The 2025 Top New Products

ByChris Gaetano, Daniel Hood, Danielle Lee

February 4, 2025 2:16 PM

The artificial intelligence revolution continued apace in 2024, with many candidates for this year's Top New Products touting their products' AI capabilities, if not centering their entire offerings around the technology. This year we saw AI for audit evidence, for bank reconciliation, for spreadsheet support, for tax calculations, for payroll, for research and much, much, much more.

This reflects accountants' growing interest in AI to improve efficiency and increase capacity, as well as the ongoing shift in the profession's self-image as increasingly tech-oriented. It is becoming more evident that, barring extraordinary circumstances, AI will be a major part of it in some form or another.

It has become so ubiquitous that it is becoming less meaningful to simply call something an AI solution, rather than a solution that uses AI. For instance, this year's set of nominations included an unusually high number of audit solutions, many of which themselves employ AI. Such products remind us how far we have come from the days when an audit meant sending an army of first-years to dig through boxes of receipts, with automation and AI now handling the most arduous parts of the process.

This year's winners reflect this progress, sporting the advanced functionality that auditors have come to expect from their solutions while addressing other pain points like managing highly specialized areas like employee benefit plan audits or SOC 2 audits. These digital-first solutions look at the audit from a data-centered perspective, with workflows and processes that don't try to electronically recreate what came before, but rather create a new experience and mindset for the modern auditor.

Of course, audit and AI aren't the whole show; we've also recognized solutions that address immediate professional needs like keeping up with new regulations and taming the jungle of documents that springs up in any engagement. There's also tools that recognize the needs of firms as businesses themselves, such as payroll migrations and cross-selling services. While this points to the unfortunate fact that accountants have a lot of needs, it also indicates the thriving community of developers making products to meet them.

AI TOOLS

Summit Art Creations - stock.adobe.com

Caseware AiDA (Caseware)

AI chatbots are everywhere these days, and so having one isn't as impressive as it used to be before the rise of large language models like ChatGPT. It's no longer enough to just understand natural language and respond in a somewhat intelligent manner; a bot needs something extra to really stand apart from the crowd — like Caseware's AiDA.

Named for computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace, AiDA is designed to provide context-aware responses to profession-specific inquiries regarding accounting, auditing and other matters ranging from methodology or compliance questions to the processing and analysis of audit evidence. Beyond that, it's also capable of summarizing documents, as well as providing answers regarding specific tasks, like analyzing a specific set of leases. A lot of AI assistants do this, but not all of them were designed with security and privacy in mind. With AiDA, both firm and client information will remain confidential, addressing one of the most common reservations — data security — that people have about generative AI.

Field Agents (Fieldguide)

Fieldguide has been enthusiastic about AI for years, having worked it into many of their existing solutions and developing many new ones. Its latest offering, Field Agents, draws on something that sits on the bleeding edge of this technology, agentic AI: bots that are capable of at least some degree of autonomy to make decisions and interact with things outside themselves in order to achieve some sort of goal without needing constant human guidance. Made to help firms scale their efficiency and capacity, Field Agents can orchestrate entire series of accounting tasks with AI specifically tailored to the profession.

This goes beyond just workflow automation. Field Agents can perform actual tasks like password policy tests, evidence sampling, client requests, and document analysis — all processes that traditionally have needed hours of staff time and resources.

AUDIT TOOLS

Thumbnail for Video: Opportunities in Audit Technology

DAS (AICPA, CPA.com, Caseware, etc.)

A revolutionary product years in the making, the Dynamic Audit Solution started by looking at the many new technologies developed over the last few decades and daring to imagine what the audit process would look like if it were built anew. Created with input from experts from dozens of leading audit firms, DAS features the AICPA's guided methodology and new technologies (particularly Caseware's cloud-based platform) as the basis of an entirely new audit process, with features that include embedded sampling, financial statement modules, prebuilt communication templates, and real-time collaboration for audit team members. And with a long line of new improvements and extensions waiting in the wings, DAS is well positioned to become the central solution in the toolkit of the auditor of the future.

Audit Intelligence Analyze (Thomson Reuters)

At every level, audits are all about the intelligent, efficient management of risk, and Audit Intelligence Analyze is designed to do just that by using data and AI to help auditors more quickly and accurately test and assess client records to identify anomalies and areas that need more investigation. It segments audit testing populations by risk level to reduce the number of overall items to be tested, and uses advanced anomaly detection techniques to find the sort of unusual items that a human auditor might uncover given enough time — as well as the subtler items they'd never uncover in a million years.

Audit Intelligence Analyze is the first of what is expected to be a line of AI-powered products from Thomson Reuters' Audit Intelligence Suite (a number of which are expected to be released in 2025), but while it works with Thomson Reuters' other audit tools, it can also be fit into workflows that use other tools, even homegrown ones.

Autire (Autire)

Among the flood of new products for auditors that we examined this year, Autire stood out for its specificity: Rather than broadly empower auditors, it aims only to support employee benefit plan auditors, with the profession's first (and, so far as we know, only) automated, cloud-based platform for this crucial niche — an area that could certainly use help, given the recent Department of Labor study that found that up to a third of EPB audits have major deficiencies.

Built by CPAs who fully understand the time- and labor-intensive processes involved, Autire automates risk assessment in compliance with SAS No. 145, as well as time-sucks like data gathering, and it deploys AI to significantly speed up compensation testing. Overall, it claims to cut the time needed to conduct an EPB audit by as much as two-thirds.

Yak (Yak)

Yak is another Top Product that reflects both the broadening and the deepening of the marketplace for audit tools. While the developer aims eventually to serve all types of audit and attest services, it currently handles SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance audits (an area its founder, a credentialed Certified Information Systems Auditor, is thoroughly familiar with), managing them from end to end, and simplifying control mapping, document request collection, review cycles, approvals, client communication, and report generation.

ACCOUNTING TOOLS

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Intuit Enterprise Suite (Intuit)

Intuit's Enterprise Suite provides advanced tools for growing businesses, such as financial management and accounting process automation capacities, as well as automated marketing via Intuit's Mailchimp product to help users find, retain and manage customers through email and SMS campaigns, and leverage customer data from QuickBooks to find untapped revenue opportunities. It also allows users to track real-time project profitability and performance with custom multidimensional reports and KPIs by syncing employee time data with payroll, and it sets AI-powered KPIs with estimated targets compared to historical amounts.

Designed for growing businesses that, as they increase in size, graduate to more complex needs and challenges, this product is meant to help accountants advise their clients on how to scale efficiently and effectively, as well as business owners who need guidance to make holistic decisions that drive profits.

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

A&A Focus (AICPA)

Not every tool is a piece of software or hardware; some of the most useful are those that improve the individual practitioner themselves, through education or training or technical updates, and A&A Focus is a perfect example of those. Built on the same model as the AICPA's Town Hall series (a previous Top Product honoree for its role in helping the profession stay informed through the depths of the COVID pandemic), but with a narrower remit, A&A Focus is a monthly webcast that brings together experts in accounting, audit and assurance to educate attendees on the latest news, hot topics, standards developments and more. In an era when the pace of change is getting ever-faster, it's an invaluable resource — and each episode qualifies for CPE!

Skillabyte (Skillabyte)

What can feel like a chore of keeping up with educational requirements has gained some much-needed dynamism with the release of Skillabyte, which promises more engaging continuing professional education backed with the most current technology. The company offers training in accounting, tax and auditing, all enhanced by artificial intelligence and video-game visuals, among other tech. And while gamifying CPE adds the interaction necessary for truly locked-in learning, education is only as good as the content itself, which comes from founder David Wood, a professor and leader in accounting education. In addition to more traditional learning methods, the information is delivered via AI-driven practice scenarios that create interview simulations with virtual clients and immersive video games that break down complex topics, among other innovations.

CRYPTO TOOLS

Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

Ledgible Readiness Assessment and Ledgible SpecID (Ledgible)

The keys to exceptional software are not just solid technology, user accessibility/friendliness, and the solving of a specific problem — though all are essential — but the urgency of that problem being addressed, which Ledgible proves with two new solutions tailored to timely concerns.

The Ledgible Readiness Assessment was launched following the Internal Revenue Service's introduction of the new draft Form 1099-DA form for digital assets, and was designed to examine and assess a company's existing compliance, data and reporting infrastructure for these upcoming reporting requirements. Ledgible has consistently analyzed IRS updates in this area and especially in the Form 1099-DA, and offers this program so companies can stay as up to date as possible in this still unpredictable and young area.

Ledgible SpecID is also specialized to this burgeoning field, functioning as a tax optimization feature for Specific Identification tax calculation. With the tool, users can identify and mark digital assets of noted sales to calculate tax tailored to their needs.

PRACTICE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Urupong - stock.adobe.com

Ignition (Ignition)

As the years go by, the relevance of the classic model of firms billing by the hour is slowly eroding, giving way to alternatives like value pricing or subscriptions, which in turn open doors to entirely new ways of doing business. Ignition's latest offering is in this new tradition, bringing e-commerce sensibilities and a "shopping cart" online experience to the accounting world, with much success.

From tailored service packages to one-click payment options, Ignition's e-commerce functionality accelerates revenue by optimizing the online sales experience. In particular, the practice management platform now has "proposal add-ons" that give users the ability to self-select additional services as optional extras within proposals as a way to upsell services. Ignition can also highlight service discounts on proposals to fast-track conversion, as well as leverage AI to craft service descriptions to clearly communicate the value of offerings within the proposal.

SPREADSHEET TOOLS

SpreadsheetLLM (Microsoft)

One of the surprising revelations of our headlong rush into generative AI, large language models and AI in general has been the discovery of the shockingly shoddy state of most of our data. It's badly organized, often inconsistent, sometimes incoherent, and takes a long time to get through. This is true even of that data held in that mainstay of the accounting profession, the spreadsheet, which is why Microsoft released SpreadsheetLLM, a tool that helps LLMs better process and analyze complex spreadsheet data. Among other things, it can significantly compress the data contained in the spreadsheet to make it quicker and easier to digest.

While we're on the topic of spreadsheets, we're naming two Honorable Mentions in this area, both of which aim to improve your use of this ubiquitous tool: Sheetmatcher makes it easier to compare two Excel files quickly and accurately, while Hidden Hawk AI uses AI to identify errors and inconsistencies across Excel worksheets.

PAYROLL TOOLS

Payroll Transfer Automation (Gusto)

The tedious process of payroll migration has gained a necessary ally in Gusto's Payroll Transfer Automation solution, designed to simplify and accelerate the procedure. PTA transforms manual tedium into efficiency benefitting both accountant users and their clients, enabling employee reports from previous payroll providers to be uploaded so data is quickly imported and presented for review and confirmation. The solution is currently available for those transitioning from major payroll providers, with plans to expand that support to other platforms, while Gusto also works to extend its current capabilities to more historical payroll data.

TAX TOOLS

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Bloomberg Tax Workpapers (Bloomberg Tax & Accounting)

Unlike other parts of the tax workflow, workpapers have historically been an area that has seen little in the way of automation or innovation. This gap in efficiency is why Bloomberg Tax and Accounting introduced Bloomberg Tax Workpapers, a product specifically designed with the needs of professional accountants in mind. To ensure ease of use, the interface closely mimics the familiar spreadsheet experience, making it intuitive and accessible for users.

Bloomberg Tax Workpapers combines both informational and operational features to address the challenges of traditional workpaper processes. It automates tasks specific to tax workflows, such as cleansing trial balances, M-1 flux analysis, and period-over-period roll forwards. It also provides prebuilt templates aligned with the latest tax laws and ensures calculations are automatically updated to reflect the most recent regulations, complete with explanations for changes and links to primary sources. Additional features include cell-level reviews, which notify users whenever critical values change, and standardized SOX controls, which offer workbook-level sign-offs, status tracking, and the ability to lock workbooks once finalized.

CCH Axcess Tax Essentials (Wolters Kluwer)

CCH Axcess Tax Essentials offers many of the advanced features you'd expect to find in tax solutions typically marketed to larger, multioffice firms. These include a comprehensive library of forms and schedules, robust onscreen review and diagnostic tools, workflow automation capabilities, and convenient e-signature collection, along with all the other resources necessary to perform complex tax engagements. However, this innovative solution isn't designed for massive firms with hundreds of staff members — it's tailored specifically for small, local accounting practices with just one to four professionals. CCH Axcess Tax Essentials serves as an equalizer, empowering smaller firms to leverage the same advanced tools and resources used by large firms. This allows them to move beyond handling basic engagements and begin offering more substantive and lucrative tax services.

With this software, smaller firms gain access to a complete, cloud-based tax compliance solution specifically crafted to meet their unique needs. It includes frequently used forms, intuitive self-guided training resources, and the ability to manage complex tax scenarios such as cryptocurrency or K-1 filings. Built around a fully virtual, cloud-based environment, it also provides real-time links to Wolters Kluwer's expert content through CCH AnswerConnect and CCH IntelliConnect, ensuring reliable guidance whenever it's needed.

RESEARCH TOOLS

Alexandr Vasilyev - stock.adobe.

CCH Answer Connect AI (Wolters Kluwer)
Another chatbot that stands out is CCH Answer Connect AI from Wolters Kluwer, a generative AI solution made to assist with research. Users can type a question in the search bar, and an answer written by the CCH editorial team displays at the top. If there is no editorial-curated answer for the query, the new AI-enabled search will generate a response, based entirely on trusted sources within their CCH AnswerConnect subscription. This generative AI feature will minimize the volume of search and review, accelerating the speed to answer.

Yes, there are a lot of generative AI products out there that say they do much the same thing. However, not all of them use both human and machine expertise to answer queries, nor do they have access to Wolters Kluwer's extensive library of content. When CCH AnswerConnect AI responds to a query, its answers are backed by the company's own store of knowledge, cross-referenced with other sources like the Internal Revenue Code, income tax regulations, and administrative guidance. Its knowledge, originally focusing on tax, now also includes accounting and audit research. Users will be able to use the embedded solution to understand recent regulatory and legal changes, identify planning opportunities, and prepare the necessary forms.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

On a final note, we wanted to single out two extra products as Honorable Mentions. First off, AI-powered AprilPro provides filing services for taxpayers with complex financial situations, pulling in data from existing financial accounts and allowing users to upload files as needed, with a qualified tax pro reviewing and finalizing each filing.

And Protection Plus' free Customizable WISP Template is a step-by-step tool that guides you through the process of setting up the written information security plan that you're required to have if you're providing tax prep services. (You knew about that, right?) The Internal Revenue Service also makes boilerplate templates available, but this one's interactivity may make it a little more attractive.