How AI Is Changing Accounting – From Your Favorite Orange County Bookkeeper
Patty Hansen
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived in the accounting field and it’s huge! AI is helping to streamline the Orange County bookkeeper‘s accounting tasks, find patterns in data you can take action on, and generally making workflow more efficient. Here are just a few places we’re seeing AI impact accounting.
Transaction Coding
Most systems have incorporated some form of machine learning into transaction coding. When bank feeds are imported, each transaction needs to be coded to be recorded in the Chart of Accounts. Class, tracking codes, and other custom data may need to be added as well. Rules can be set so that the accounting application can pre-code the transactions; in this case, the accountant simply approves or corrects the entry.
Invoice Fetching
It starts with a picture of a receipt. Invoice fetching applications can turn pixels into data using sophisticated OCR (optical character recognition). This data is then turned into a business transaction that can be imported into an accounting system.
Auditing
The books of many government agencies, non-profits, and large businesses need to be audited on a regular basis. Auditing is an expensive process. Smart programs can review a company’s data and assess where the risks and anomalies are so that the audit program can be modified to focus on the more important parts. This reduces risk and cost for everyone involved.
Accounts Payable
Artificial Intelligence can help speed up many bookkeeping services Orange County processes like: matching purchase orders, packing slips, and invoices so that accounts payable tasks are streamlined. It can also automate approvals and look for duplicate invoices to avoid over-payments.
Accounting Tasks That Are Clerical
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a platform that allows users to create automation without involving the IT department. Think Excel macros or Zapier on steroids. Any workflow with a mind-numbing set of clerical steps is a candidate for RPA.
AI allows accountants and Orange County bookkeeper to spend less time on routine tasks and more time on higher-level analysis. As AI becomes more affordable for small businesses, everyone will benefit from this long-term trend.
Related Posts
Small Financial Habits That Make a Big Difference by Year-End
With fall approaching, now is a good time to make sure your books are on the right track for next year’s tax filing. When January arrives, many business owners suddenly find themselves scrambling to get their finances in order. Receipts need to be tracked down, accounts need to be reconciled, outstanding invoices need attention, and…
More Than Bookkeeping: The Peace of Mind That Comes From Outsourcing Your Books
Running a small business comes with an endless list of responsibilities. There are customers to serve, employees to manage, decisions to make, problems to solve, and plans to put into action. And somewhere in the middle of all of that are the books. Did I categorize those transactions correctly? Have all the accounts been reconciled?…
The 5 Questions We Help Business Owners Answer Every Day
Most business owners don’t wake up wondering about reconciliations, journal entries, or their chart of accounts. Instead, they’re asking questions like: “Can I afford to hire someone?” “Why don’t I have any cash?” “Which products actually make me money?” Those are the questions that matter because they impact the decisions you make every day. At…