5 ways accountants are using AI to streamline workloads

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Artificial intelligence continues to tighten its grip on the way we engage with information both at home and at work, and the accounting profession is no exception. Despite fears about the ultimate impact on job security, accountants are finding new ways to embrace generative AI tools and machine learning to streamline their workloads.

Samantha Bowling, managing partner of Maryland-based GWCPA, uses generative AI to sift through the information that previously took hours for humans to process, which she then uses to offer financial statement analysis. While her firm has always done this, it used to take hours; AI allows her to cut this time down to mere seconds. This has vastly increased the scale at which her firm can perform these analyses, enabling them to expand the number of clients they can offer them to.

"We're using it for clients who do bookkeeping work and outsourced CFO type work. We see this being a quicker tool to get answers on stuff and maybe provide this information to people who are just doing bookkeeping and not making financial statements … as opposed to waiting for the year end," Bowling recently told Accounting Today.

Other AI applications not only analyze information, but can produce some of their own, too. Sergio de la Fe, digital enterprise leader with Top 10 Firm RSM US, said they're using generative AI to draft tax position documents. While humans have long done this for clients, he said that things "get very complex very fast," so professionals must take into account things like the actual tax law itself, legal precedents about taxes and RSM's own positions on tax strategy. The company's internal AI can do all of this much faster.

"We've been able to create and leverage language models and generative AI to help us write those memos, because it accesses all of those databases and information, and is able to help us generate the response," said de la Fe.

De la Fe also pointed to the firm's bespoke solution, RSM Automation Compliance, which takes clients' regulatory requirements and their internal control and process documents to map where they may be falling short on compliances. This used to be an exhausting process for human accountants — especially for complex clients — but now they can near-instantly analyze their regulatory compliance.

Read more about how accountants are implementing AI below.

Does more AI mean higher rates for accountants?

A recent survey from Thomson Reuters of 1,128 professional service workers, conducted in January and February 2024, found that 40% of tax professionals believe the rise of generative AI will allow them to charge their clients higher rates, with 2% saying it would do so significantly. A slightly higher number, 42%, predicted their rates would stay largely the same, with or without generative AI. Only 6% thought the technology would lead to them charging clients less.

"A high number of professionals say their organizations are still considering GenAI use within the workplace and its impact — and while some may determine that GenAI is not for them, it's likely that an even higher percentage will become GenAI users," the study concluded. "Many professionals will receive even more education around GenAI and its usage as well, especially among those organizations at which opinions are not yet fully formed."

Read more:

Generative AI may let tax pros charge more

With AI, the zero-based budgeting future is now

In a recent column for Accounting Today, Seth Catalli, chief revenue officer of Globality Inc., outlines how AI finally makes the idea of zero-based budgeting practical.

"On paper ZBB promises objective, data-based baselines for every budgeting phase that would allow decision-makers to only work with what's real and current, not what happened last year, or even farther back," he writes. "The convergence of machine learning, generative AI and autonomous sourcing platforms presents organizations with the ability to realize approximately 90% of the ZBB ideal in the present day. That's happening via organizations using autonomous sourcing to consciously and strictly seek to rationalize every purchase and make data-driven decisions on every vendor relationship."

Read more:

AI makes zero-based budgeting practical

How AI can make accountants more efficient

Summarization and analysis is just one piece of accounting that typically takes time away from other work — but not with the power of AI.

"So 50% of someone's full-time equivalent was going through these sometimes very lengthy reports and extracting the same information across all of them," Spencer Lourens, managing principal of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence with CliftonLarsonAllen, recently told Accounting Today. "What we did was say, 'We can create this process where we take in the information and have a pipeline run where these questions are asked of the AI models involved, and they will go through and provide answers and try to cite themselves in the process to hopefully shave off hundreds of hours per year.'"

Read more:

Making the (use) case for AI

AI can solve the complexities of estate accounting

Estate accounting involves dealing with complex and rigorous documentation, meeting compliance requirements, and managing detailed day-to-day financial transactions. Advances in AI, natural language processing and automation are changing how accountants can support a growing need in the marketplace fueled by the Great Wealth Transfer.

"As trusted advisors, accountants are in a pivotal position to guide families through the complexities of estate accounting,"Ari Brojde, co-founder and CEO of Estateably, recently wrote in an AT Think column for Accounting Today. "Handling a client's estate accounting needs allows financial professionals to bond, empathize and build trust with heirs and beneficiaries, helping to retain next-generation clients."

With AI and automation, accountants can streamline manual processes. For instance, for every 12 months an estate remains outstanding, it can take up to 15 hours to generate formal accounting in court-approved formats. Natural language processing can then apply machine learning to simplify the once-burdensome process of manually inputting monthly bank, brokerage and credit card statements into an accounting report.

Read more:

Automation and AI unlock new opportunities for estate accounting

6 accountants share their AI tips

Some accountants are hesitant when it comes to AI, while others are fully embracing new tech tools and using AI to address the pipeline crisis, surface insights and enable new efficiencies.

One firm that has implemented AI is GWCPA. "We take a client's financial statement, export it to a PDF, take all the client information out … and we upload it and ask, 'If you were going to analyze this, what would be the key factors you'd alert the client to quickly?' Within seconds, it does it," GWCPA managing partner Samantha Bowling recently told Accounting Today's Chris Gaetano. "[This is] something we would do anyway but it would take us a while to analyze it. … We're using it for clients who do bookkeeping work and outsourced CFO type work. We see this bring a quicker tool to get answers."

Read more:

Accountants share how they're using AI