[Opening Slide / Opening Lines]
We may not often hear it said aloud…
But we suspect it’s being said silently every day in finance departments across the world.
“I don’t know — the system does that.”
You’ll hear it when you ask someone in FP&A or accounting, “What just happened here?”
And the answer comes back, “I don’t know — the system does that. I don’t have to worry about it.”
That, right there, tells us something very profound about where accounting has drifted.
Part 1 — The Disconnection
So I start with a simple test.
I ask:
“Do you know what a balance sheet is? What a profit and loss account is?”
They say, “Yes, of course — the system does that.”
So I push further:
“Alright then, let me describe a few simple business events. Tell me how they affect the financial statements.”
Let’s see what happens.
A retail business places an order to buy some stock from a supplier.
That’s a business event.
I ask:
“How does that affect the P&L? The balance sheet?”
And the answer comes back:
“I don’t know. I just place the order in the system — the system does that.”
The goods are received into the warehouse.
Now I ask again:
“Does that affect the balance sheet? The stock valuation? The P&L?”
And again —
“I don’t know. The stock’s booked in, the system handles it. When I run the report, it’ll show up.”
And so it goes — customers buy goods, invoices go out, payments come in —
Every question gets the same answer:
“I don’t know. The system does that.”
Part 2 — The Black Box
And that’s when we realise:
We’re living in a black box world.
Today’s accountants are trained not to understand how double entry works —
only to operate the box that does it for them.
Every company’s box is different.
Different systems, different setups, even within the same organisation.
And yet, we trust them all — blindly.
But when the results come out every month,
and something doesn’t look quite right…
suddenly that trust starts to wobble.
Part 3 — The Real-World Consequence
Now management has a problem.
They rely on these systems to produce draft accounts —
but when things don’t tie up, or anomalies appear, or numbers look “off”…
the politics begin.
People are promoted or blamed based on what the system says —
even when the system might be wrong.
So, management decides to create a review process.
Before the accounts are finalised,
budget holders will get a chance to review the draft results
and flag any issues that don’t look right.
It sounds sensible.
But here’s the catch:
The system that does everything so magically…
doesn’t have a system to audit itself.
“The system doesn’t have a system to check the system.”
That’s the key phrase here.
Part 4 — The Practical Dead End
So what happens next?
We ask the ERP vendor:
“Can you add a review feature for budget holders?”
They reply:
“Of course! Our system is infinitely customisable!”
…which means it will take infinite time and infinite money.
If we ask the cloud vendors, we hear the opposite:
“No, it’s a standard product. One size fits all. Take it or leave it.”
So neither option works.
And when we try to do it manually with spreadsheets —
downloading dozens of reports, distributing them to hundreds of managers,
asking them to review, comment, and send them back in 24 hours —
it collapses under its own weight.
We are stuck.
The system won’t do it.
The system can’t be customised to do it.
And we can’t do it by hand either.
Mission impossible.
Part 5 — The Breakthrough
And yet… I’m here to show you that it is possible.
Let me demonstrate.
Imagine I open a workbook — blank.
I type in a budget holder ID and an operating unit ID.
Click “Get.”
In seconds, I have my profit and loss statement on screen.
I scan through — everything looks fine, except one item that jumps out.
I click to drill down, add a quick comment:
“This belongs in September, not October.”
Then I hit a button labelled “Put.”
That’s it.
My job as a budget holder is done.
Two minutes, maybe less.
Meanwhile, back in the finance department,
the controller refreshes their workbook.
All the comments from 400 budget holders appear instantly.
They review, make the appropriate adjustments —
prepayments, accruals, reclassifications — all with a few clicks.
Budget holders can refresh again, see that their issues were resolved,
and confirm.
Finally, the controller runs a single refresh and sees that
all units are reviewed and confirmed.
Everyone’s happy.
No mess.
No chaos.
No black box mysteries.
Part 6 — The Lesson
So let’s recap.
The system couldn’t do it.
The system couldn’t be made to do it.
Traditional spreadsheets couldn’t handle it either.
And yet —
here we are, with a live, working solution that took no extra work from anyone.
How did that happen?
Simple:
We understood what the system does under the hood.
We understood double entry.
We understood data flow.
And because of that understanding,
we could extend the system beyond its own limitations.
Part 7 — Why It Matters
Now let me be clear —
I’m not anti-system.
I love systems.
I love machines that do things faster, more accurately, more reliably.
But as an engineer, I also love knowing how they do it.
Because when the system fails — and it does —
what do you do if you don’t know what it’s doing?
That’s where we are today in much of the accounting world.
A generation trained to trust the box,
but not to understand the box.
And that’s dangerous.
Because if we don’t know how the system works,
we can’t audit it, we can’t improve it,
and we certainly can’t extend it when it reaches its limits.
Part 8 — The Future of Accounting Education
That’s why I teach the principles of accounting
in the context of digital technology.
We start from scratch.
No jargon.
No fancy tools.
Just Excel.
We literally build the black box ourselves.
We take simple business events —
purchases, sales, payments —
and recreate what the system does behind the scenes.
We link data, double entries, and reports step by step.
And in doing that,
we reconnect what has been broken —
the link between accounting principle and digital execution.
Part 9 — The Invitation
So here’s my pitch to you.
If you’ve ever said,
“I don’t know — the system does that,”
this workshop is for you.
Because when you do know what the system is doing,
you can make it work for you.
You can extend it.
You can fix what others say can’t be fixed.
And that’s where the real value lies.
That’s how I tripled my pay — not by learning another tool,
but by learning how to make systems do what management actually needs.
And you can do the same.
Join the workshop.
Learn what’s under the hood.
Turn the black box into a transparent, powerful, and flexible tool.
Because the future of accounting belongs to those who understand how the system really works.
[Closing Slide]
“We can trust the system —
but we can trust it even more
when we understand what it’s doing.”
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