ChatGPT has quickly become one of the most used software programs in the accounting profession.
Many accountants rely on it to ensure compliance tasks are done accurately and automate repetitive accounting tasks. However, there are also a lot of firms that use it for more complex tasks like data analysis and highly personalized client communication.
In this blog post, we’re going to talk about 13 ways to use ChatGPT to boost efficiency.
Table of Contents
- What Is ChatGPT?
- How ChatGPT Can Help Accounting Firms
- How Accounting Firms Can Use ChatGPT
- 1) Blog Post Creation
- 2) Drafting Emails to Clients
- 3) Turn a Loom Video Into an SOP
- 4) Turn a PDF File Into Data in Excel
- 5) Classify Uncategorized Bank Transactions
- 6) Social Media Post Creation
- 7) Summarize Meeting Notes
- 8) Fix Excel Formula Issues
- 9) Reduce Market Research Time
- 10) Create an Email Signature for Easy Advertising
- 11) Make Better Case Studies
- 12) Summarize Information for Monthly Executive Summaries
- 13) Simplify Tax Regulations
- Risks of Using ChatGPT in Accounting
What Is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a powerful large language model that you interact through a chat interface. It’s easily one of the most used AI in accounting and finance teams.
Instead of relying on a list of set commands, you can use casual, conversational ChatGPT prompts.
It can automate manual and repetitive tasks like:
- Generating text (like client emails)
- Summarizing documents (so you can quickly understand key parts of a whitepaper, etc.)
- Personalizing responses (for client concerns and inquiries)
- Assisting with research (like regulatory updates, etc.)
- Proofreading text (to suggest writing improvements in client documents)
- Generating ideas (great for brainstorming industry trends, marketing materials, etc.)
How ChatGPT Can Help Accounting Firms
1) Reduction of Manual Tasks
ChatGPT can help you with tedious tasks like:
- Writing email replies
- Analyzing journal entries
- Writing blog posts
- Preparing financial reports
- Etc.
These increase productivity and give you more time for more high-level work.
For example, ChatGPT can check discrepancies between invoiced amounts and purchase orders.
When you provide ChatGPT with the right data and context, it excels. For example, if you upload accounting data and type a command like the following…
“Can you help automate the process of checking discrepancies between invoiced amounts and purchase orders?“
It’ll give you something like this.
As you can see, ChatGPT can analyze financial data and more within a couple of seconds.
This task is tedious, and it’s easy to get things wrong here, but the right ChatGPT prompt makes it easuer.
2) Improved Client Experience
This is a bit related to the previous benefit, but I feel that it deserves its own entry.
Here are some reasons why ChatGPT can be a valuable tool to improve your client experience:
- Professionalism: Uniform responses help give a professional tone and consistency to your firm’s communications
- Quicker Responses: Can provide responses in seconds, which is especially convenient during busy season
ChatGPT can also write emails for you. My Future Firm team and I have used it a lot to respond to members, partners, and vendors.
To give you an idea, here’s how I used ChatGPT to reply to a fake client:
Although it may not provide you with the exact response you prefer at times, it can certainly be used to help improve your customer experience.
3) Helps With Training and Learning
Learning new concepts, keeping up with changing regulations, and understanding new technologies in the accounting industry can be tough.
The good news is ChatGPT can help.
Listed below are a couple of examples of how it tool can be instrumental in continuous learning:
- Concept explanation: ChatGPT excels at providing simple and clear explanations and examples to enhance comprehension.
- Example scenarios: You can get hypothetical scenarios or case studies for analysis and interpretation.
- Exploring specialized topics: Get insights on niche topics like forensic accounting, tax planning strategies, or risk management techniques.
Here’s a couple of ways you can leverage ChatGPT to your accounting practice:
How Accounting Firms Can Use ChatGPT
1) Blog Post Creation
ChatGPT can help you make informative blog posts about accounting.
However, I don’t recommend relying on it for everything. Instead, use it to:
- Brainstorm article ideas
- Create outlines
- Check for grammatical and spelling errors
- Get SEO suggestions
Make sure to use the right prompts to get the best results. Otherwise, the content generated may end up being generic.
You can use a prompt like below to get better results:
“I want you to write in a voice that’s authoritative yet informal and straightforward. The tone should be conversational and personable, incorporating personal anecdotes when relevant.
Your language should be clear, concise, and casual, focusing on business advice or insights, especially in accounting and business growth.
Always aim to address the reader directly to build a connection and keep them engaged.
Your style should typically present a problem or issue first, then guide the reader to a resolution with clear, actionable advice.”
When you ask ChatGPT to rewrite paragraphs or a whole blog post draft such as this:
You’ll get a result like:
See that? This more distinctive writing style is more likely to resonate better with your readers than if you were to ask ChatGPT to generate content with a generic prompt.
2) Drafting Emails to Clients
ChatGPT can help firm owners write personalized emails to clients.
You can create a set of prompts that provide basic information about the client and the requirements of the email.
For example, prompts could include the client’s first name, industry, the purpose of the email, and additional information like specific concerns or calls to action.
Your prompt can be as simple as this:
“Write an email reminder to a client about an upcoming deadline for filing their quarterly tax return. The email should be professional yet casual, reminding the client of the approaching deadline and requesting them to submit the necessary documentation as soon as possible. Include a friendly closing and sign off with your name.”
ChatGPT will provide an answer like:
In a few seconds, you have a fresh draft that you can edit as you see fit.
3) Turn a Loom Video Into an SOP
Loom has been one of my most-used tools here at Future Firm.
I once eliminated 1,000 meetings in a year… according to Loom, at least.
With ChatGPT, you can do one more thing with Loom besides reducing meetings: creating SOPs.
To be honest, this is not an original idea of mine.
One of my members shared the practice in our community forums.
To do this, simply copy/paste the transcript from Loom into ChatGPT and ask it to summarize it into a step-by-step standard operating procedure.
Watch how I do it here:
4) Turn a PDF File Into Data in Excel
This can be a time-consuming process that needs manual effort. But you can streamline this with ChatGPT.
Just copy and paste the data from the PDFs into ChatGPT. Then, ask ChatGPT to format it into a table. The table will be ready for easy insertion into Excel.
However, since the release of GPT-4, this process is easier.
You can now upload files into ChatGPT directly for a more convenient experience.
5) Classify Uncategorized Bank Transactions
ChatGPT can review transactions and suggest categories, which can speed up bookkeeping dramatically.
Just enter the transactions in the chatbox. Then, accept or adjust the suggestions as needed and update your records. This saves time and improves accuracy.
Here’s the output from ChatGPT if you provide this simple example prompt:
“I have some transactions I need to review and categorize for my business expenses.
Date: May 15 2024
Amount: $45.00
Description: Office Depot – Printer Ink”
6) Social Media Post Creation
Building your presence online through social media can be challenging, especially with the constant need for fresh, engaging content.
Still, it’s worth establishing you and your firm’s space in the medium, as 5 billion people have social media profiles.
ChatGPT can create social media posts that are engaging, relevant, and tailored to your target audience.
Here’s an example:
You can always tweak your prompt, tone, and other aspects until you get the best results.
And you still will likely need to edit the output (at least slightly).
7) Summarize Meeting Notes
ChatGPT is great for summarizing meeting notes. Here’s how you can do it:
- Record the meeting: Use a tool like Loom that has transcription capabilities to record the meeting.
- Transcribe the recording: If the tool doesn’t provide transcription, upload the recording to a transcription service to get a text version of the meeting.
- Input to ChatGPT: Once you have the transcription, input it into ChatGPT. You might start with a prompt like:
“Summarize the following meeting notes, focusing on key decisions, action items, and important points discussed:
[Paste the transcribed text here]”
This is a sample result of the summarized meeting notes done by ChatGPT:
8) Fix Excel Formula Issues
ChatGPT can help you with step-by-step instructions if you forget a specific Excel formula and how to input it.
You can simply describe the task or calculation you’re trying to perform, and ChatGPT can provide the appropriate formula.
This is how ChatGPT will answer if you ask it how to calculate compound interest in Excel but you forgot the formula:
With this feature, your financial reporting process can be faster and easier than before.
I also suggest checking out custom GPTs like the one below to take it a step further. However, be aware that some will be limited for free users.
9) Reduce Market Research Time
ChatGPT can reduce your research time a lot by:
- Summarizing reports and articles
- Answering questions on the content you provided
- Generating insights from data
- Recommending resources
As an example, you can perform a competitor analysis using ChatGPT with these steps:
1. Collect the names, news articles, financial reports, and press releases related to these competitors.
2. Provide all of the data you gather from each competitor and instruct the AI to summarize them.
Depending on the information you provided, you may ask ChatGPT questions such as:
If you’re using a paid ChatGPT plan, you can also take advantage of its deep research model, ChatGPT 4.5.
10) Create an Email Signature for Easy Advertising
Using the space for an email signature is one of the more underrated ways to market your accounting firm.
To give you an idea, here is an example I shared in my Future Firm Newsletter:
If you’re not sure about what to put on yours, ChatGPT can generate a list of ideas for your email signature.
For example, you can ask:
“Can you send me a list of possible email CTA for an accounting firm targeting SaaS startups?
You’ll get results similar to the one below:
Now, it’s up to you to decide which one is the most compelling to use.
11) Make Better Case Studies
Case studies are one of the more effective marketing tactics because they provide intricate details about how your services benefit a client.
You can use ChatGPT to help create client case studies.
All you need to do is include specific details in your prompt about your clients, the challenges they’ve faced, and how your company helped them.
Here’s the result of the prompt we shared with Future Firm Accelerate members to help them create case studies quickly.
As you can see, it’s almost good to go, but you can always tweak it for improvement.
12) Summarize Information for Monthly Executive Summaries
Using ChatGPT to summarize information for monthly executive summaries can streamline the process and ensure clarity and conciseness.
Note: I always recommend anonymizing sensitive information to safeguard privacy.
Follow these steps first before proceeding with providing the data:
1. Gather data: Before summarizing, collect all relevant data and reports you need in your monthly executive summary. This could include:
- Financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement)
- Key financial metrics and KPIs
- Budget vs. actual analysis
- Major financial events or transactions
- Commentary on financial performance and variances
2. Prepare the input: Clearly label each section of the data to help ChatGPT understand the context. For example:
- Revenue
- Current Month: $X
- Previous Month: $Y
- Year-over-Year Change: Z%
- Expenses
- Current Month: $A
- Previous Month: $B
- Major Changes: Details
- Key Highlights
- Significant events, variances, or trends
Input your organized data and prompts into ChatGPT to generate the summaries.
Ensure you specify the required tone and length (concise, professional, etc.) and try not to mention the client’s name or any sensitive data for security purposes.
Here’s how it might look:
Carefully review the summary generated by ChatGPT for accuracy and completeness.
Make necessary adjustments to your prompts to ensure it aligns with your expectations and the needs of the recipients.
13) Simplify Tax Regulations
ChatGPT can help interpret complex tax regulations and provide summaries, making it easier for accountants to understand and apply them.
Here’s a sample prompt:
“Can you summarize Section 179 of the new tax regulations regarding small business deductions in a more digestible manner?”
You can also use it for computations. For instance, you can ask it to:
“Calculate the tax liability for a business with the details below:
Annual revenue: $500,000
Deductible expenses: $200,000
Depreciation expense: $30,000
Tax credits: $10,000
Applicable tax rate: 21%”
You’ll get an answer like this:
Risks of Using ChatGPT in Accounting
AI Errors
One major risk of using ChatGPT and AI as a whole in accounting is the lack of human oversight.
While it can process large amounts of data and provide insights, it can also make mistakes that may go unnoticed without a manual review.
Generic Results
ChatGPT is a machine learning tool. It has an excellent ability to learn, but it also means that without sufficient human input, it will produce generic content more often than not.
Relying solely on AI for your marketing efforts can result in bland, cookie-cutter content that no one will bother paying attention to.
While ChatGPT can’t fully automate all business aspects, it can still save you tons of time with the right prompts and proper oversight.
Data Security
There are also security risks associated with ChatGPT and other AI models.
Once financial data and other sensitive information is entered into a system like ChatGPT, there’s a risk of these being accessed by unauthorized parties.
Even though OpenAI takes measures to protect user data, there’s always a possibility of data breaches.
Unlike most accounting software, ChatGPT’s interactions are stored to improve the model and monitor for abuse. However, the handling and retention policies might not align with privacy requirements for sensitive data.
Overall, it’s best to avoid sharing any personal, sensitive, or confidential information in systems where data security cannot be fully guaranteed.
Are You Using ChatGPT in Your Firm?
ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can save a lot of time at your firm, especially when implemented correctly.
Which of these use cases do you have in your firm? Are there any prompts that have worked really well for you?
Share in the comments below!
