Sorting receipts, filing documents, keeping Excel spreadsheets up to date: in 10 years, these routine activities will no longer play any role in the daily life of AI-influenced accounting. What are the consequences of this change on the job profile? What opportunities and risks arise from it?
AI or binder? Digital or manual?
Twenty years ago, Maria worked in a small office filled with piles of papers and files. She sorted, filed, and processed pay slips with a calculator and manual spreadsheets. In the near future, Maria’s daily life will be different: Maria sits in a modern office in front of a sleek laptop and does the accounting with an AI-assisted assistant that takes over the routine work. Deep learning algorithms learn autonomously and become more accurate and reliable with each execution. Maria only gives short voice commands and checks the results provided by the AI. There is still time to take care of setting up the next report.
Even today, the sales department is a strategic partner of management and moves between AI, full automation and manual tasks. Callback proposals, open positions, invoice processing: never before have so many tasks been almost completely automated.
Making AI an ally in time
Artificial intelligence Companies will soon be able to work increasingly autonomously in the commercial domain. The initial fear of human tasks disappearing is no longer relevant. Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a member of the team, alongside humans. It takes over error-prone routines, such as data allocation in accounting processes, etc., draws attention to deviations and errors and encourages human review. AI-assisted software uses its strengths to analyze complex financial data and identify patterns. Variance analyses are used to identify deviations between planned and actual results and to investigate their causes.
Experts call this prediction of events based on experience from the sales department database predictive analytics. This scenario will also become a reality in sales departments in the medium term. What will the HI (human intelligence) and AI (artificial intelligence) team achieve in the future?
This enables management to take proactive improvement measures. In the commercial area, Maria and her team are pleased with the forecasts on the payment and dunning behavior of creditors. It is not only technology that is evolving, but also people. The shift from simple data entry by accountants to analytical tasks is what enables commercial departments to contribute to value creation. Together with people, AI in accounting certainly has the potential to become a strong pillar of a company’s value creation – and thus contribute to its long-term success.
Study: Many companies lack solid digital strategies
But what is the reality today? The first steps have been taken a long time ago. Artificial intelligence does not knock on the door and does not want to be let in. In addition to the technical infrastructure, this is also an important development topic for employees. A recent survey conducted by Diamant Software GmbH, a specialist for accounting and controlling software from Bielefeld, Germany, among 332 participants shows that most companies are currently operating in a digital gray area.
Although data and analytics knowledge is recognized as the skill of the future in the commercial sector, robust digital strategies are often lacking. For example, only 34.9 percent of respondents are satisfied with the use of already digitized workflows. The reasons are manifold. Technologies are often not optimally integrated into the company. Many companies continue to waste time because specialist departments such as accounting and controlling are not networked on the software side and merging information requires manual work, which is detrimental to productivity. In addition, employees are often insufficiently trained or do not feel prepared internally for the digital transformation in their daily work.
A CCI survey on digitalisation in 2023 reveals a similar problem. Companies often struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of development. They lack the time, financial resources and IT specialists to manage complex AI technologies, which often require a certain level of specialist knowledge. Added to this are complex regulatory requirements and security risks in terms of data protection. Many companies therefore rate their level of digitalisation as “satisfactory”. The good news is that AI systems for accounting will in future be able to be integrated more and more easily into existing IT environments and be used more intuitively. This development should relieve the pressure.
Artificial intelligence makes suggestions, humans decide
A year ago, a Diamant Software study revealed problems with AI acceptance in the commercial sector. Where is the data stored? How secure is the company’s data in the cloud? Should employees worry about their jobs? Only 10% of companies surveyed rely on AI software to summarize reports and analyses, for example. 48.8% would prefer an automatic suggestion function that would then be approved by a human employee. Humans should continue to play a key role in the processes. For example, account assignment suggestions would be made by the software, but they would have to be approved by a person.
Complete automation by software, especially for critical tasks such as the preparation of annual accounts, seems less attractive to companies in the future. Only 13.3% of respondents can imagine that annual accounts, including consolidation, will be prepared entirely by software. In less critical areas such as invoice entry, 46.9% are aiming for complete automation by software. There is therefore still a lot of potential that has not yet been exploited. Today, the figures would certainly paint a very different picture – because the reasons for the lack of acceptance are disappearing.
Conclusion: Businesses must set the course for the future of AI now
The advent of AI does not necessarily mean that accounting jobs will disappear. But the accountant of 2030 will be much more than a simple data entry clerk. He will need to possess a wide range of new methodological and technical skills that were hardly used in his former professional world. These skills will make him an analyst who works closely with AI-assisted software and helps management make strategic decisions. This shift in priorities is nothing new. But the transformation is now accelerating. Companies must prepare the ground for this transformation of the job profile by developing resilient digital strategies in time, promoting the integration of AI technologies into their IT systems, investing in employee training and providing psychological support for the change.
