills came very much to the fore. He made an interesting point that soft skills are never undervalued in the past. More, they weren't needed. There's been a handful of drivers for this shift, uh, that we're seeing at the moment. The key one being the pace at which the modern world moves. There's an element of having to always be on meaning. People want their answers relatively quickly. And in Alton's words, colleagues don't necessarily have time to digest a full report or the full profit and loss package. He said, like any storyteller, you make the narrative work for them. And this thing with time, some of the stories you were talking about earlier, Richard, it seems like they happened a very long time ago, not just a few months. You know, time is just absolutely flying by. And there is this kind of urgency these days of people wanting stuff more and more. And I think as a finance leader, you are going to have to have the ability to have those conversations. It's, uh, it's part of the package now, isn't it? It's gone from being something of an introverted rule to a real extroverted one.

Speaker A: I would also argue that if you're going to kind of climb the ladder and become kind of more of a C suite style finance leader, you kind of need these skills. These are skills which you kind of desperately need as part of your skill set. I remember speaking with a, uh, finance director who said that every Friday, I think it was like the CEO had like a, uh, all hands meeting every Friday, and the CEO would stand up there and do like the big kind of vision stuff and then throw it to the finance director who then had to stand up every Friday and give like a numbers kind of thing. I think they called it Donut Friday is what they called it. Kind of like an American kind of thing. As you could probably tell by like the donut thing and like donuts were all out and all the business had to come forward and this person had to kind of. It was almost like performing, performing like the things. And they were kind of relatively new to the position of what they held at that Time. And it was like the, the quickest way to get over any kind of performance anxieties or anything was to, to do that kind of every week, knowing that that was your time to do the performance thing. There's also an important point as well. If you're sitting around that, that C suite boardroom table and you're the only finance person there and your job then is to communicate the numbers to everyone else. In a piece which we published on Accounting web a couple of years ago was an interview with Zoe Kleinman from the BBC. And she raised that important point of kind of a great skill to have, which she has as a journalist, which she advised the readers, was the importance of storytelling and being able to talk about the numbers and talk about in such a way that you're discussing this narrative and getting buy in from everyone else around the table, which goes beyond just here's a spreadsheet, here's the numbers. You have to have that compelling narrative behind it. And that's an important attribute which any FD or CFO or any finance leader kind of needs in order to fulfill that job which is required of them.

Speaker B: Yeah, it feels like it's twofold at the moment where you need to have, like you said, that ability to tell the story to be able to speak finance. Basically. You know, they can, I'm sure they can look at a P and L sheet and uh, instantly know just what everything says. But to be able to translate that to someone who doesn't speak finance is obviously a skill itself. But then not only that, have the ability to stand up and kind of confidently have that conversation, have the discussions at, uh, every level so that everyone is brought with you on that journey. And what I think will be an interesting watch now is how this shift translates to the next generation of finance leaders. Because knowing there is an element of extrovert to the role might yield a change in who does or uh, doesn't look to get involved in finance. I spoke to the new djh cfo Steve, uh, Bryce recently and he told me that more is expected of us. We're expected to be savvy around the technology, but also able to articulate and build relationships out in the organ. So that skills gap that needs to be filled. Tom, um, now it feels like the professional bodies might have to change the focus of what that draw might be for those people looking to enter the profession. Suddenly it's got the tech, it's got the influence, it's got people skills. It's become a different proposition, dare I say it's become a little sexier.

Speaker C: Oh, indeed. Your words, not mine, Matt. It's definitely something you've noticed over uh, the last decade or so that the type of person entering the profession is, is very different. You know, the opportunities are there. Right. You know, when 20 or 30 years ago to work in accountancy, you needed to join an office with you know, your big server room and uh, you know, the computers sort of bolted down and everything and you have to sort of work your way up. It was all very, a sort of very straight jacketed sort of way to the top, as it were. Whereas now, I mean, you need your practicing license, uh, you know, your qualifications and uh, a laptop and a bank account, a few software tools and off you go. You know, it can be a little more freewheeling and buccaneering and you can kind of set it up. You know, you've got your fractional CFOs emerging, you've got people sort of specializing in very niche areas of industry where they have experience, I think a much bigger jaw. Whether, uh, I mean, interesting, like looking at uh, that traditional pyramid shape that like the big firms have of sort of, lots of people at the bottom doing all the sort of grunt work and then sort of getting gradually moving to the top of the pyramid, I feel like that will change. But I think that's probably no bad thing because I think it's fairly soul destroying stuff and I think you lose a lot of people from the profession, a lot of good people from the profession along the way. So yeah, I mean, I think definitely changing the equation for accountancy is a uh, thing.

Speaker B: And now we wait to see if me calling the role of the finance leader sexy makes the cut. That's all we've got time for this week. Join us next time for a look at the big goings on. But until then, take care, uh,