In this podcast episode, CPA Josh Andler, senior director of finance, describes how openness, curiosity, and switching contexts to work across the entire business are part of a typical day at JaneApp.
“Being scrappy and operational is so important when you’re wearing many different hats,” says Josh Andler of his CPA career in tech. The senior director of finance at Jane App underscores the importance of being well-rounded, saying, “You’re not focused on your month-end cycle – you’re focused on being a great business partner.”
Josh’s route to helping lead an online platform for health and wellness practitioners started during an internship at Bench Accounting, a provider of online bookkeeping services, and after that, he was hooked. “I saw that as a chartered professional accountant in tech, you’re not in this box of what a typical accountant does. You’re there as a rational, strategic voice that helps guide the organization,” he says. After that, he finished articling at Big Four firms, left for another tech company, then arrived at Jane App in 2020.
What sets his team apart
During his time with Jane App, which handles booking, scheduling, charting, billing and payments, Josh has seen the company grow to nearly 750 employees, mostly located in Canada. Recently, it hit $100 million USD in annual recurring revenue, with over 200,000 practitioners now using the platform. Josh notes there are a few key factors that differentiate Jane App.
“We’ve been profitable since day one,” he says “which eases pressure on our balance sheet. And our small finance team is highly operational, covering everything from forecasting to payroll to legal and we support teams by implementing tools, building reports, and delivering answers fast.”
He also notes that their culture isn’t focused on standard objectives like optimizing revenue or following the traditional private equity model. “Our mission is about how we can build more exciting features to help our clients. That openness and constant curiosity ensure we’re focused on the customer journey which drives investor returns.”
Context switching is at the core of this CPA’s work
When asked about what’s typically on his to-do list, Josh says, “Right now I’m focused on building our financial roadmap and understanding how we can provide better reporting to our stakeholders.” Overall, his days involve the ability to be versatile. “This could mean switching from building databases with our data team, to working through employment issues with our people team, to managing investor requests,” he notes.
The benefits of being early adopters
On the part of his job that he’s most excited about, Josh points to Jane App’s encouragement to be early users of new technologies and the role it plays in shaping these tools. For example, he says, “We’ve been using the accounts payment management tool Float for close to four years. We’ve helped them shape their product offerings and they’ve provided us the ability to pilot their new features. We recently helped them with their new reimbursements feature which has revolutionized our ability to automate the expense side of our business and we also earn cash back on all of our spend now, which is fantastic.”
Integrating AI to support practitioners
Among his responsibilities, working with AI is central to Josh’s role. “We recently launched AI Scribe, a feature that lets practitioners opt in to record patient visits and Jane App transcribes the audio and drafts chart notes,” he says. “Many practitioners have told us this has saved them a lot of time and reduced administrative burden.” Josh emphasizes that integrating AI was done carefully: “When we were building this tool, it was important for us to focus on accuracy, so practitioners need to review and sign off on all AI-generated charts to ensure the patient record is correct.”
Internally, his finance team uses AI to transcribe team meetings and using chatbots is second nature for research and refining internal communications. “We’re also building internal bots as reference tools for things like expense reimbursements and travel policies,” he says. “But what excites us most is embedded AI in new tools we’re launching like our ERP and FP&A systems. It’s incredible to think about the insights they can gather given the level of detail they can look at.”
The CPA’s role in responsible AI use
Josh underscores that using AI needs to be done diligently, saying “As CPAs, we have a responsibility to the public to provide accurate information, so the people-pleasing nature of AI and the potential for false information is scary. While it may be easy to fact-check a chatbot, information from embedded AI features may be harder to verify.” As CPAs, he notes that, “our professionalism is the most important thing, so ensuring the accuracy of the information that AI provides is key.”
Strategic skills that accelerate success
Reflecting on other factors that are driving his work, Josh says, “Big picture thinking is super important. I live at 30,000 feet because I have such a broad exposure to the company. In finance that’s powerful because you’re able to consult, advise, and bring stakeholders together who need to connect in order to move things forward.
All photos courtesy of Bobo Zhao Photography.
Leah Giesbrecht is a communications specialist at CPABC.
