Today, many of those in the accounting profession are leveraging ChatGPT to automate more and more of their work.
In this blog post, we’re going to talk about 13 ways accountants can use ChatGPT to save time and get more done.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
- What is ChatGPT?
- Benefits of ChatGPT in Accounting
- 13 Ways to Use ChatGPT in Accounting
- Risks of Using ChatGPT in Accounting
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a powerful artificial intelligence language model that you interact with in a “chat” format. 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 identify grammatical errors in client documents)
- Generating ideas (great for brainstorming industry trends, etc.)
- Providing recommendations (like advice on compliance measures)
In a nutshell, ChatGPT can help you save time, reduce stress, and increase productivity in your accounting tasks and more.
Benefits of ChatGPT in Accounting
Here’s why firm owners should consider incorporating ChatGPT into their accounting processes:
1) Reduction of Manual Tasks
ChatGPT can help you with tasks that can be tedious and time-consuming such as:
- Email response
- Manual data entry
- Blog posts
- Financial reports
- Etc.
In terms of benefits, I believe this is the number one feature that firm owners should take advantage of.
Here is an example of how convenient this AI tool can be:
You can check discrepancies between invoiced amounts and purchase orders by providing the right data and using this prompt:
“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, it can analyze financial data and more within a couple of seconds.
This is a task that can be tedious and prone to human error, but with ChatGPT, it can be handled with a single prompt.
That said, make sure you’re adhering to any requirements related to protecting sensitive/confidential data, etc.
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
- Quicker Responses: Can provide responses in seconds, which is especially convenient during busy season
- Cost-Effective: Reduce overhead costs associated with client support.
As I mentioned, ChatGPT can write emails for you.
My Future Firm team and I have used it more often than not to respond to members, partners, vendors, etc.
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 emerging technologies in the accounting industry can be tough.
The good news is:
ChatGPT may be able to help. 🙂
Listed below are a couple of examples of how this AI tool can be instrumental in continuous learning:
- Concept Explanation: ChatGPT can provide clear explanations and examples to enhance comprehension.
- Case Studies and Scenarios: You can get hypothetical scenarios or case studies for analysis and interpretation.
- Exploring Specialized Topics: Get insights on niche topics such as forensic accounting, tax planning strategies, or risk management techniques.
13 Ways to Use ChatGPT in Accounting
Here’s a couple of ways you can leverage ChatGPT to your accounting practice:
1) Blog post creation
ChatGPT can help you make informative blog posts about accounting.
However, don’t use it to do everything.
Instead, leverage ChatGPT to:
- Come up with outline ideas
- Check for grammatical and spelling errors
- SEO suggestions
Make sure to use the right prompts to get the best results. Otherwise, the content generated may end up being generic and less effective.
You can use a prompt like below to get more distinct 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? It has a more distinctive tone that may resonate better with your readers.
ChatGPT can help save precious time and resources when creating your blog posts.
2) Drafting emails to clients
ChatGPT can help write personalized emails to your 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, specific concerns or requests, and desired call 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’ve eliminated 1,000 meetings this 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 Future Firm Accelerate 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 61% of the population have social media profiles.
ChatGPT can be an invaluable tool in this process, helping to create compelling social media posts tailored to your firm’s needs.
With the right series of prompts, 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.
As you’ll notice, the example above has two opening lines, so you’d need to eliminate one of them.
7) Summarize meeting notes
ChatGPT can be an invaluable tool for summarizing meeting notes by automating and streamlining the process.
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:
By following these steps, you can efficiently use ChatGPT to summarize meeting notes, ensuring all critical information is captured and organized in a clear, actionable format.
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 this custom GPT to take it a step further but it’ll be limited if you’re a free user.
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
Before we proceed, let me be clear.
As of this time, ChatGPT can’t do web scraping alone.
This means it cannot access the internet by itself and provide you the latest information available.
Even after the release of GPT-4, it seems to be a feature yet to be added.
However, it’s possible to integrate it with web scraping libraries or build a web scraper via Python.
Unfortunately, web scraping can be too technical for those who don’t have a background in coding.
Still, it’s possible to use it to help you with market research.
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:
By leveraging ChatGPT, you can reduce the time usually required for market research efforts while gaining deeper insights.
10) Advertising via email signature
Using the space for an email signature is one of the more underrated methods of advertising your services.
To give you an idea, here is an example I shared in my Future Firm Newsletter:
If you’re not sure on 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) Help 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: It’s important to ensure confidentiality by anonymizing any 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) Tax simplification
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 computation. 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
Keep in mind that ChatGPT often produces generic content, especially if used without sufficient human input.
As such, 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, with the right prompts and proper oversight, it can still save you tons of time.
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, but the exact 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 – when implemented correctly.
Which of these ways are you already practicing?
Do you think AI will replace us soon?
Share your answers by commenting below!
