AI in Accounting: Why you should be aware as an accountant?

AI in Accounting: Why should you be aware as an accountant?

“We’re quickly approaching an era of ‘no-code accounting’–truly zero data entry,” Blake Oliver, editor of Cloud Accounting Weekly, writes. “We’re already seeing cloud accounting platforms move beyond transaction automation and into the analysis. Machine learning [can] give accounting professionals unprecedented insights into their client base.”

The rapid growth of AI aka Artificial Intelligence is continuously taking over more and more decision-making tasks from humans.  AI is designed based on how a human brain thinks and how humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem. Then, using the outcomes of this study, they developed smart software and systems.  

However, in accounting the accountants have been using the technology for many years to ease out their work and render an error-free outcome. Larger firms are using technology such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to make the audit and contractual processing times lesser – from several months to a few weeks.

AI AND ACCOUNTANCY

Well, the AI is not a very new concept, but it is trending among all industries as its pace of change is fast, widespread adoption in all business. But in accounting, it is still in the early stage. In the accounting field, the AI will soon be going to help in the automation of its many routines and repetitive activities such as –

• Empower a quick and easy decision
• Provide smart insight
• Analyse the bulk data without error and in very lesser time.

Here are the top five facts of AI from which an accountant should be aware –

1. Better financial forecasting-

   AI works based on huge data collection that makes it prominent to better analyse the whole previous data for a better future prediction of business finances – a valuable service offered by accountants. In the present industries, 77% of businesses already say they’re very reliant on machine learning technologies (source: Cisco Systems 2018).

2. Easy Risk Analyzation –

   AI comes up with great analytics of future risk involved with a business. It bases on the customer characteristics, such as demand, industry, size, present system landscape and much more. AI allows the accountants to access all the previous projects that the company has ever completed. It also helps to map the whole project’s data and come up with a well-informed risk assessment. This feature is helpful for businesses to make a wise investment for their future projects. With the absolute analyzation of risk involved with the projects based on huge data report comprised of AI.

3. Role transformation of finance –

   The step of AI in the accounting world, change the whole image and the working of finance. Today, the skill required during the finance function is drastically transformed as the transactional job turned to less critical, whereas the cross-functional knowledge and tech-savviness become more crucial to create an effective accounting system.

4. Change in the definition of an accountant –

   The evolution of AI in accounting transformed the whole concept or the definition of accounting. As the skills and training are closely linked to the roles of accountants, there was general agreement on the need for more technical skills as an accountant. The Artificial Intelligence takes care of all technical skills so that one just have to the emphasis on flexible skills. These skills include a presentation and administration skills – that allows the accountants to work on their proactive involvement in accountancy.

5. Enhancement in OCR solutions-

   The term OCR (Optical character recognition) from which every accountant is aware, is not a new concept but widely affected by AI. AI improves its accuracy significantly and opens it to new uses. However, in past accounting era, a human is required to point out to the OCR software where the data was located. This also meant the document layout couldn’t alter without further instruction. But with the involvement of AI, the OCR is revolutionizing, as now system can analyze the printed documents. These documents include receipts or invoices, on which it also analyzes and extracts salient data. This is helpful to reduce a lot of human effort and time – required to assign information.

These above-mentioned points give a wonderful insight into AI-enabled benefits for accounting that become the prime auditor in the whole finance world. This shows the future accountants to make themselves educated and highly skilful. This will also help them lead their teams in adapting when the time is right. Future accountancy will go to be tremendously impacted by AI or machine learning. It will bring a revolution phase in accounting and in every other industry that nobody can imagine yet.

Everyone is waiting to see the innovative future with the trending artificial intelligence technology.