Young Difference Makers: Excel is eating audit, and Christiaan Coetzee brought the fork!

Ready to discover how a chartered accountant turns risk literacy into a founder’s edge? We sit down with Christiaan Coetzee—CEO and co‑founder of Audit Toolbar and SAICA Top 35 Under 35 overall winner—to unpack the mindset shifts and practical levers that help small firms run with the giants. Christiaan shares how starting articles straight out of high school gave him a front-row seat to hundreds of businesses, and why governance, financial fluency, and rapid risk assessment can be superpowers when you’re building something new.

We dive into the surprising centre of gravity in audit work: Excel. While big platforms chase grand architectures, most auditors still spend the bulk of their time inside spreadsheets. Christiaan’s team built a tool that lives where the work happens, unlocking “insane efficiency gains” and levelling the field for five-person practices competing with enterprise players. The results speak loudly: a rolling 650 years of work saved across Africa every year, letting local firms grow faster, pitch bigger, and serve clients better.

The conversation turns on a simple but uncomfortable truth—most of us think too small. Christiaan describes the shock of hearing peers make fearless asks of global leaders and realising he’d been self-rejecting big opportunities. His new default is to pick up the phone, pursue top-tier clients, and let the answer be earned, not imagined. Along the way, he lays out a grounded operating system: protect your work ethic, mentor the next builder in line, and prioritise cash moving hands—funding for impact orgs, revenue for startups. Forecasting tech beyond two years is murky, but staying close to customers and their real levers keeps you ahead where it counts.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s thinking small, and leave a review telling us the one bold ask you’ll make this week.

Transcript

Share Your Story, Spark Action

Christiaan Coetzee 0:00

The thing I'm taking away from me from One Young World is number one, not to be afraid to share your story. Everybody has gone through something significant, and there's somebody else going through a similar situation, and you telling your story will inspire them and will drive them to achieve what they need to achieve. Hi, my name is Christiaan Coetzee. I am the CEO and co-founder of the Auto Toolbar. I'm also a member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and the 2024 top 35 to 35 overall winner. My journey towards becoming a chartered accountant started from my teenage years in that I've always wanted to get into entrepreneurship and understand business. At the same time, I wanted to also get tertiary education, but my family couldn't afford it. And so Saikar had the opportunity for me to go and do my articles straight after finishing high school and then study part-time. And for me, this was an opportunity to tick both boxes as in get that tertiary education in and at the same time see hundreds and hundreds of different businesses and how they operate and talk to those directors and entrepreneurs to understand and learn from them. So that's what got me into chartered accountancy, and it's been an invaluable tool in my entrepreneurship journey. Although there was an initial barrier of the profession creating a natural risk aversion, which is not something you want as an entrepreneur. But as soon as you push through that barrier, you start to see that your knowledge of corporate governance, of uh accounting, the way you can read financial statements, the way you can identify risks at a glance, um, how those things are actually superpowers for entrepreneurs. So there's two parts to how I am making a difference in the profession and in my community. I think the first part is highly focused on the audit toolbar. We serve audit firms all around the world, and I would sometimes get into a conversation with a five-person audit firm in Busaka trying to compete with a big four and finally being able to on very tight budgets because of the software we've created, right? Uh, we did a calculation that that software has now saved a rolling 650 years of work in progress every 12 months across the African continent. So it's a huge impact and it helps these small firms to grow and scale uh like never before. So that's the one part. The the other part for me personally is I am very passionate about entrepreneurship, and wherever I see it, wherever I find it, if I meet somebody where there's a flicker of light within them in context of building something big, I want to water it and I want to see it grow. And so, as wherever I can, I'll spend time with young individuals to help them through the next 10 steps. Even though I'm not where I want to be as an entrepreneur, I have proceeded quite far down the line. So, somebody just starting out, there is a lot of value that I can offer, and I always try to. I think what makes it extra special is that nobody is scared to have the difficult conversation, nobody keeps things superficial. These conversations go deep within two minutes and and and we go all the way. So that's been for me not only the biggest surprise, but the biggest value of being here is yeah, caliber of delegates. I think again, in terms of any specific insights or lessons gained, it's not not so much specific speakers, it is an overarching message across the board. I realize that I think I'm thinking too small in my day-to-day, and that's the message I'm getting off stage when I look at what other people are doing, when I look at some of the talkers at this at the summit, I'm thinking a hundred times smaller than I should be thinking, and that's what I'm taking away from this. And so when I get back to the office, get back to my colleagues, we're gonna dial things up. I think an example of what I mean by thinking too small is that I think it's that it's that fear, almost that imposter syndrome, that comes in when you go after an enormous firm, right? Like you wanna take on uh an enterprise level client, and your default instinct is oh it's not gonna work because of this, because of that, because of that, and then you hear about somebody who's trying to raise funds hitting up the biggest leaders in the world saying you gotta pay these kids need to eat, right? And I'm sitting there going, Oh, I don't wanna try and go after one of the big 10 or top six firms because A, B, and C. I'm like, no, I'm gonna call them up and push through. So a brief overview of the auto toolbar. It essentially focuses on the place where an external auditor spends 80% of their time, which is Excel. Uh, I feel that the big software houses has always overlooked this part of the process because the arguments are usually you can upskill yourself, and people do, some people do, some people don't. But it is in terms of a business, it is the single most powerful lever that any business, any audit firm can pull is the Excel lever. The audit toolbar plugs into Excel and it creates insane efficiency gains for an auditor working there. I often say this that any business and other any other industry they would dream about having a lever as powerful to pull in their business as an audit firm does within Excel. It's 80% of their cost of sale, and you can double that productivity in a day. As somebody who works within the technology space, looking ahead 10 years is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I often say that we can't forecast more than two years because you don't know how quickly this market's gonna change, and even two years might be stretching it. Uh so on the technology side, I've no idea. I've no idea. Um, whatever it is, we are gonna be at the forefront of it, and we're gonna guide and hold our customers' hands through it. Um, in terms of where I'd personally want to be, I want to spend more time within education, mentorship, um, and just really driving the freedom and value of entrepreneurship across South Africa and potentially Africa as well. My advice to other people wanting to make an impact, it might be different depending on where you are in that journey, but I would say don't be afraid to tell your story because your story could inspire many others. Do not lose your work ethic wherever you are, even if you're sitting in corporate right now and you're dreaming about a project that you want to build, everything you do, everything you do every single day will contribute to that. So, whatever you do, you're busy doing it, so you might as well do it absolutely excellently or leave it. And when you start building, everything starts with revenue. Now, if you're building an MPO, that starts with funding. If you're building a startup, it starts with revenue, and forget about the noise and everything that goes around it. Your job is to make cash exchange hands, and then everything else will flow. The thing I'm taking away from me from One Young World is number one, not to be afraid to share your story. Everybody has gone through something significant, and there's somebody else going through a similar situation, and you telling your story will inspire them and will drive them to achieve what they need to achieve. The second thing I'm taking away, and I think this is probably the biggest thing, is not to think too small. You can always do a hundred times bigger and more than what you are doing.