If you’re at all familiar with the world of accounting, then you know it’s a field that relies heavily on accuracy, organization, and the timely reporting of financial data. The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way accountants and accounting departments operate — and you can take advantage of these new capabilities and tools for your own business. 

In this blog post, we’ll look at how leading accounting software providers are leveraging AI to automate routine accounting tasks, enable more strategic analysis of financial data, and provide a better experience for accounting professionals.

The Role of AI in Accounting Operations

One of the easiest ways to use AI in your day-to-day accounting is to automate repetitive or routine processes like data entry, expense report auditing, invoice coding, or transaction processing. Machine learning algorithms can be trained to handle these operations using historical data and pattern analysis, freeing up accountants to focus on more strategic initiatives. Sage Intacct, for instance, uses an Intelligent GL feature to automate the traditionally tedious task of coding interactions to the appropriate general ledger accounts, using AI to review past coding patterns and learn how to code new transactions.

Of course, AI can do much more than just code transactions — like facilitating a more sophisticated analysis of the massive amounts of financial data generated by modern businesses. Instead of just reporting results, accountants can now use AI-powered data visualization, forecasting, and predictive modeling to uncover key strategic insights that support better and more forward-looking decision making across a business.

And that’s still just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to automating routine tasks and providing heightened analytical insights, businesses can also use AI to set up virtual assistants that leverage natural language processing to help users get quick answers to any question they may have. Sage Intacct is again at the forefront of this movement, providing a chatbot that can help clients and customers respond to a diverse range of plain English queries — whether someone is seeking support while navigating software or interpreting a financial report.

As AI capabilities grow, accounting systems are poised to become faster, more efficient, more insightful, and lower risk. The new technology is rapidly influencing accounting systems and reshaping the day-to-day work of accountants, automating tasks and augmenting human capabilities to focus on acquiring strategic insights from financial data. These capabilities are only going to grow as technology develops — and by proactively embracing AI now, accounting teams and organizations can stay fit for the future.