Artificial intelligence marks the beginning of a new era for accounting firms. For Solwers company Epta Advisors, however, it is the latest stage in a transformation that began more than a decade ago.
In this article, originally written for the PrimeGlobal network, Epta Advisors’ Managing Director Arkadiusz Szwak shares the company’s digitalisation journey and reflects on why advances in technology are making human judgement, communication and trust even more important than before.
Before I became an accountant, I wanted to be an ergonomics specialist.
I brought this interest into an accounting firm that I founded from scratch in 2009, Epta Advisors (formerly Szwak i Spółka Accountants). By 2023, the company had grown to 60 employees. Continued investment in digitalisation and process improvement has since transformed the way we work, enabling us to operate more efficiently with around 30 employees today.
Instead of manually entering figures into accounting systems, we implemented an electronic document and invoice workflow 12 years ago and have continuously improved it ever since. Once entered, data flows automatically between systems. Today, we process more than 100,000 invoices per month, and the solution has increased the efficiency and speed of our accounting processes by more than 300%.
The next major step came in 2018, when we created our first online business intelligence reporting solution. It enabled clients to access the financial reports relevant to them online, 24/7/365.
We have also improved our payroll processes by introducing electronic leave requests and payslips, making the information our clients’ employees most frequently need readily available.
We have shortened the time between issuing or receiving an invoice or payment and seeing the transaction reflected in P&L reports, settlements or budget tracking from several dozen days to just a few seconds. Our clients are more satisfied, our specialists have more time to focus on higher-value work, and our company has gained a competitive advantage while maintaining a strong EBITDA margin.
We have gradually moved from the role of calculators to the role of advisors.
These are three key areas, but over the past 15 years we have continuously developed our expertise and technology, introducing improvements that digitalise more and more of the work traditionally carried out by accountants, payroll specialists and analysts. In doing so, we have gradually moved from the role of calculators to the role of advisors.
AI now enables us to perform repetitive tasks, which are common in our industry, at incredible speed while improving the quality of our services. Even translating a document can now take seconds, helping us internationalise our services.
The impact of AI: becoming advisors
When we think about AI, we approach it with both respect and appreciation. There is no point in fighting the inevitable. It is better to learn how to use it. That is why we adopt these tools, configure them to our needs and continuously improve how we use them.
As we increasingly become advisors, robots, AI and other digital tools take over much of the manual work we used to do. At the same time, this gives us more time to build and maintain relationships with our clients. If business were only about numbers, mathematicians would be billionaires. Business is built on relationships.
Our job is to count money accurately, report it reliably and keep financial information confidential. Accounting is a profession built on trust, and that trust remains fundamentally human.
Our clients are unlikely to rely solely on AI when discussing their money, their plans or important financial decisions. This is where our human advantage lies. AI cannot have lunch with a client, play golf with them or ask how their family is doing.
So, while AI increasingly powers our accounting systems, we are also investing in our human capabilities: listening, communication and relationship-building, as well as the interests and experiences that help us connect with other people, whether through food, sport or something else.
Technology makes us more efficient. Human relationships make us better advisors.
Epta Advisors joined Solwers in 2025 and is based in Poznań, Poland.
