It’s tax season, and your accounting firm looks like a scene from a post-apocalyptic drama. Your inbox is a breeding ground for chaos, and your spreadsheets multiply like alien fungus. Your team has turned into zombies fueled by caffeine and panic.
Just when you think you have it under control, a client emails you with yet another URGENT request.
Of course, you know AI can make your life easier. But how on earth do you use it for accounting? Can you trust it to make error-free calculations and audit-compliant reports?
We’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Read this blog to learn how to use AI in accounting to automate tasks and delegate your workload. And maybe—just maybe—you get through tax season without zombie-mode number crunching!
How to Use ChatGPT for Accounting?
⏰60-Second Summary
Here’s a quick run-through of using ChatGPT in the accounting profession:
- Automate repetitive accounting tasks like data entry and transaction categorization, freeing up accountants for more strategic work and improving your org’s financial health
- Enhance audit and compliance processes by identifying risks early on and keeping abreast of regulations
- Analyze financial data and generate reports faster to provide valuable insights into business performance
- Improve client communication by drafting emails, summarizing reports, and answering basic questions on autopilot mode
- Simplify tax and regulatory research to ensure compliance and minimize errors
- Get financial projections and simplify budgeting by analyzing historical data and generating forecasts
- Generate code and automate tasks within accounting software to boost efficiency
- Use ’s AI-powered tools to manage accounting projects, track deadlines, and collaborate with your team seamlessly
- Customize accounting workflows with templates to streamline financial reporting, audits, and bookkeeping tasks
Understanding AI in Accounting
AI has been automating accounting workflows longer than you might think. Before ChatGPT even existed, accounting software used AI to automate bookkeeping tasks, flag discrepancies, and predict cash flow trends.
AI has simplified accounting processes, from scanning receipts to categorizing expenses, ensuring professionals can continue to make sense of key numbers that impact the business—without drowning in them.
🧠 Fun Fact: The first known accounting innovation was in 1494 when Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, the ‘father of accounting,’ introduced double-entry bookkeeping.
Why use ChatGPT for accounting?
ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, makes accounting professionals’ lives easier in multiple ways. Unlike traditional AI tools in accounting, ChatGPT understands and processes language in addition to numbers. It can draft financial reports, explain complex financial concepts, and even interact with clients on your behalf.
Need a quick breakdown of last quarter’s financial performance? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate an email explaining tax regulations in plain English? It does that remarkably well, too.
Mind you, it’s not here to take your job; it’s here to make it easier! ChatGPT in accounting saves you time and effort and makes you more efficient at strategic business decisions.
👀 Did You Know? A May 2023 survey found that 22% of the 75 CFOs surveyed at large organizations were actively investigating uses for Gen AI within finance, while another 4% were piloting it.
How to Use ChatGPT in Accounting for Different Use Cases
Now, let’s understand how exactly you can incorporate ChatGPT into your project accounting.
1. Automating bookkeeping and data entry
Remember the days of manually typing every single transaction into your ERP software like you were writing the next great American novel? ChatGPT saves your wrists from an inevitable carpal tunnel!
It automates repetitive tasks in the general business accounting category, such as extracting data from invoices, receipts, and bank statements. While it won’t completely eliminate manual data entry (sorry, you still need to double-check those numbers), it can dramatically reduce the time you spend playing copy-paste champion.
But what about sensitive information? There is a way to work around that too!
📌 Example:
You’re trying to determine whether your marketing spending is paying off. This is how you could use ChatGPT without disclosing proprietary data.
Prompt: What are some common ways to categorize marketing expenses for a small business?
ChatGPT provides you with a list of categories (e.g., advertising, social media marketing, content creation) that you can then use to organize your data.
This way, you’re not giving it your data but still getting valuable organizational guidance. You can use this knowledge to create bookkeeping templates and save time when working from scratch.
2. Audit and compliance support
Audits can be scarier than a horror movie marathon, but ChatGPT reduces the terror factor by helping you prepare like a pro.
Need to understand complex audit requirements? It can generate clear summaries of regulatory standards like GAAP or IFRS and walk you through what documentation you’ll need for expense reimbursements, revenue recognition, or depreciation schedules. It can also help create audit trails, explain compliance procedures, and even draft preliminary audit responses.
But nothing beats human expertise, right? So, while you might still hold on to your lucky audit socks, ChatGPT has your back spotting red flags. It ensures compliance with proper procedures. Just remember to validate its suggestions against current accounting regulations—we don’t want any ‘creative accounting’ mishaps!
3. Financial data analysis and reporting
Advanced data analysis isn’t complicated for experienced accountants. But it does take time. Why not do it faster with ChatGPT?
Feed it your financial statements; it’ll help identify key metrics, calculate ratios, and explain what those numbers mean in plain English. Even your non-accountant friends might understand—though maybe don’t test this at parties.
🤝 Friendly Reminder: To prevent ChatGPT from using your data/conversations to train its models, go to Settings > Data Controls and toggle off “Improve the model for everyone”.
📌 Prompt: Calculate the following financial metrics for the company based on the <type of financial statement uploaded>
- <Metric 1>
- <Metric 2>
- <Other metrics as you need them>
👀Did You Know? In a study, GPT-4 was asked to analyze financial statements like human analysts—spotting trends, calculating ratios, and predicting earnings. When tested on new, anonymized financial statements, it predicted earnings direction with 60% accuracy, outperforming professional analysts, who scored 53%.
4. Invoice and expense categorization
Tired of playing ‘Where’s the Receipt?’ like it’s some twisted accounting version of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ ChatGPT helps categorize your invoices and expenses with the precision of seasoned accounting professionals.
Give it your transaction details, and it’ll suggest appropriate categories based on description and amount. It can even help create rules for recurring transactions, making future categorization a breeze.
5. Data cleansing
ChatGPT excels at helping you clean up your accounting data by identifying duplicates, standardizing formats, flagging inconsistencies, and even suggesting corrections for obvious errors.
Whether you’re dealing with mismatched dates, inconsistent naming conventions, or mysterious special characters that snuck into your spreadsheets, ChatGPT helps you maintain the relevant data formatting needed for your accounting workflow. And it does so without making you lose your sanity in the process.
6. Excel formulas and automation
Still Googling ‘how to VLOOKUP’ every other day? ChatGPT is your Excel guru on speed dial!
It helps you craft complex Excel formulas, create macros, and automate repetitive spreadsheet tasks.
📌 Example:
You’re creating a simple budget tracker in Excel. ChatGPT will provide the formula with a detailed explanation, which you can copy and paste into your spreadsheet. There is no need to share any financial data with ChatGPT.
Prompt: Write an Excel formula to calculate the total expenses for a given month, assuming the expenses are listed in columns B through F and the month is specified in cell A1.
From basic formulas to advanced pivot tables, ChatGPT explains the logic and even helps you troubleshoot when your spreadsheet acts possessed.
7. Client communication and support
It’s no news that ChatGPT can help you improve your communication skills.
Whether you must draft emails, prepare meeting summaries, or create client updates, ChatGPT helps you strike the perfect balance between professional and personable. It explains complex financial concepts to clients without sounding like you’re reading from an advanced accounting textbook.
📌 Example:
You’re trying to explain the concept of depreciation to a client. You could simply ask ChatGPT to do the job. ChatGPT will give you a clear explanation that you can then adapt and use in your communication with the client.
Prompt: Explain depreciation in simple terms that a small business owner can understand.
8. Tax and legislation compliance research
Tax regulations change more often than social media trends. Instead of combing through dense legal jargon, accountants can use ChatGPT to research tax laws quickly, summarize new rules, and identify compliance risks.
📌 Example:
You’re unsure about the deductibility of certain business expenses.
Prompt: Are business meals with clients generally tax deductible? What are the limitations or rules?
But here’s some advice! Don’t let it replace your tax advisor. All the information still needs to be verified, but it just makes April 15th less stressful.
9. Financial projections
Crystal balls might be out of vogue, but ChatGPT can help you with the next best thing—financial performance forecasting! Feed it historical data and market trends, and it will create reasonable projections and scenarios.
Whether planning for growth, predicting cash flow, or preparing for different market conditions, ChatGPT helps you crunch those numbers and explain their logic.
10. Budgeting
Creating a budget is part science, part strategy, and part magic. ChatGPT can create realistic budgets by analyzing historical spending patterns, suggesting budget categories, and even identifying potential areas for cost optimization.
📌 Example:
You’re starting a new business and need a basic budget. ChatGPT will give you a list of common categories (like rent, utilities, marketing, and salaries), which you can then customize with your specific numbers.
Prompt: What are some essential categories to include in a startup’s budget?
It can help you format budget reports, create variance analyses, and clearly explain budget implications. While it won’t magically make more money appear in your accounts, it can help you make the most of what you have.
11. Generate computer code
ChatGPT can help write scripts for Excel, Python, or other programming languages if you ever need to automate accounting tasks with coding.
Whether you’re automating data entry, extracting insights from bank transactions, or integrating different accounting software programs, ChatGPT can help accountants streamline their workflow. It also assists them in writing and debugging code—even if they’re not professional programmers.
All in all, ChatGPT doesn’t hand you solutions on a platter but helps you automate tedious tasks and save you endless reworks (and visits to your therapist).
💡Pro Tip: When using ChatGPT for financial analysis, always cross-validate the AI-generated responses with traditional methods to ensure compliance and accuracy.
Limitations of Using ChatGPT for Accounting and Finance Management
ChatGPT accounting may feel like a dream come true—until you realize that even the best tech has its limits. Before you let AI take over your accounting department, remember some key shortcomings.
Data security
ChatGPT doesn’t have an internal filter that screams, “Hey! This is confidential!” when you enter sensitive data. It treats every input the same, so it’s up to you to ensure you’re not sharing proprietary financial details.
⚠️ If you’re working with sensitive client or company data, think twice before pasting it into an AI tool—because once it’s out there, there’s no taking it back.
Accuracy and reliability
AI is intelligent, but it’s not perfect. ChatGPT doesn’t have real-time access to updated information. It predicts responses based on patterns in data on which it has been trained. That means errors are expected, especially when it comes to complex financial calculations or tax regulations.
⚠️ A missed decimal or a misinterpreted tax rule could be the difference between a small mistake and a significant compliance issue. Always double-check its output before taking action.
Over-reliance on AI
ChatGPT can be a powerful assistant, but it shouldn’t (or rather, can’t) run the show.
⚠️ Relying too much on AI for financial decision-making can lead to blind spots. It lacks professional judgment, industry experience, or the ability to understand unique business contexts like a human accountant. So, it’s not ready to replace jobs just yet!
Limited understanding of context
AI doesn’t ‘think’ the way humans do. It can analyze data and generate reports but doesn’t grasp the emotional, ethical, or contextual factors that often influence financial decisions.
👉🏼 For example, ChatGPT might suggest layoffs as a cost-cutting measure if a business faces a financial downturn. However, it may not consider the long-term impact on morale and company culture.
⚠️ So, ChatGPT is a fantastic assistant for accountants, but it’s not a substitute for human expertise. The key is to use it with complete awareness, double-check its output, and always pay attention to security!
👀 Did You Know? After sensitive company information was leaked, Samsung Electronics banned employees from using ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.
Using for Accounting
Aren’t the limitations of ChatGPT the limitations of every AI accounting tool?
Well, yes. And no. While no AI is perfect, some internal AI tools can be more secure, private, and context-aware than an external one like ChatGPT.
We’re talking about Brain, a native AI assistant built into —the everything app for work.
combines project management, knowledge management, and chat—all powered by AI that helps you work faster and smarter.
for Accounting is your cloud-based accounting project management software designed to simplify financial processes.
Within this suite, Brain can significantly streamline accounting-related tasks by automating data retrieval, improving financial organization, and enhancing collaboration.
Here’s how:
Instead of digging through spreadsheets or financial reports, Brain can instantly surface key financial data, like expense summaries or outstanding invoices. It also pulls numbers from reports, balance sheets, and transaction logs to speed up financial reviews.
Use it to generate summaries of financial reports, quickly assessing cash flow, revenue, and expenses. It further makes keeping track of due dates and payment statuses easier, ensuring the lights stay on and the late fees stay off.
When it comes to accounting team collaboration, Brain can guide teams through month-end closing processes, tax preparation, and compliance checks. If someone asks about a budget update in a task, Brain can surface the latest numbers without them needing to search through multiple files.
It already has context from tasks, conversations, and documents in your workspace—and other connected sheets, docs, and more. All you need to do is ask for what you’re looking for, and it’s done within seconds!
It’s like having ChatGPT, but integrated directly into your workflow, making it your ultimate AI tool. But does more than just AI. It easily integrates into your entire accounting workflow!
Want to create spreadsheets for bookkeeping? Use Custom Fields in to record transaction data the way you need—from vendor names and invoice numbers to payment status, tax codes, and account categories. Unlike regular spreadsheets, databases created in the Table View don’t mysteriously break when someone touches a formula.
With Docs, you can create a centralized repository for referencing all accounting practices and conventions followed in your organization and keep updating it without worrying about losing the version history. All of this happens in collaboration with your team in real time!
Creating SOPs for your accounting team isn’t a big deal either if you have the Accounting SOP Template. It helps you create, store, and link SOPs to your workflow!
Here’s how it helps you:
- Create, update, and track SOPs easily in one place with Docs
- Customize the template to reflect the company’s unique processes and workflows
- Create tasks for each step of the accounting procedures and assign them to the relevant team members
- Send out final SOPs automatically when completed, with Automations
📮 Insight: Context-switching is silently eating away at your team’s productivity. Our research shows that 42% of disruptions at work come from juggling platforms, managing emails, and jumping between meetings. What if you could eliminate these costly interruptions?
unites your workflows (and chat) under a single, streamlined platform. Launch and manage your tasks from across chat, docs, whiteboards, and more—while AI-powered features keep the context connected, searchable, and manageable!
And if you’re anything like the thousands of professionals struggling to maintain efficient communication and notes, you should check out the Accounting Journal Template.
This template helps you record every business transaction, including details regarding multiple impacted accounts, helping you to digitally record transactions more accurately. It can also be used as a foundation for your general ledger templates.
It helps you:
- Categorize your ledger accounts with the Board View
- Create balance sheets with the Table View
- Use Docs to create financial statements
- Track transactions with time-tracking capabilities, tags, dependency warnings, emails, and more
If you need a complete solution for managing receivables, payables, and billing your clients efficiently while tracking resources to boost financial performance, the Accounting Template is your best bet!
Plus, Dashboards come in useful to display key metrics tailored to your accounting business in a single command center. Generate pre-built reports or customize them to track the financial health of your business in real time. You can also use the dashboard to monitor your team’s progress and workload. Does it get better than this?
But it all comes down to security, right? Accounting data is sensitive, and takes that seriously.
It prioritizes data security with AWS cloud storage, encryption, and top industry certifications. Features like two-factor authentication and HIPAA compliance ensure your financial information stays in the right hands—yours.
So, whether you want to integrate AI for smarter accounting or simplify your entire team’s workflow, is the project accounting software you need to manage your finances effortlessly!
AI might just be the best thing to happen to accounting since the invention of the calculator. But let’s be honest, AI alone isn’t enough. You need a system that brings everything together effortlessly.
is where AI accounting tools meet workflow genius. With Brain’s AI capabilities and project management features, your workflow runs smoother than a perfectly reconciled ledger: no more scattered files, endless email threads, or late-night number crunching.
So why settle for ordinary when you can have the very best? Make the smart switch and sign up for a free account today!
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
