How accountants are using AI tools now

Accountants are going to be hearing a lot about AI in 2024 as software vendors look to take advantage of the technology to enhance their range of products.

The good news is that it should be them that takes care of thinking about how it can be best used in the day-to-day working of a busy practice. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have opportunities to experiment and get a feel for how things could work.

Helping clients with common challenges

Darren Jones of SharpenUp Accountants has been using the ChatGPT tool to create simplified guides for clients around challenges facing many small businesses. He has created nearly 20 so far, covering a wide range of common issues such as VAT, bookkeeping, self-assessment, and deciding whether – and how – to form a limited company.

“It’s taken a while to get right, but it took all the hard work out of bringing together the key information, meaning I could simply edit and check that they are 100 per cent accurate.”

The time saving here is considerable, and having a raft of ready-to-go guides has been useful to create consistency in the information provided. Clients will still need support and advice to make the final decisions, but this way they can be forearmed to help them understand the implications.

Recording and creating summaries of online client meetings

Given the amount of time spent talking to clients, there are readily available tools that plug into online meeting software that can not only take notes, but also create summary lists and actions without the need for any further effort.

Jessica Pillow of Pillow May has found this approach a much better way to create shareable documents with clients, and to store them next to their client records.

“We’re enjoying Tactiq, which summarises meeting transcriptions so we can be more engaged in the client meeting and the minutes are quicker to write up. We’re still playing with it as it’s a new 2024 tool for us, but we’re already seeing some benefits.”

Analysing data

Caution needs to be applied when using public-facing tools such as ChatGPT to analyse clients’, or indeed your own firm’s, data. There is considerable risk in terms of data privacy and therefore GDPR, so whatever the temptation, it’s best to only use tools supplied by your software supplier.

However, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be considerable value in researching and trying out different ways of presenting data that could be of use now, and to develop the skills in the future.

Darren Jones has been doing this to provide context for some of his conversations with clients. This has included looking at cost of living data, in particular around things which have an impact on clients such as energy, wages and raw materials.

“Being able to review this, and then create graphs and tables which I can share has opened up conversations around price increases and margin pressure. I can help to demonstrate to clients that their plans can be made in line with what’s happening in the wider world, not just based on their own gut feel.”

Learning to play

The idea of ‘having a go’ may seem like play, however as these tools develop, so will some of our awareness of how to get the most out of them. In particular, the concept of ‘prompts’ is important to ensure we get the best responses and outputs.

Prompts are the commands that certain tools need to help deliver a response. Jones then refines what comes back.

“We use prompts such as ‘create a response for an owner of a busy local restaurant’, or ‘create a draft in bullet points that summarises the main issues, and how these might impact taxi drivers’ – and it has a real impact on what comes back.”

AI integrated into your everyday tools

All the major bookkeeping software providers are planning on releasing integrated AI tools in 2024, and it already exists in certain tax and audit products. However, it would be fair to say that this is an area of promise at the moment, rather than hard reality.

Saying that, it is likely to grow and develop quickly, as the impact on business (and individuals) is potentially vast; expect to see AI embedded into tools in every sector and facet of life.

Gaining some of the skills and confidence needed now could help boost your client service in (currently) unimaginable ways in the near future.

Where to start with AI

These LLM (Large Language Model) tools can help with researching, and creating text and images:

• Chat GPT: openai.com/chatgpt 
• BARD: bard.google.com
• Copilot: for MS Office 365 users

These AI tools can streamline meeting notes and summaries:

• Tactiq: tactiq.io
• Fireflies: fireflies.ai
• Otter: otter.ai

Richard Sergeant is MD of Principle Point and a freelance journalist.