Whether you’re a fan of AI-powered automation tools or still skeptical about their benefits, there’s no denying that accounting automation is here to stay.

Accounting task automation tools have become part of the daily lives of many accountants. Topics such as AI and machine learning have dominated conversations as the technology has developed, the changing trends of AI in accounting are on the radar of most industry leaders.

Considering that AI can take care of everyday accounting tasks like data entry, expense management, and bank reconciliation, you may be wondering what the future holds for accountants in an industry increasingly driven by automation. You may even wonder if accountants will continue to play a role in the years to come. What if I told you that the outlook could be much more optimistic than many might think at first glance?

In this article, we describe the applications and limitations of accounting automation and present an interesting vision for the future of work for accountants.

AI-based tools and software are designed to make traditional accounting tasks more efficient, more accurate, and much less time-consuming. These are just some of the ways you can do it:

• Tools powered by OCR (optical character recognition) technology capture receipts, invoices and banking transactions and extract the data automatically. This virtually eliminates all manual work related to data entry when it comes to recording invoices, expenses, and banking transactions.

• Some of these tools go a step further and suggest categories for accounting transactions. This saves a lot of time when it comes to the often tedious task of managing invoices and expenses.

• Many accounting automation tools make it easy for you to collaborate with clients, allowing them to keep their own records up to date with easy-to-use mobile apps.

• By automatically creating and classifying transactions based on captured data, many AI-based accounting tools make the bank reconciliation process faster and more accurate.

Ultimately, accounting tools are designed to support the work of accountants by giving them the results they need quickly and accurately and freeing them to focus on more valuable tasks.

Think of using accounting automation as enlisting the help of a reliable, highly collaborative assistant who can continue daily tasks while you focus on more meaningful work.

While there are many accounting tasks that automation can perform, there remain many aspects of an accountant’s role that require your judgment, knowledge, and humanity.

AI-based accounting tools are not capable of cultivating meaningful relationships with clients or the team, for example. AI cannot consider nuanced scenarios or plan strategically in complex environments, nor can it make judgments or provide critical advice or guidance, adding to the difficulty in handling more complex concepts. The good news is that when tedious accounting tasks are automated, Accountants finally have time to devote to these crucial value-added activities.

Human judgment is also required when it comes to reviewing the output of automation tools. This is due to ChatGPT ‘s tendency to “hallucinate” and deliver false information when it does not know the answer to a user’s question or loses the context of the conversation, after all we must understand that AIs feed on databases to be able to “Learn” and generate results, we might think that when connecting to the internet the quantity of data should not be a problem, but we do not consider its quality, making the quantity work against us, always resulting in AI having results in based on the average.

Many times, when filling in these gaps in information or losing the context of the conversation by not being able to work with complex concepts or handle dispersed information, we begin to fill in those spaces with “hallucinations” and we must also consider the same biases that may be present. in AI because of the developers themselves in an attempt to filter and censor interactions with AI.

No matter how much support AI-powered automation tools can provide, it is clear that the need for human involvement remains.

Accountants using automation tools are already experiencing the benefits of greater efficiency and accuracy, as well as time to spend on more meaningful work. As technology continues to evolve, it will likely be possible to automate an increasing number of other accounting tasks, and tools will be able to perform these tasks with higher levels of accuracy.

The reality is that the future is being written with each passing day and it is understood that AI in recent years has experienced such a great development at a technological level that it is causing a disruption comparable to what the WEB was at the time, for example. Therefore, no one has any idea how far the changes in today’s society will go due to the impact of AI, but what we can take for granted is that the ability to adapt and be able to take advantage of the changes is vital to achieving success.

Historically, accountants have struggled to find time to do more than simply process their clients’ data. Accountants had deep knowledge of their clients’ businesses but could not apply it in a material way.

With technology taking care of many of those data processing tasks (and more tasks likely to be automated in the future), accountants have the opportunity to use all that information and provide strategic business support to their clients.

Astute at spotting patterns and trends in their clients’ numbers, accountants can provide real-time insights into the health of their clients’ businesses. This will give them even more scope to use their deep knowledge of their clients’ business performance to provide strategic advice and support.

The quarterly reporting cadence will also provide opportunities for accountants and bookkeepers to work more collaboratively, particularly when it comes to preparing clients’ annual returns.

Of course, none of this would be possible if accountants were still stuck in the endless cycle of processing client data. Now that accounting automation does much of the heavy lifting, the role of the accountant can finally transform into one that delivers true client value and much greater professional satisfaction. As business health consultants for clients, accountants will take on a role that is not only more strategic and decisive but, ultimately, irreplaceable to their clients who benefit from their business knowledge and critical analysis skills.