Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Accounting Bookkeeping

This week we're gonna talk about AI, artificial intelligence. So in the future, I want you to imagine that accounting and bookkeeping won't be just about crunching numbers or filing tax returns. It's gonna be more about leveraging that technology to streamline our processes, to analyze our data and help us make informed decisions, and allowing us to provide strategic insights to drive our business growth. I believe that by embracing automation, adopting cloud-based software, and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, we can begin to revolutionize our business and also how we handle our finances. Think back to when we first saw the internet or we first saw, you know, it was AOL and remember that sound? We were all excited about that. Well, we're in that same kind of crux of a place. So the implementation of AI in accounting and bookkeeping is already happening and it's having a significant impact on the industry. And it's expected to continue to reshape the future in our profession in several ways. So one way I see it happening is the automation of routine tasks. So AI is going to be able to handle those repetitive and time-consuming tasks like our bank feeds. That's been around for a while. That data entry, maybe invoice processing, and maybe some transaction categorization. It's going to get better. And this automation is going to reduce the risk of human error, and it's going to free up accountants and bookkeepers to focus more on strategic and value-added activities. It's going to improve our accuracy. So anytime we implement AI, those AI algorithms are going to analyze a large dataset. They do it faster than we can, and they do it with a high percentage of accuracy, and they reduce the likelihood of errors in our financial statements and reports. This enhanced accuracy can provide more reliable financial information to the businesses and to the stakeholders, to the partners. In the law firms. It's going to give us real-time financial insights. It's going to be less about us having to do like spreadsheets and pretty graphs. AI-powered analytics and tools are going to provide real-time insights into a company's financial health. It's going to enable us to make faster decisions and have the ability to identify trends, anomalies maybe promptly, and help businesses adapt to changing circumstances more effectively. We see that in Keeper. It analyzes a big data set. It notices different things. And it really makes it a lot easier and quicker to detect any problem inside the file. Fraud protection. AI is going to help us detect patterns and anomalies in financial transactions. It's going to help us identify maybe some fraud, some errors, and it's going to find them right away. That machine learning is going to constantly monitor our financial data and it's going to raise alert if any suspicious activities occur. So we won't have to do that manually. It'll actually flag us. There'll be a cost reduction 'cause AI is gonna significantly reduce our operational costs for accounting and bookkeeping. And it's going to automate routine tasks, streamline processes. So you heard that, right? It's gonna automate tasks that we do now. This is gonna make our services more affordable to businesses of all sizes, but it's also gonna give us the opportunity to do more. This is where our brain's gonna come into, really into play. So there's gonna be enhanced compliance. AI is gonna ensure financial transactions comply with relevant regulations and standards. It's going to probably plug it in, know that you're practicing law in, let's say, California. It's going to assist in automating the generation of these reports that are required for regular regulatory compliance. And it's going to reduce the risk of non-compliance penalties. So you won't have to manually expect that. Customized financial advice. So AI-driven financial advice is gonna come right at you. So there's gonna be recommendations and insights with inside your company's financial data. That's what I see in the future. AI inside of QuickBooks is gonna assist you in making informed financial decisions and optimize your financial strategies. So you're not gonna have to rely on that person. Maybe you'll even be able to see tax advantages for you. There'll be an increased efficiency. So AI's gonna process and analyze the data much faster than the human beings that are doing it now. And it's gonna lead to increased financial efficiency in the operation That means a quicker ending of the month, a quicker closing of the financial periods, a faster response to financial inquiries. There'll be evolving roles happening. So as our jobs get automated more, AI is gonna take over these routine tasks that now are currently done by humans, and it's gonna find that our roles as the accountant or the bookkeeper are gonna evolve. That means that we're gonna become more strategic advisors, and we're gonna focus on interpreting the financial data, providing those insights, even though that the software might do it, we're gonna implement a better way to do that using, making more informed decisions. There'll be continuous learning. So remember, AI is becoming, adopting, it's learning, it's regenerative. So it's adopting the way we work and it's an evolving technology. It's gonna continuously learn and upskill. And it'll be essential for us to upskill our personal, skill set to stay relevant in this industry, to learn how to talk to the AI because it's going to be a lot more verbal. Won't be as much typing, be a lot more verbal. So at Intuit, I know they have a research program. You can Google this and it's inside the boundaries of QuickBooks where they've purchased a lot of AI programs and they're starting to really implement that with breakthroughs, trying to solve their customers' most important financial problems. problems. So they've got a diverse team of research scientists. They've got data scientists. They've got engineers. And they have an extensive expertise in AI. And it includes some natural language. I'm now starting to see that now as I follow along on the AI train. I'm seeing a lot more of that. It's incredible the difference in how the AI machine learning is happening and how the optimization is there. And also how it's able to speak back to us. It's going to learn how to communicate better. Yeah. So it's gonna have a lot of important and significant advantages to us, but that human expertise cannot be missed. All that I've had in the 25+ years of business and working in business is hard to replicate in a machine, at least in today's world or maybe even 5 years down the road. So you're still gonna need that human expertise and the efficiency of AI to have an insightful financial landscape. So our jobs won't be eliminated. They're just going to shift and change. So know that as you start to consider how AI is starting to work, I mean, I've seen people like, "Ah, I don't wanna bother with that." Or a lot of times people in a certain age group will be like, "Oh, I'm too old. I don't wanna learn that. I think it's not necessary. I'll age out of this." And you really probably won't. Even if you're in your 50s or even your 60s, you're gonna see that it's really not something— it's gonna be here and it's here already. It's gonna be even progressing more. If you follow some of the places where you can find AI, and I have an AI tool report that I get that gives me different software that have implemented AI. I know Keeper has. There's a lot of software out there. Some of them have had it in there for a while. Digits, for the most part, that's the main one that they've really implemented that kind of communication style where you can ask it. Mm-hmm. What's my top vendor? You know, what vendor did I spend the most money on? It will actually feed into the data out of QuickBooks and extract that for you. And what's the percentage? You can ask it questions like that and it gives you the right answer. You can do the same thing in ChatGPT 3.5 or whatever is the free one out there. I've seen people take the data and take off the client names and dump that in. It really doesn't work very well. It wants to give you an answer back that it thinks you want, but it might not be accurate. So be very wary there. Stick to programs that you're paying for that you know, or speak to your colleagues to find the right programs that have implemented AI into them and take a look and see and verify the results. At this point, it's a new system. It's a new adoption of technology. And just like we were fascinated by the beep bop boop when you logged into the internet way back in the AOL days and dial-up, or just the fact that there's Google and— Yeah. Remembering those days back, it's not that far ago that we just started to get all excited about this stuff. And there's definitely an excitement around AI. Don't discard it, implement it, embrace it, learn as much as you can about it. Learn the right prompts to ask it questions. At least grab the free one and start to play with it, asking the questions and look at the results as you start to hone these skills. And I think as a bookkeeper and accountant, you could say that one step in front of it, or at least— Yeah. Make your skill set upskilled to that point that you work and embrace it and use it. It's coming. It's gonna be inside of QuickBooks. You're gonna see it everywhere. It's been, I cannot forget sitting at QuickBooks Connect and I think it was 2017 maybe where Sasan Ghodarzi came out on stage and started showing, talking to the car and asking it to, you know, connecting to QuickBooks and saying, "Hey QB, make an invoice." And I can remember that day thinking, "Wow, is this the future?" It's the future, folks. It's the future. So start to think about that as you start to stay ahead of this. And I'll give you a link to one of the sites I like to follow that kind of gives you a listing every day of some of the places that you can get some new software that's beta and play around with it. There's a pretty good one called Guide that I like, and there's a few other ones. So I'll list those in the article as well. So if you wanna read the article, but it's exciting times. So let's embrace it and move forward to the future. Bye everybody. Bye.