AI in accounting: A comprehensive guide for your CAS practice
By Shahram Zarshenas
May 30, 2024
"AI cherry-picks the lower-level activities. That gives us (accountants) more time to spend with clients to strategize and advise them." —
Roman Villard, CPA, founder of Full Send Finance
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be faster, more consistent and accurate than humans, so the initial fear of AI in accounting is understandable.
However,
AI will not replace accountants — but fear that makes one shy away from learning how to maximize AI may cost more accountants their jobs than AI itself ever will.
Using
AI will augment, enhance and amplify your Client Accounting Services (CAS) to help you meet client deliverables at scale.
How can AI impact your workflow?
1. Create a streamlined process for your work
Manual tasks are so demanding that they leave teams no room for the work that matters.
But AI in accounting
can handle several tasks, from data capturing and categorizing to posting receipts.
This streamlines your processes so that your team can deliver value and personalize your services, which are essential for client accounting service firms.
2. Create workflows faster and more efficiently
AI draws from a large pool of accounting data to create the steps that make up CAS processes.
For example, you can prompt ChatGPT to create a workflow for financial analysis and a standard workflow in seconds.
You can always review the steps and tweak them to
fit your specific needs.
3. Create tasks for out of scope projects
AI's natural language processing capability enables it to handle tasks independently.
For example, CAS firms can effectively delegate out-of-scope tasks with AI chatbots. Chatbots are especially good at responding to frequently asked questions and client requests.
With good customization, AI chatbots will hand over complex tasks to real humans for a more personalized experience.
How CAS firms can integrate AI into their work
CAS firms can use AI tools for:
1. Generating templates
AI can generate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for your accounting processes which removes the burden of brainstorming and documenting them from scratch.
What could be better? Well, you don’t have to use AI separately from your accounting practice management software. With Financial Cents’ integration with OpenAI, you can type the accounting process you want to create into a search box, and the steps will populate your screen in seconds.
2. Data analysis
CAS firms can run their profit and loss data into an AI tool like, ChatGPT, for unbiased analysis.
All you need to do is copy and paste your information into ChatGPT and tell it to analyze and interpret the data as your accountant.
ChatGPT will analyze data and offer its observations. You can review the analysis to see if and where it applies to your client’s business.
3. Financial forecasting
AI can predict future financial outcomes based on your client’s historical data.
With
the right prompt, ChatGPT will analyze a company's sales, marketing and operational data to show the aspects of the business that will have the desired effect on business outcomes.
When done well, this enables you to understand your client’s strategic priorities and opportunities for growth.
However, you need to review its results to determine the accuracy or relevance of its interpretations to your client’s business.
4. Invoice processing
AI streamlines accounts payable processes through invoice processing. It can analyze invoice patterns and payment information to flag inconsistencies.
It can also verify the sameness of two documents and spot any similarity between the information on multiple documents. By catching such suspicious invoicing activities (which humans usually miss), AI gives you a better chance to prevent fraud.
5. Email writing
Figuring out how to write what you want to say can take time and effort on a busy day.
AI tools draft emails with incredible accuracy. They help to draft emails for effective client communication.
With ChatGPT in Financial Cents, you can
generate emails for client communication from your accounting workflow software.
Better still, you can store these emails as templates inside Financial Cents, so you don't have to recreate them in the future.
AI in the right practice management software is a force multiplier
AI in accounting is a force multiplier when integrated with accounting practice management software.
That is why AI solution providers (like OpenAI) are integrated into Financial Cents to empower accounting firms to do more in Financial Cents.
With AI integrations and
up-to-date security measures, Financial Cents is positioned to bring accounting firms the best accounting AI solutions for the next several years.
Shahram Zarshenas has helped thousands of accounting firms overcome these challenges. He is the CEO of Financial Cents, an easy-to-use practice management software built to help accounting firms track the status of client work, collaborate with their team, and get work done.
