I’m sure you’ve heard this question before.
With more accounting firms relying on artificial intelligence than ever, will it replace human accountants in the near future?
I’ll answer that question in this article. But more importantly, instead of being afraid of AI, I’ll share how you can use it to your firm’s advantage.
Let’s start!
What Can AI Do?
You’ve probably heard countless takes on how AI is used in accounting.
It can analyze complex financial data, automate routine accounting tasks, perform data analysis, and more.
Here’s what that actually looks like in practice:
- Automates data entry: Pulls info from receipts, invoices, and bank statements without manual input.
- Performs bank reconciliations: Matches transactions faster and flags inconsistencies in real time.
- Prepares financial forecasts: Analyzes historical data to generate predictive cash flow models.
- Extracts and categorizes documents: Uses OCR (optical character recognition) to scan, read, and sort paperwork automatically.
- Flags potential errors or fraud: Detects duplicate payments, unusual transactions, or compliance issues before they become problems.
Numbers from major firms tell a story of efficiency as well:
- Big Four accounting firm PwC reports 20 to 40% productivity gains in accounting and tax brought by generative AI.
- Airbase reports they save 46 hours each year thanks to a Gen AI automation that captures invoice and receipt data with over 90% accuracy.
From a pure numbers standpoint, these are great advancements.
Plus, with AI agents in the mix, these tools are transforming accounting even further.
Unlike “regular” AI tools that wait to be asked something, agents can autonomously handle sequences of tasks, like pulling data, reconciling accounts, and flagging issues without anyone lifting a finger.
For example, here is Basis, an accounting AI agent that can perform tax returns from start to finish.
It’s a meaningful step up from automation as we’ve known it.
But I can certainly see how all of this adds to the narrative most accountants are probably tired of hearing…
That AI is going to take over the low-level work and AI replacing accounting jobs is inevitable.
That the only way to protect yourself from being made redundant is to stick with “higher value tasks” like advisory work.
Advisory work is great if it works for you, but this isn’t your only move. Besides, even some advisory work can be performed by AI (more on this later).
And to be honest, I think advisory work can be overhyped.
Yes, AI is taking over repetitive routine tasks. It’s starting to creep into parts of advisory work too. That can feel a little unsettling.
But it doesn’t mean accountants are being replaced.
If anything, it makes it more important to understand what these tools can do (and how they fit into your business strategy).
When you know what tools are out there and how to use them, you’re freeing yourself up to run a more efficient, future-proof accounting practice.
In the next section, I’ll talk about the tools and the technology themselves.
But if you want strategies that will help you turn the fear of AI taking over…
Into opportunities to grow your firm while working less hours…
You can join my Future Firm newsletter for free. 🙂
AI Tools Commonly Used in Accounting Firms
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology
Optical character recognition refers to a software feature that automatically reads, extracts, and converts text from images, PDFs, and scanned documents into structured, usable data.
- Dext: Automatically pulls and categorizes data from receipts, bills, and bank statements. At Future Firm, we use it to process all expenses with minimal manual input.
- Hubdoc: Syncs documents and transactions directly to your accounting software.
- AutoEntry: Captures data from scanned documents and PDFs, even handwritten ones, and pushes them into platforms like Xero or QuickBooks.
AI Chatbots
AI chatbots use natural language processing to simulate conversations and answer questions.
They work best when paired with critical thinking, as chatbots are especially helpful when guided by human judgment.
Here are a few examples of this AI technology:
- Custom ChatGPT bots: You can create a GPT that knows your firm’s internal processes, tone of voice, and even specific SOPs by uploading files or setting custom instructions.
- Intuit Assist: Built into QuickBooks, it helps answer accounting questions, surface insights, and guide clients.
- Drift AI: A sales and support chatbot that can be customized for client onboarding, lead capture, or real-time Q&A.
- RyanBot: A voice assistant I made with Delphi.ai. It’s designed to give firm owners advice and is trained on all my Future Firm Accelerate lessons (more on this later).
If you want to read more about these tools, check out my post on the best accounting AI chatbots.
AI Agents
AI agents take things a step further than your typical AI tool.
Instead of waiting to be asked a question, they can plan, take action, and complete multi-step tasks autonomously.
(Like a teammate that works in the background while you focus on other things.)
The space is relatively early, but it’s moving fast and worth paying attention to.
- Claude Cowork: Anthropic’s desktop agent that can navigate your computer, work across apps, and handle file and task management without you being at the wheel.
- OpenClaw: An open-source personal AI assistant that lives in WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, or whatever chat app you already use. It can manage your inbox, browse the web, run scripts, and even build its own skills over time.
- Ramp Intelligence: Built specifically for finance teams, Ramp’s AI agents handle expense coding, invoice processing, fraud detection, and policy enforcement around the clock, so your team can stop chasing receipts and focus on doing finance work.
Curious to learn more? I wrote a guide about AI agents in accounting firms.
Fraud Detection Tools
Fraud detection tools use AI to scan financial data in real time. They can flag unusual transactions, inconsistencies, or patterns that could indicate human error or fraud.
- MindBridge AI: Scans all transactions for anomalies that could indicate fraud or human error.
- Vic.ai: Uses AI to flag high-risk financial transactions and suggests corrections automatically.
- Xero Analytics Plus: Offers simple forecasting and anomaly detection directly within Xero.
Tax Research and Planning Tools
For firms offering tax planning and advisory services, these tools help you analyze complex scenarios, speed up research, and help your clients make smarter decisions.
- Blue J: Uses AI to analyze financial and tax records and then predict outcomes based on case law and legal precedent. This can help with planning and research in areas like worker classification, business structure decisions, and tax treatment. You can test scenarios and get clarity on grey areas without spending hours combing through rulings.
- Intuit Tax Advisor: A planning tool (currently U.S.-focused) that uses client data from ProConnect to suggest personalized tax strategies. While not “pure AI,” it’s evolving fast and gives small firms a real edge in offering proactive tax advice at scale.
Practice Management Software
Practice management tools are in practically every firm’s accounting tech stack.
Many of these platforms use AI to automate routine tasks like email follow-ups, task reminders, and workflow management.
Client portals also help in gathering documents and managing client relationships, freeing up time for actual client work.
- Financial Cents: Integrates AI to streamline workflow creation and client communication. It also offers features to automate client data collection and task reminders.
- Karbon: Uses AI to draft emails, auto-prioritize tasks, and recommend next steps based on activity. Its client portal makes it easy to collect documents and keep communication centralized. You can read more about it in my in-depth Karbon review.
- Canopy: Provides smart task management and AI-generated responses for client emails. Its built-in client portal helps organize document sharing and engagement letters. More in my Canopy review.
For a more detailed list of these tools, check out my article on the best accounting practice management software.
As you can see, these tools can automate a lot of repetitive tasks.
But even still, the question hangs in the air: can all of this AI replace accountants?
Let’s talk about the accounting jobs AI can’t do.
What AI Cannot Do
While a huge part of automation in accounting is AI-driven, there are still a lot of things AI can’t do.
It cannot perform complex accounting operations like untangling a year’s worth of unreconciled transactions.
It also cannot reliably perform tasks that involve more complex financial analysis like spotting what’s really driving cash flow problems without human expertise behind the wheel.
But here are the two biggest things in which AI systems just can’t match human intelligence:
- Strategic decision making: AI can support strategy — it might surface useful insights, suggest options based on data, or even generate high-level recommendations. But it doesn’t understand your firm’s long-term goals, values, or priorities. It can’t weigh trade-offs in the context of your business, or factor in team dynamics, risk tolerance, or client expectations. Strategic decisions require human judgment, and that’s something no AI can fully replicate.
- Building and maintaining client relationships: Human accountants play a central role in client happiness. AI can help with reminders or draft emails, but it can’t build trust or understand the emotions behind a client’s frustration or uncertainty. Clients want to feel heard and that they’re in the right hands, which no accounting AI can do.
It’s not rocket science. Like I mentioned in a LinkedIn post, people simply prefer connecting with humans.
(This is especially true in the accounting profession.)
As great as AI is at automating repetitive tasks, only you can build genuine relationships with clients.
More importantly, only you can build a scalable and profitable firm.
Will AI Replace Accountants?
All of this just reinforces what I’ve seen play out time and time again…
I don’t think AI will replace you.
This reminds me of when I first got into cloud accounting over a decade ago.
Back then, I wrote about the death of the traditional accounting firm — not to be dramatic, but because the shift was real.
I was one of the early adopters, and moving quickly gave me a serious edge. I was able to stand out, offer a better client experience, and build a firm that felt modern and tech-forward (because it was).
The same thing is playing out now with AI. Firms that start learning, testing, and integrating it into their workflows today will be the ones best positioned to differentiate tomorrow.
Sure, it’ll take over some of the repetitive stuff. But firms still need human professionals to manage, interpret, and oversee the tech running behind the scenes.
Back when I attended the first-ever QuickBooks Connect in 2014, Intuit had just rolled out online accounting.
I remember a group of bookkeepers sitting at the front, raising their hands and challenging the executives: “What happens to us now?”
They were worried this new tech would make them obsolete.
But here’s what actually happened: cloud accounting didn’t replace bookkeepers.
It made them more valuable. It freed them up to focus on higher-level work and offer better services.
Ultimately, what this all means is that AI will not replace people in the accounting industry…
Instead, accountants who can maximize AI will win more clients than those who can’t.
How Can Accounting Firms Take Advantage of AI?
While many accountants worry that AI will replace them, not using AI might actually make you more likely to lose clients.
This is because firms that use these tools well are more efficient, more accurate, and able to deliver a better client experience — plain and simple.
AI plays a big role in the future of accounting, and to give you a glimpse of what that role looks like, I surveyed 150 accounting firm owners about how they use AI in their businesses.
(Get free access to the AI report here.)
If you want to stay competitive and successful, you need to get good at using AI.
Plus, you’ll position your firm as an emerging technology leader in the industry.
1. Upskill Team Members While Experimenting
Accounting firms with teams that can use AI will outperform those that cannot.
Your team already knows the work, and AI just helps them do it cleaner and with fewer repetitive steps.
(Besides, without expert human oversight, many AI tools are just shiny objects.)
Identify areas where team members lose time like reconciling accounts, analyzing financials, or figuring out tricky journal entries. Then, test how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can assist.
Here are a few ways to experiment:
- Upload trial balances or spreadsheets and ask ChatGPT to identify trends or anomalies
- Describe a complex transaction and ask which journal entry to make
- Paste a messy client email and ask for a clearer summary or task list
- Request simple charts or graphs from Excel data
Encourage your team to explore and share what works. Then, build internal SOPs around successful use cases.
You could also assign someone to take the lead on exploring the latest technology used in accounting firms. They’ll be in charge of staying on top of new AI features and sharing knowledge with the rest of the team.
Here’s what I did with my Future Firm team like I shared in this LinkedIn post:
That said, AI isn’t limited to accounting processes.
For example, I use ElevenLabs to clone my voice for the weekly Future Firm podcast. Tools like this can help you create marketing assets or educational resources that sound like you, without needing to record everything from scratch.
HeyGen is another example — you can generate quick video messages in your likeness. You can use it to create onboarding explainers or internal training videos.
Here’s a short AI-generated video of myself that I put together for Financial Cents’ Accounting AI & Automation Summit:
Test, experiment, and see what works for you.
More importantly, always think about how these tools can put your firm in a more powerful position to differentiate itself and charge more. 🙂
2. Enhance Client Interactions With AI Cloning Tools
Let’s be clear — AI isn’t here to replace real conversations with your clients.
But one of the best ways to use AI in accounting is scaling access to your knowledge when you’re not immediately available.
That’s why I created RyanBot. It’s a custom AI trained on all my Future Firm Accelerate content, built with Delphi.ai.
Here’s RyanBot creating a quiz lead magnet for an accounting firm’s coaching packages:
Another example. Here’s RyanBot performing what I would call an “advisory-level” task:
Analyzing a firm’s pricing packages and suggesting what to do differently.
It’s not for building relationships or closing deals. It’s for when someone needs quick guidance but doesn’t want to wait days for a reply or sift through tons of content.
For tips on choosing the right tools, building a skilled team, and scaling your firm, check out my Future Firm Accelerate program.
3. Use Large Language Models to Support Marketing Tasks
Marketing is one of the most critical aspects of accounting firm growth, but I understand why it can feel daunting for many firm owners.
The good news is, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude can make several aspects of your marketing efforts more manageable and much less time-consuming.
Here are a few ways to use LLMs in your firm’s marketing:
- Write blog post outlines faster: LLMs can help you turn a collection of rough ideas into a structured blog outline in seconds. It’s a great way to speed up content production without starting from a blank page.
- Summarize complex documents: LLMs can distill lengthy reports or articles into concise summaries. This is extremely helpful in creating digestible content for newsletters or client updates.
- Help with social media content: If you’ve been following me on LinkedIn, you’ve seen how consistent content builds visibility and trust. LLMs can help you brainstorm post ideas, map out a content calendar, and turn your helpful thoughts into a rough draft. (Pro tip: Don’t let it do all the talking. Use it to support your voice, not replace it.)
You can find out more about using these tools in my article on generative AI in accounting.
4. Summarize Client Calls With Fireflies.ai
Taking detailed notes during client calls is tough.
Going back to find exactly what was said? Even tougher.
Fireflies.ai makes this way easier by automatically recording, transcribing, and summarizing your meetings. It integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and generates clear recaps with key takeaways and action items you can actually use.
It also helps surface things you might have missed, like a casual comment that later turns out to be a big deal. Instead of digging through scribbled notes or trying to remember who said what, everything’s there, searchable and organized.
Client calls aren’t all that Fireflies.ai is good for too. One of our Future Firm Accelerate coaches, Meryl Johnston, came up with a great idea of using it for hiring!
5. Automate Accounts Payable
Automating accounts payable (AP) lets your firm save significant amounts of time while reducing errors.
It’s not as complicated as it sounds:
- Map out your current AP process: Common slow points include invoice collection, approval routing, and manual data entry.
- Look for tools that can automate these bottlenecks: Platforms like Bill can automatically extract invoice data, match it to purchase orders, and route invoices to the right team member for approval.
- Set up approval workflows and payment rules: With your tools in place, define who approves what and under which conditions.
6. Improve Fraud Detection
Nothing damages client trust faster than a financial mistake that involves overpayments or fraud.
The good news is that tools like MindBridge AI and Vic.ai scan every transaction behind the scenes. They can flag duplicate payments, unusual vendor activity, or sketchy spending patterns before they become real problems.
So instead of wading through reports and bank feeds, you get real-time alerts when something looks off.
Some tools even scan invoice details for mismatches — like a vendor name that doesn’t match their bank info — further helping you protect clients from fraud.
7. Deploy AI Agents to Handle Multi-Step Workflows
Fair warning: this one may require a bit more technical setup than the other tools on this list…
But if you’re willing to explore it, the payoff for your firm can be significant!
If individual AI tools help you work faster, AI agents take it a step further — they can handle entire workflows on their own.
Unlike a single tool that does one thing at a time, AI agents can string together multiple tasks, make decisions along the way, and complete them without needing someone to manage every step.
For accounting firms, this means things like:
- Chasing clients for missing documents automatically
- Processing and organizing incoming financial data as it arrives
- Keeping routine administrative tasks from piling up on your team’s plate
It’s also worth noting:
AI agents aren’t here to replace your team.
When clients choose a firm, they’re not evaluating your tech stack.
They care about how you help them and how you make them feel.
What AI agents do is free your people up to deliver more of that!
Future-Proof Your Firm With AI
That’s a wrap!
I hope this article helped you understand that the future of accounting is AI being leveraged with human skills, not AI taking over every accountant’s job.
AI is great to have in financial reporting processes, marketing campaigns, and routine accounting tasks in particular.
However, it will never replace human judgment and the personal touch human accountants bring to the table.
How much do you use AI in your firm? Are there any techniques or use cases that I missed?
Share your thoughts in the comments below!
