In this exclusive interaction with StartupTalky, Anil K. Sharma, Director of AKSSAI ProjExel, shares practical insights on how both large corporates and MSMEs can manage accounting and compliance efficiently without large teams or rising costs. He explains the limitations of outdated tools, the value of automation through their platform FINAC, and the risks of using multiple software systems. Drawing from his Big 4 background, he highlights common financial mistakes, changing roles of Chartered Accountants, and the importance of internal accountability. Sharma also discusses real results achieved by clients, cost savings, and how FINAC stays updated with India’s evolving tax rules.
StartupTalky: How can MSMEs future-proof their accounting and compliance functions against frequent regulatory changes without inflating costs or hiring large teams?
Mr. Sharma: In the last 5-7 years, the government has invested billions in cutting-edge technology to identify lapses/catch every mistake in accounting and compliance done by MSMEs and issue them notices/demand penalties. Traditional tools that have worked in the last few decades will slowly be obsolete and not provide sufficient protection to MSMEs. Only using the right technology platforms (for eg, FINAC by AKSSAI), the MSMEs can compete/comply.
StartupTalky: From your Big 4 experience to founding AKSSAI, what are the three most common but critical financial errors you’ve observed even well-managed companies making, and how can technology eliminate them?
Mr. Sharma: Three of the most common but critical financial errors include:
- Not doing 360-degree reconciliations: This often leads to missed errors and financial mismatches.
- Lack of review before delivery: Not having a structured review process results in oversight and inaccuracies in reporting.
- Relying heavily on manual work: This increases the chance of errors and slows down operations.
Ensuring 360-degree reconciliations, reviewing everything before it is delivered, and gradually reducing manual work as much as possible, all of these are areas that we have incorporated into FINAC.
StartupTalky: FINAC promises up to a 90% reduction in processing time. Could you walk us through a real-case efficiency comparison before and after using FINAC, for any business size?
Mr. Sharma: A trading business with a turnover of INR 10 crores initially used to spend 2-3 days manually doing accounting entries. With Finac, now they have to only upload invoice copies and bank statements; the system automatically posts entries, matches to GSTR2B data, and readies the GSTR1 and GSTR3B return for the month, all in a few minutes. In addition, this is being reviewed by the Finac team for 1-2 hours to do a final quality check before releasing the reports.
StartupTalky: With AI handling core accounting tasks, how do you see the role of Chartered Accountants evolving, especially in advisory, governance, and fraud detection?
Mr. Sharma: AI should be perceived as a tool to facilitate CA’s work. Advisory, governance and fraud detection are critical for any business owner, regardless of their size. By simplifying voluminous tasks, it will help CAs spend their time on more meaningful areas and provide purposeful advice. Decision-making will continue to be required to come from CAs as trusted advisors for businesses.
StartupTalky: Given the wide range of automation tools available, what are the unseen risks businesses face when adopting piecemeal accounting and tax software instead of a unified platform like FINAC?
Mr. Sharma: One of the risks is poor decision-making owing to limited overall visibility and inability to look at the complete picture. Occasionally, it might work to adopt multiple different tools, but there is always benefit in finding a common platform that addresses and even provides tailored insights to a business. The other key risk is inefficient use of time by juggling multiple tools/vendors/software. Other factors to consider are cost element, learning/training time to learn multiple systems vs only one system, knowing who the SPOC is to answer all/most of your questions, instead of working with multiple people.
StartupTalky: How should growing companies evaluate whether they’ve outgrown their current compliance setup? Are there any signs in the data or operations that indicate a need for automation?
Mr. Sharma: If there are challenges coming from team members in terms of timely reporting, getting insights from the team, and owners are not getting this despite changing the staff multiple times, then it means the system has to change instead of the people.
StartupTalky: You mentioned that FINAC focuses equally on delivery and governance. Could you share how internal team accountability and performance are tracked within the platform, and how this translates to client satisfaction?
Mr. Sharma: One example is that the system maintains a 100% log of every journal entry in FINAC. This includes a documentation trail such that any errors or post-date changes can be seen by reviewers, including the time stamp of when those happened. In addition, we have a mandatory 5-day approval window for each journal entry where a senior accountant must review the work done by their team. There are several means and checks to ensure the approvals take place within this window to ensure the internal team maintains delivery discipline.
StartupTalky: Based on your internal data, what has been the average cost savings and time reduction observed by MSME clients after switching to FINAC?
Mr. Sharma: We have seen average cost savings to be 60% initially and are gradually increasing it to 80%-90%.
StartupTalky: India has one of the most complex indirect tax systems globally. How does FINAC simplify GST compliance for multi-state operations, and how do you ensure accuracy at scale?
Mr. Sharma: Finac has all rules embedded, which are applied to every transaction, and the GST returns are updated in real time. There is no need to manually change or enter anything. It also provides flexibility to manually override any particular rule in case of different treatment/categorisation in case of exceptions. Accuracy is achieved through automation. Every rule has been tested thoroughly over a long period of time and only implemented after several iterations. Getting the treatment/categorisation of a transaction right is Finac’s responsibility, and hence the team of experts continuously reviews and updates the system in line with frequent changes in GST law and the GST portal.
StartupTalkySanvi Barjatya
Original Article
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