8 Unique Ways to Use AI for Accounting Firms

There are two main schools of thought regarding artificial intelligence (AI) among accountants: those who believe AI might replace their jobs and others who are excited about how much more productive and effective it can help their firm become.

While AI adoption is on the rise, it’s still a relatively new technology, and accounting firms continue finding new ways to leverage this advanced technology to their advantage.

On Jetpack Workflow’s Growing Your Firm podcast, we recently interviewed two seasoned industry experts to get their unique perspectives on the topic of AI. Both provide practical insights and ideas for using AI to improve firm operations, including:

• Empowering non-tax and accounting professionals to complete a portion of client work
• Researching the implications of new tax legislation
• Generating relevant content ideas to support the firm’s blogging strategy
• Uncovering strategic insights tailored to the firm’s/client’s unique needs and goals

1. Easing the Pressure of Skilled Talent Shortages

An exciting AI application in the accounting world is its potential to enable non-tax professionals to take on some of a firm’s workload, allowing CPAs to work more efficiently and focus on strategic tasks that require their expertise.

Over recent years, industry leaders have sounded the alarm on the shortage of CPAs and a shrinking number of students pursuing accounting degrees.

As firms strategize how to pivot their workforce and fill a growing number of vacancies, some experts recommend loosening a few of the stringent requirements to work in the industry, like getting rid of the “150-hour rule” for CPAs and making it easier for non-CPAs to handle certain workflows.

Our podcast guest, Piritta Van Rijn, the Global Head of Product and SVP for the accounting tax and practice division at Thomson Reuters, speaks about how AI technology can help fill this gap:

“We know that there’s going to be a need to help even people who are not tax and accounting professionals to be able to do some of that work. And that’s a whole different avenue where AI and generative AI can help firms continue to be really productive and create new value for their clients.”

Put it into practice: Adopt AI-powered accounting or bookkeeping software that empowers non-tax and accounting employees to produce “ready-to-review” work for CPAs and senior accountants.

That can help your team get more done with less resources and allow you to handle client work at scale, even if you’re struggling to recruit and hire licensed CPAs.

2. Producing Blog Content

Firms that aren’t yet comfortable employing AI-powered tools to deliver client work could consider leveraging this powerful technology for marketing and administrative tasks within their firm.

Billy Angelo, the managing partner of Angelo & Associates with over 20 years of experience in the industry, suggests that such firm owners might approach AI thinking, “… maybe it could help me write blog posts or do marketing, which it absolutely can do.”

Especially for teams that are already short-staffed, using an AI-powered tool to support blog ideation, outlining, research, and editing allows firms to pursue a content strategy without detracting from their ability to focus on client work.

Put it into practice: Start by using an AI-powered writing assistant to brainstorm ideas for blogs relevant to your target audience. The idea is to produce valuable content that addresses your clients’ pain points, helping you earn organic traffic to your website.

3. Completing Research Into Legislative Changes

In an industry closely tied to legislative changes, staying current on tax code updates and interpreting how complex regulations affect clients can be a significant challenge for accounting firms, albeit critical to delivering high-quality services.

Van Rijn highlights legislative research as one of the most useful applications of AI for accounting firms today, especially those facing a labor shortage.

She explains it’s a powerful tool to help firms quickly drill down what has changed after the introduction of new legislation, which benefits both tenured staff and newcomers:

“AI can help those who have the traditional background and degrees, but also all the members who are joining these firms who are not going to have that expertise on day one.” 

Eventually, AI tools could evolve to identify which clients are directly impacted by the update, further streamlining the legislative research process and ensuring compliance with new regulations.

Put it into practice: When new legislation emerges with tax implications, use an AI assistant to summarize and interpret the changes. You could also use AI to help draft communications to inform affected clients where relevant.

4. Accessing a Personal Creative Brainstorming Assistant

Rather than replacing or streamlining an existing workflow with AI, Angelo suggests using this technology to add an entirely new dimension to how managing partners lead their firms.

Namely, he recommends using AI as a convenient, creative brainstorming tool that’s accessible at all hours of the day:

“What I’m really using [AI] for more than anything is as a creative brainstorming partner. What if I had my best friend sitting next to me all day long, and that best friend happened to be the smartest entity that’s ever lived and has access to the world’s information within milliseconds?”

Think about it as getting an outside perspective on current questions, initiatives, or decisions your firm is considering. The AI tool may provide personalized and innovative solutions that leaders and staff might not have considered.

Angelo explains that even if the majority of the tool’s recommendations are irrelevant or not useful, taking away just one or two unique and good ideas can be a worthwhile use of time.

Put it into practice: Consider using an AI assistant on an ad hoc basis to offer new context or ideas when making internal decisions. Provide the tool with key information about your firm, your clients, your industry, and current staff to help it make more tailored recommendations.

5. Offering Personalized Advice for Clients

Similar to brainstorming, Van Rijn suggests utilizing AI tools to augment advisory services for “… helping provide better advice, very personalized, targeted advice for your clients…”

Again, you shouldn’t necessarily view this approach as replacing your efforts and expertise. However, it can be a great tool to support advisory services and add greater value to your clients.

Maybe you have the AI assistant analyze the client’s historical performance data to identify potential areas for cost savings you haven’t already explored.

Or, you can use the tool to uncover general insights and trends about the client’s industry, offering a more complete picture of the risks and opportunities they’re facing so you can tailor your services accordingly.

Put it into practice: While sharing sensitive client information with AI assistants is not recommended, you can prompt these models with general information about a client and their circumstances to uncover insights and strategic recommendations that you may not have thought of yourself.

6. Automating Audit Processes

Van Rijn also shares how AI tools offer a way for accounting firms to enhance the efficiency of auditing workflows, minimizing the need to review all transactions and financial data by hand:

“We have this concept of helping to automate the audit process, [from] the first step in the ingestion of ledger data, and then finding anomalies in that data so you know where to focus your audits.”

These models can process large amounts of data quickly and efficiently, looking for inconsistencies that require further review. That can help teams prioritize where they devote auditing resources, focusing on areas deemed more high-risk based on current data and historical patterns.

Plus, AI models can be more effective at detecting potential fraud than relying on manual checks alone. In other words, the applications of AI in the auditing process are widespread and can produce meaningful benefits in accuracy and efficiency.

Put it into practice: Rather than overhauling your entire auditing process, start with small projects to implement AI into your audit workflows where it makes sense for your team.

You could begin by using an AI-powered tool that’s focused on anomaly detection, where you can upload financial data and have it flag outliers that require manual review.

7. Categorizing Expenses

One of the primary reasons firms might consider implementing AI is to streamline tedious and repetitive tasks, explains Angelo. Expense management and related tasks can fall under this category.

AI technology can simplify how accountants categorize expenses and update the client’s general ledger with expense data.

Thanks to the optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities of certain AI tools, teams can upload receipts to supported platforms, where it automatically extracts the necessary data, including the purchase amount, date, and vendor, to update the general ledger and apply the proper expense category.

This way, teams can produce expense reports, manage spending patterns, and maintain accurate records for clients more easily.

Put it into practice: See if the current accounting software used by you and your client offers AI-powered expense categorization. If so, consider enabling the feature.

Otherwise, you may be able to enter expense data into an AI model directly with some context and explanations for your expense categories to automate classification and generate expense reports more quickly.

8. Reconciling Accounts

AI tools can help accountants work more efficiently. Plus, this technology can all but eliminate the risk of human error with manual data entry and processing, reducing client frustrations and costly mistakes.

This is especially helpful with tedious and time-consuming tasks like account reconciliations, where it’s all too easy for human reviewers to transpose values or accidentally omit a line item, leading to inaccurate accounting records and financial reporting.

That said, there’s a growing number of accounting platforms and financial management tools that use AI and machine learning technology to match the values in a bank statement with the general ledger, purchase orders, invoices, and other financial data stored in the system, ensuring all records are complete and accurate.

Rather than poring over bank statements and journal entries to complete reconciliations, AI enables a much more streamlined and error-free process, freeing up accountants for more strategic work.

Put it into practice: If you haven’t already, see if the accounting software or financial management solutions you and your clients use offer automated account reconciliations. These platforms should flag any items that require further review, allowing you to focus your efforts on complex matters that require your expertise without compromising accuracy.

The Tool Thousands of Accountants Use to Organize and Automate Their Workflows

Thousands of busy firms worldwide trust Jetpack Workflow to automate and manage their accounting tasks, freeing up more time for billable work and minimizing administrative burdens.

During the hectic nature of tax season, accountants especially appreciate how Jetpack Workflow enhances productivity and efficiency, helping them make the most of their limited resources.

The platform empowers firms to create organized, automated workflows for repetitive tasks, standardize client work to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and collaborate with team members to complete all tasks before filing deadlines.

Users can build custom checklists or customize Jetpack Workflow’s pre-built templates to streamline the collection of required tax documents and files from clients. This saves accounting firms hours on tedious client setup and standard processes.

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