4 Useful AI Tools for Accountants and Bookkeepers
Accountants and bookkeepers who are ready to automate repetitive activities can leverage varying types of AI depending on the task at hand. For instance, if you need to quickly create a document, ChatGPT can assist. Whereas, if you’re tasked with quickly analysing financial data, you could use Intuit Assist in your day-to-day operations.
Let’s take a look at some AI tools available to accountants.
ChatGPT is a complex language model from OpenAI that can fit seamlessly into your workflow. As a natural language processing tool, ChatGPT can help with research, content creation, and even basic legal document drafting. ChatGPT allows accountants and bookkeepers to dedicate their valuable time to handling the complex financial needs of their clients rather than repetitive tasks.
It is important to note that Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can ‘hallucinate’ leading to inaccuracies or even made-up ‘facts’. This is why human oversight is often necessary to ensure the accuracy of what is being generated especially for critical tasks.
Microsoft Copilot is another remarkable AI tool that can assist accountants in their daily tasks. It’s an assistant that is integrated into Microsoft 365 apps like Excel, Word and Outlook. With a prompt Copilot can create an entire first draft in Word, creative presentations on PowerPoint and even professional-looking data visualisations in Excel.
Communicating with clients clearly and accurately is essential. This is because accountants and bookkeepers are expected to communicate with clients and regulatory bodies frequently, being able to write professionally is a part of the job description.
GrammarlyGO helps accountants and bookkeepers enhance the quality of written communication by allowing them to set the tone and writing style of the bot before it generates drafts or rewrites emails. This ensures that reports, emails, and documents maintain high professionalism, helping improve an accountant or bookkeeper's reputation and their client’s trust in them.
With AI, you can turn raw data into meaningful insights. AI-powered data analytics will help you identify trends, patterns, and anomalies, giving you a deeper understanding of your clients’ financial health.
Suppose you’re working with a small start-up that’s considering expanding its business. What if sales dropped 30% next quarter? What if inventory costs rose by 15%? Does the business have enough cash in the bank to account for a sudden uptick in demand?
Using an AI-powered tool like QuickBooks Cash Flow planner, you can analyse their financial data to forecast the future health of thebusiness under different scenarios. The AI will then analyse the company’s data to give you a sneak peek into what would happen in each of these scenarios.
You can then advise your client on the best time to expand or potential risks they should be wary
of, helping them to make informed decisions with confidence. These tools are already here, built into features like those that make smart predictions about when your invoices will be paid in the Cash Flow Planner in the QuickBooks suite.
