Accounting is no stranger to AI. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and NLP have found their applications in accounting, driving intelligent automation since the early 2010s.Â
But the emergence of Gen AI is a watershed moment for the accounting industry. It’s no longer just about disparate tools that deliver handy optimizations and incremental improvements. Gen AI is a paradigm shift that is reshaping the role of accountants by automating the most complex and tedious accounting workflows that have long plagued businesses.
Gen AI for Accounts Payable & Accounts Receivable Workflows
Gen AI is completely eliminating the need for multiple systems and manual monitoring in traditional AP.Â
When integrated seamlessly, AI accounting software powered by Gen AI now transforms the long, complex, and tedious Accounts Payable workflow into a frictionless system.
The Invoices are automatically read using OCR and language models, matched to purchase orders (POs), and flagged for mismatches, duplicates, or vendor anomalies. Approvals are routed based on company policy, and payments are scheduled in a smooth, end-to-end flow with minimal manual oversight.
On the Accounts Receivable side, AI auto-generates and sends client-specific invoices, sends reminders tailored to each client’s behavior, and even enables seamless engagement through conversational AI. Dashboards give predictive insights, while automated escalation workflows improve cash flow and reduce delays, all with better control.
While smart automation of AP and AR individually brings tremendous value, the real transformation happens when both are integrated into a single AI-driven accounting system. Let’s explore the four most common accounting workflows that accountants are already transforming with Gen AI.
1. Unified Cash Positioning
AI continuously reconciles incoming receivables and outgoing payables to show your real-time net cash position.
2. Prioritized Collections & Payments
If AR predicts a late payment, AI can reschedule AP payments to avoid shortfalls and balance out the cash according to requirements.
3. Smarter Payment Timing & Forecasting
Accountants can prioritize which clients to collect from and which vendors to pay based on working capital needs. With AP and AR in sync, cash flow forecasts also become sharper too.
Gen AI for Financial Reporting and Analysis
The tedious process of financial gathering, validation, and manual analysis translates to delayed insights (at best) that are often of little value. Narratives had to be built from scratch, and any deep dive into data wasn’t possible without wasting hours at a stretch.
From data collection to validation and analysis, Gen AI automates all the steps involved in financial reporting to deliver accurate financial reports directly from raw inputs.
- Standard financial reports are made instantly, with insights generated continuously, not just at month-end. But the USP is its advanced analytics, which automatically identifies trends and forecasts future performance, risks, and opportunities to support informed strategic decision-making.
- Customizable metrics, data drill-downs, comparisons, and summaries are auto-generated in seconds. Even better, AI accounting software powered by platforms also offers real-time dashboards with extensive metrics that help you monitor all insights, metrics, and recommendations on the go.
Gen AI for Month-end Close
Today’s Financial close software reduces errors, improves visibility, and shortens the timelines of month-end close processes, which is a marked improvement over manual processes.Â
But advanced AI accounting software platforms powered by Gen AI are ushering a seismic transformation by providing a zero-day close that allows businesses to close their books everyday as they go without waiting for the month-end.
With continuous transaction capture, accurate automated categorization, and document-to-transaction matching at scale, AI accounting platforms enable continuous reconciliation that keeps books updated in real-time with minimal human intervention. As a result, finance teams can soft-close their books daily, gain real-time financial visibility, and eliminate the rush and uncertainty of traditional close cycles.
- With the zero-day close offered by Gen AI-powered accounting platforms, month-end close becomes a matter of formality for the internal finance teams.
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- For accounting firms managing multiple client books, the zero-day close enabled by AI accounting platforms ensures consistent, accurate, and daily closings. This not only improves the accuracy of financial insights but also reduces billable hours while helping firms sharpen their client advisory services.
Gen AI for Client Advisory Services
Hours spent compiling financial data, preparing tailored reports, manual benchmarking, and analysis rob accounting firms of valuable time. The expertise of accounting firms, due to lack of time and bandwidth, usually limits their advisory services to just tax planning and compliance.
By automating financial reporting and insight generation, Gen AI lays the foundation for robust client advisory dashboards that augment accountants with accurate data and insights for analysis and strategic advisory services.
- Gen AI helps automate industry-relevant benchmarking, insight decks, simulated financial scenarios, and financial health repositories instantly.
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- Whether it’s to generate customer investment strategies, cash flow management plans, or tax planning recommendations, Gen AI does all the heavy lifting and helps accountants blend their specialized skills in delivering customized advisory and value to clients.
Powered by Gen AI, today’s AI bookkeeping solutions, such as Docyt, are revolutionizing the entire client management and advisory workflow with dedicated AI tools like Docyt Copilot.
Check out the cutting-edge features of Docyt Copilot that are driving accounting firms into a new era of strategic excellence here: https://docyt.com/docyt-copilot/
