5 Ways ChatGPT Can TRANSFORM Your Accounting Firm!

In this video, I'm going to share with you five practical use cases for how you can use ChatGPT in your accounting firm. Five ideas that will save you so much time and really demonstrate the power of ChatGPT.

Welcome. My name is Mark Wickersham. I'm the author of Effective Pricing for Accountants and many other books for the accounting profession, primarily on value pricing. But today I'm going to teach you some stuff around ChatGPT. I'm going to share with you five practical use cases. So let's start with number one. Number one is we can use it for data analysis. So let me give you, let me give you an example. We're going to go across to ChatGPT and just to save a bit of time, I've pre prepared my first response. So let me go my first prompt. So if we just go over to ChatGPT, this is my ChatGPT. If we start a brand new chat and we get the, we can choose which version we want to use. If you're on the free account you'll be using 3.5, I pay for it. I think it's worth upgrading. I'm going to use ChatGPT4. No, I'll stick with ChatGPT 3.5 just in case that's what you've got. And so I'm going to put in the prompt here. I'm going to say and I've missed the I out. I am going to, I am going to share with you the profit and loss account for this year and, and the previous year. I want you to act as my accountant and tell me whether there are any potential errors and also tell me whether there's anything about the numbers that gives you cause for concern. Okay, let me now type here is the profit and.

Loss account.

If you hold the shift key down, by the way, the shift key and return, if you hit return it'll send it. Hold the shift key down, will put a blank space in. Okay, so now what we can do is we can feed it some information. So I have a profit and loss account. It's some made up numbers and I'm just going to control C to copy it. So we've got two years worth of data for a profit and loss account in Excel and I can come back here and can do control V, paste that and hit the return key. And what it's going to do is it's going to go and analyze that data and start to come up with what I said. I asked it to tell me whether any potential errors and also Tell me whether anything about the numbers that gives you cause for concern. So let's see what it's coming up with. And you can see already it's done that. It didn't take long at all. So let's see what it says. It it says thank you for sharing the profit loss account for 2015 and 2016. It recognized the dates it says. Based on the information provided. Here are a few observations. In 2015 there is an opening stock of 15,000. But in 2016 the opening stock is listed as 0. This could indicate an issue with inventory management or a change in the business's operations. So that will be something that you might want to check. See if just make sure it's right.

And then there may be something you want to check and advise the client. Number two, there is a significant increase in both turnover and cost of sales between 2015 and 2016. This suggests the business may have experienced growth or expanded its operations during this period. And so that might be something we want to double check. It's grown fast. Is that correct? Number three. The overhead expenses for both years seem reasonable and typical for a business of this size. The okay, great. Number four. There is no information provided about the nature of other operating income in either year, which makes it difficult to evaluate its significance. Okay. The net profit before tax increased significantly from 16,000 to 50,000. This could be a positive sign of business growth and profitability. But it's important to consider the context of this increase including any changes in the business's operations, market conditions or other factors. The amount of tax paid increased from 750 in 2015 to 4,000 in 2016 which is expected due to increase in profits. So it's just picking out things that it's noticed that we can then if you're an accountant or a bookkeeper, you could go and have a look at these and see if it does make sense or are they cause for concern. Does it suggest something's wrong or is it something we discuss with the the client? Now it is interesting. I did do a quick test earlier and it's picked up with chat GPT4 and it picked up something else which it hasn't this time around. But one of the interesting things about Chat GPT is if you're not 100% sure and happy with the response, you can always hit regenerate response and it will go and do it again and sometimes it will come up with some different things. It's worth doing that test it, get it to read. So as I go here, I saw it Straight away it said here.

It'S got different things here it's picked up on some other things that we might want to be aware of.

So.

You could regenerate two or three times and see if it picks up on some other things. This will save you loads of time with just initial glance, just to see if data is correct or not. So that's the first idea I want to share with you. Data analysis. We can feed it data and get it to analyze it. Second thing, something which if you're an accountant, you may want to do is do tax summaries. Now, if you watched my earlier video on the five weaknesses of ChatGPT, you will know that we have to be very careful with technical information like tax because for example, it doesn't necessarily have the up to date information. ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 were trained on data up until September 2020 21. However, just like I've just shown you, we can feed it information. So let's imagine for example, and I'm going to just bear with me a second while I just grab my prompt and put it into ChatGPT. I'm going to start a brand new chat and I'm going to still use 3.5 and it says, I am going to supply you with some tax guidance notes from hmrc. That's the UK tax authorities respond with I have those notes. Once I have supplied you with them and await my next instruction. Let's see what it does. So it's saying, sure, please provide me with the tax guidance notes from hmrc. I'll let you know once I receive them. Great. So what we can now do is I've just gone to the HMRC website and I've just picked up the guidance notes for capital gains tax on UK property or land. If you're not UK resident, let me just hope I have correctly copied, copied that to the clipboard. We'll soon see. So Control V, I think it's all there. Let me just hit the return character. So there is, I've copied it. There's a lot of notes here. This is the guidance notes from HMRC's website on.

On that particular issue. So it says I have these, those notes. Let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything else I can help with. Great. So now that it's got that data, that tax information, we could, for example, there's many things that we could do. We could ask it questions about. We might say we have a client that's resident in France. So we sold a Property. What are the deadlines for giving information and it'll find it in. We might even do it. In fact, let me do that. Let me do something else first. It could be for example that you want to write an article for your firm's newsletter about this issue. So please summarize this in less than 500 words.

Suitable for a blog post or newsletter article.

And let's see what it does and how long it takes. So here it goes from 6 April 2020. Non residents who sell or dispose of UK property or land must report and pay their capital gains tax using the capital gains tax on UK property account etc. Etc. Now if you watch my earlier video on five weaknesses, I said to you, you have to fact check everything. We should be pretty good because we fed it the information first. But nevertheless you should use your expertise, your judgment, your knowledge to just check it is right. But there you go. In minutes, having fed it the information, we have a 500 word newsletter article on the that particular area of tax. So that would save you a huge amount of time. If you are an accounting firm and you do a monthly tax newsletter, for example, you could use ChatGPT to create articles in minutes. You just need to feed it the source information that you might get from the tax Authority's website, for example. So we could then ask it further questions. We could say I have a client resident in France who has just sold a property in London. What should they do and by when? Now I am not a tax. I used to be a tax expert many many years ago. Tax was my thing. I haven't practiced since. When was it? 2003. So I would go to an accountant for this. So I don't know whether it's right or not, but let's see what it comes up with. So to answer that question, we can see that as a non UK resident who has sold property in the uk, your client may be liable to pay non resident capital gains tax on the gains made from the sale. It goes on to for sales completed on or after 27th October 2021. The deadline is it's given the deadlines. There's a fairly high chance this is accurate because it's based upon the information we fed in it from the UK government's tax website. So there you go. It's a great way of getting an answer fast to tax questions. So we've covered two things so far. We've covered data analysis and tax summaries. So hopefully I'll give you lots of ideas that you can Feed it information. Okay, let's go on to number three, the third idea. And actually if you like this, if that's been valuable to you so far, just hit that like, like button and if you've not yet subscribed to the channel, do subscribe. And before I forget, I have some free resources for you as well if you hang on until the end. So number three, the third thing that it's really good at, that ChatGPT is great at is coming up with ideas. So let me just grab. Yeah, let me just grab this and let me just go to ChatGPT. I'm going to hit a brand new chat. I'll leave it on 3.5. So I'm going to ask it this question. I'm an accountant and I'm looking for some ideas for a blog post about cash flow management for small construction businesses. Can you provide me with five possible blog posts? For each blog post idea, include three main points I should cover. So if you're an accountant and you specialize in small construction businesses and you know you should be doing blog posts as part of your content marketing strategy and you have no idea what to write about, then here's five ideas. ChatGPT and look how quick it does it. So number one, five tips for improving cash flow in your construction business. And I've asked it as well to give three main points that you could cover and so you could talk about in that blog post. You could talk about sending out invoices promptly and following up on late payments. You could negotiate favorable payment terms with suppliers and subcontractors and you could track expenses closely to ensure that you are staying within your budget. That would be, I think, a pretty good blog post. But that's not the only one. Understanding the cash conversion cycle in construction and looking at that, it looks like a pretty good outline for things we could talk about managing cash flow during a construction project, forecasting cash flow for your construction business, and the role of technology in cash flow management for construction business. Okay, some pretty cool stuff there. So you might decide to pick your favorite or you might want to use all three. It's entirely up to you. So that's, that's the next thing that we can do with blog. With ChatGPT, it is great for coming up with ideas. Now number four, the fourth thing that you can then do is as well as coming up with ideas, if it's a blog post, you can then help it. You can get it to help you write the blog post. So.

I would just write something like, and just to save you a bit of time because my typing is not the fastest, I'm going to put it into here. And for this.

We can keep the same chat. One of the great things about ChatGPT, unlike search engines, is it remembers that the previous conversation. Think of a chat as being a conversation with your new employee or your virtual assistant. So he's given me five and I might say I think I like. Which one do I like? I don't know. I think I like the role of technology in cash flow management for construction businesses. So number five. So I'm going to put. Please give me a blog post outline for number five. Five and what it's now going to do. It knows what number five is, at least I hope it does. And it's now coming up with a more detailed outline. So here we go. For the role of technology in cash flow management for construction businesses, we have an introduction, briefly introduce the topic of the blog post and its relevance to small construction businesses. Highlight the importance of effective cash flow management in the construction industry. Great, that would be a nice introduction. Then we talk about software and tools for cash flow management and it's given us three ideas of things that we could write about in that particular area. Then we've got an outline of. We could talk about the benefits of technology for cash flow management. Again, an outline of that, selecting the right technology solutions with three ideas and then a conclusion. That's a pretty good blog post outline. And you could then go and start to write based on your knowledge or experience, you could write those sections assuming of course you do have expertise in cash flow management and the construction industry. Of course for you it might be something completely different. So we can use it for ideas and then we can use it. If it's content marketing like blog posts, we can start to create outlines for the blog post. Now you can go a step further and you can get to help you write the blog post. And I have a separate video on that in our training course. And if you, if you want more detailed training on, on how to use ChatGPT, we've got a whole training program where we go really deep and show you exactly how the best way of getting, for example, how to create great blog posts and how to avoid the AI detectors. So if you want to, if you want to have a access to that course, then at the moment, at the time I am recording this, we are not selling the course, we are giving it away for free as a bonus to the members of training academies. And if you're not part of the Value Pricing Academy or the Bookkeeper's Pricing Academy. Then the best place to start is the Profitable Growth Academy. That's our entry level academy. I'll put the link below. This is where we teach you how to build a more successful accounting firm. We talk about the four foundations and although it may not be listed on the website if you click on the link below, there is this extra brand new bonus now of our complete training course on ChatGPT and AI for accountants and bookkeepers. So check out the link. Check that out below. Okay, I still have one more thing to show you. So let's just summarize though. So we've covered data analysis, we've covered tax summaries, we've looked at how we can use it for ideas. We've looked at how we can build on that and write the blog post. So let's look at number five and we'll keep on the theme of marketing for this. I love it for marketing. There are so many things we can use ChatGPT to help us with our marketing, which if you're an accountant or a bookkeeper, you probably hate marketing. I know that when I was running my accounting firm many years ago, I didn't have the time for it. I was too busy doing client work. The great news is it's great at marketing and it will save you hours of time. So we've got our blog posts and once you've written your blog post, you'll want to post it now. With marketing, one of the things we have to be good at is headlines, SEO and headlines. And so we can get it to help us write great headlines. So if we just go back to here and we'll keep within the same thread and we might say that's a great summary or outline rather that's a great outline.

For this blog post. Can you please suggest three alternative.

Attention.

Attention grabbing headlines.

For this blog post And I'm conscious that my spelling is not great. Here we go. Let's see, let's see what it comes up with. Let's see what headlines we Alternative headlines. So revolutionize your cash flow management. How technology can help Construction businesses. It's a good, really good headline. Building your bottom line. The top Technology Solutions for Cash Flow Management in Construction and From Paper to Pixels How Modern Technology is changing Cash Flow Management for Construction Businesses. So three great ideas. Plus of course the original one it gave. And if you're not happy with those, then you can either say can you give me three more? So can you give me the three more.

And then it will do exactly that. Or you could hit Regenerate response and it will come up with some some alternative headlines. Okay, they are some five ideas for how practical ideas of how you can use ChatGPT. If you want some more help then make sure you join our Facebook group ChatGPT and AI for Accountants and bookkeepers. Also make sure if you've not already grabbed a copy of our ebook, we'll put the link below. It's about 30 odd pages full of tips, tricks, ideas on using ChatGPT and if you want to go further, check out the Profitable Growth Academy. If you've enjoyed this video, remember please hit the like button and also tell me below. Tell me below which of those five ideas is your favorite? Which one are you going to go out and try straight away? And if you've got any other things that you use ChatGPT for again, put it in the comments. I'd love to know what what are you using it for in your business? I hope to see you on another video sometime soon. Goodbye for now.