Dexter Weaver holds many responsibilities when it comes to serving his customers, making his restaurant’s signature food and maintaining a welcoming environment for the community. But with so many moving parts, it becomes difficult to manage the financial side of his business when it comes to tasks like bookkeeping, payroll and filing taxes.
Certified public accountants can externally manage a businesses’ financial matters, but data suggests a national decline in the number of these CPAs. There are more than 130,000 job openings in the field, but only 91,000 jobs are expected to be created by 2033, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, the number of people taking the CPA exam has been decreasing, according to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. The number of accountants in Athens has remained stagnant however, leading some local businesses to outsource their accounting.
“When I get through [a work day], I’m good and tired,” said Weaver, owner of Weaver D’s. “Ain’t no sense of me dealing with numbers or nothing else. Just trying to get home.”
For 37 of the 39 years the soul food restaurant has been open, it has relied on the same CPA. The restaurant is just one example of a business that uses an accounting firm to handle complicated and tedious financial responsibilities.
Approximately 99.7% of businesses in Georgia are considered small, according to a report from the University of Georgia Small Business Development Center. Many large businesses can afford to invest in their own accounting resources. However, some accounting firms offer resources for small businesses such as online accounting software.
Weaver’s CPA works for a local firm, Williams and Guined, that provides clients with discounted access to Intuit QuickBooks. This software includes AI functionalities that simplify accounting tasks that some businesses prefer over hiring a CPA.
Jenny McCallen, a UGA accounting professor, says that misconceptions of the job cause the decline in accountants and not AI.
“I do think that people are scared that AI is going to take over their jobs,” McCallen said. “You have to learn to embrace it and work with it. But it’s not going to take over your jobs, because at the end of the day, there’s always a human judgment piece that is required in accounting and auditing.”
McCallen says that AI technology makes accounting easier for CPAs but cannot replace them. If a business owner decides to use AI accounting software to manage finances, it would still require training and an understanding of accounting processes.
For Weaver, outsourcing his accounting has allowed his restaurant to thrive for nearly four decades without adding unnecessary stress to his workload.
“Somebody came in here one day and said, ‘Weaver, you got a CPA?’” Weaver said. “‘How do you know I have one?’ He said, ‘You are last of the real people. I know you got one.’”