Will AI Replace Accountants?

The rise and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) remains a cause for concern for some. Many workers, including accountants, question whether AI may replace them outright. Others think this concern is unfounded. Rather than replacing jobs, AI may offer ways for you to perform better as an accountant. 

Adopting AI in accounting can help you achieve better workflow optimization processes, improved accuracy, and increased client satisfaction. Despite such potential benefits, nearly half of accounting firms have no plans to use AI, according to a recent report from Thomson Reuters [1]. 

However, the fact remains that AI can automate mundane tasks with speed and accuracy, leaving you time to perform the more thought-intensive parts of accounting uninterrupted. 

The role of accountants today

As an accountant, you prepare, examine, and evaluate financial and tax records for individuals and businesses. You evaluate financial risk, make data-driven decisions, and help streamline businesses’ financial operations in order to make them run more efficiently. 

Several different types of accounting exist. Some accounting roles require certain educational attainments, such as a master’s degree in accounting or a certified public accountant (CPA) certification, while others require a bachelor’s degree. 

How AI is transforming accounting

The Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PwC, and KPMG—all agree they won’t use AI to replace human accountants. That doesn’t mean they plan to avoid implementing AI altogether. Instead, they’ll use it to improve the way you work as an accountant. 

The Big Four aren’t alone in implementing AI in the accounting space. Firms of all sizes use AI to automate and streamline a variety of processes, such as: 

• Document review: AI summarizes and paraphrases the most important points from various types of documents, speeding up the processes of financial audits and compliance checks as well as improving their accuracy. 

• Bookkeeping: AI automatically performs bookkeeping tasks, like categorizing expenses, reconciling accounts, and generating financial reports. 

• Tax information: AI performs tax-based research to more accurately file taxes. It can also automate the tax return preparation process, and it offers predictive insights that help customers make financial decisions based on future tax scenarios. 

What’s transformative is how quickly and accurately AI performs the above functions, and how much time that leaves accountants to handle other tasks. 

Benefits of AI integration

The main benefits of AI integration in accounting include increased efficiency and accuracy as well as certain cost savings for businesses of all sizes. 

AI helps you streamline routine tasks such as data entry, invoice processing, and reconciliations, freeing you to spend more time doing the kind of decision-making and sophisticated financial planning that are beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced AI system. AI may also decrease burnout and mitigate worker shortages. 

Additional benefits of AI integration in accounting include: 

• Invisible accounting: By automating repetitive tasks, you can focus on the part of your job that requires higher-level decision-making capabilities. 

• Continuous auditing: Automated auditing capabilities are more precise than human accountants and can operate continuously for better coverage. 

• Active insight: AI can track so many data points that it’s capable of offering you real-time insights regarding important financial decisions. 

Job security concerns

AI adoption may be transformative for the accounting field. The top improvements managers expect to see from AI are [2]: 

1. Improved decision-making (41 percent)

2. Increased automation of business processes (35 percent)

3. Improved employee retention (32 percent)

Market size for AI in accounting is likely to reach $88.2 billion by 2033 [3]. Does any of this represent a job security concern for accountants? Not necessarily. While AI speeds along manual processes, it can’t do the higher-order thinking and decision-making that you’re capable of. 

The future of the accounting profession

While no one knows exactly what the AI-driven accounting industry will look like in the future, experts do expect AI adoption to increase. 

Skills for the future accountant

Clients demand innovation in the accounting field. As such, you will need to adjust to using new technology. Large firms seem eager to take a bold leap into the world of AI, and smaller firms can compete by adopting AI technology selectively. 

AI algorithms process enormous stores of multimodal data; they sort and analyze it in an intelligible way, allowing you to make better data-driven decisions. In fact, today’s AI is so good at this type of data analysis that it’s capable of not only identifying patterns that human accountants might miss but of predicting future trends based on those patterns. You’ll want to keep up with AI if you want to remain competitive in the accounting field. 

To do so, consider upskilling to learn: 

• How a variety of AI interfaces work with regard to accounting

• How to use AI to streamline your accounting processes

• How to write code

• How to use data analytics tools such as Power BI or Tableau

You may also want to look into acquiring new skills from adjacent fields, such as marketing or business strategy. 

Remember, AI isn’t here to replace accountants. It’s a tool to free you up to be as client-centric as possible. AI can’t intelligibly reproduce the human elements of accounting work, including the inherent value of emotional intelligence, relationship building, and empathy.

Ethical and regulatory considerations

As with anything, you’ll find ethical and regulatory considerations regarding the implementation of AI in accounting. 

AI can help you streamline the process of staying in line with regulations. In a field characterized by frequent regulatory changes, this type of AI function offers you a way to monitor the tax law landscape. 

Lawmakers develop new regulations frequently; a majority of US states recently passed bills regulating AI use in a variety of ways. Alabama’s H 172, for instance, prohibits “the distribution of materially deceptive media” [4].

This isn’t a bad thing: In fact, it represents an opportunity for you, the accountant, to advocate for data privacy—to insist that accounting firms balance innovation with careful adoption of AI. You can identify and elucidate risks to client privacy, such as those posed by hackers, and insist that the AI platforms your firm uses be transparent and the training data trackable as well as explainable.

Data privacy and security concerns

AI poses a risk to confidentiality and the process of protecting highly sensitive data, including financial and tax data. With this in mind, accountants must prioritize data privacy measures. 

Businesses that adopt AI will want to opt for transparency regarding their AI platform’s training sources. You’ll need to educate the public on your policies: for example, whether or not your AI platform saves customer data, and if so for how long. Additionally, you may want to put together an ethical AI statement so people know you plan to use AI in a way that isn’t socially harmful in one way or another. 

Getting started with Coursera

Will AI replace accountants? The future of accounting will hinge on the nature of the widespread adoption of AI, but it isn’t likely to replace accountants altogether. However, it will change the way you do your job. 

To begin your exploration of AI, look into DeepLearning.AI's Generative AI For Everyone course on Coursera to learn the basics of AI strategy and large language models. Then, check out the University of Pennsylvania’s AI for Business Specialization course to learn how to incorporate AI into your organization and help you prepare for the AI-driven future of accounting.