3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Your Accounting Workflow
When we hear about Artificial Intelligence (AI), the discussion tends to revolve around self-driving cars or virtual personal assistants such as Google Assistant and Siri. We usually don’t hear about how AI is changing the business landscape.
In the accounting industry, AI is improving existing practices. For example, the technology automates bookkeeping, produces fewer errors when performing administrative tasks, and provides insightful analytics.
AI Saves Time
Accounting firms are already using AI to automate time-consuming administrative tasks. Jean Baptiste Su, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Atherton Research, explains that many accounting software vendors are now deploying AI and machine learning for bookkeeping tasks like data entry, reconciliations, and more. Automating these time-consuming tasks creates more time for firms to focus on their clients and engagement planning.
AI Reduces Errors
Bloomberg BNA surveyed 200 U.S. in-house tax and accounting professionals and uncovered common mistakes involving human error with data handling. Some of the mistakes involved incorrectly entering data into an enterprise system, accidentally deleting a custom excel formula for corporate tax data, and overriding data in an enterprise system with figures calculated outside of the program.
AI can help reduce these errors by automating functions that file data into the right place. Bots with machine-learning capabilities are able to observe various human inputs and categorize the data into the right accounts. For example, if you have a monthly subscription phone bill and a prepaid phone bill from the same carrier, a bot is able to determine their distinguishing properties and categorize them into different chart of accounts.
AI is a viable solution that reduces errors through machine learning features such as automated coding. Automatic coding streamlines all the data without any manual entry. Thus, reducing the likelihood of human error.
AI Produces Business Insights
With machine-learning techniques, AI can also analyze data and make predictions.
Within this realm, Caseware has developed a machine learning tool that can provide predictive analytics. Users can search for a business to see their predicted financial data for the next filing period to determine the possibility of misstatement and to provide metrics that forecast liquidity and profitability ratios.
