ChatGPT & The Accounting Industry: How Can AI Help Accountants?

As someone working in the accounting industry, I know first hand how important it is to keep your finger on the pulse and stay up to date with the latest accounting standards, regulations, and best practices. With the fast-paced nature of the industry and ever-evolving technology, it can be a challenge. That’s where ChatGPT comes in.

I’m not one to get excited by every shiny new thing to hit the market but when I explored ChatGPT, albeit with much apprehension, over the weekend, I was quite blown away.

Upon some digging, I soon found myself down the ChatGPT rabbit hole and here’s what I learned.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is taking the working world by storm, but what is it?

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that has been designed to simulate human-like conversation and generate responses that are natural, coherent, and (mostly) accurate.

Users will type their queries or requests into a chat box that feels very familiar and ChatGPT draws on the information online to provide an answer. The user can then build on that response and the system, being a learning AI, will be able to develop the answer to add more value in response to the query.

There are lots of practical applications for this type of system from helping with customer service or emails to language translation, and it could even act as a personal digital assistant if you can get your head around the right prompts to use.

How Can AI Help Accountants?

AI and ChatGPT specifically can help accountants in a number of ways, most of these being linked to organisation and knowledge gathering.

Streamlining Workflow

ChatGPT can help to automate repetitive tasks such as data entry and report generation, and it can even perform analysis. The benefits of this are mostly related to saving time and reducing the number of input errors. The AI can help to reorder or reorganise data and can generally be a good way to eliminate those repetitive and sometimes boring tasks. This means more time to spend on work that requires context and advanced knowledge.

Research and Knowledge Gathering

ChatGPT can act as a great learning tool. In fact, one of the most common prompts entered into the chat is “Explain [TOPIC] to me as if I’m a 5-year-old.”

The system will help you to understand complex concepts or even just give you an overview of lengthy texts or regulations. The best part is that answers are generated in a matter of seconds, so you don’t have to wait long to get your head around an idea.

It’s worth remembering that ChatGPT draws its information from other online sources so it’s not always 100% accurate. Mostly, it does a great job with summaries and idea generation, but occasionally the information can be based on unreliable sources.

Analysis & Visualisation

ChatGPT is a smart AI system that can help with things like ratio analysis, benchmarking and performance analysis.

Whilst it can’t completely replace an accountant (and shouldn’t replace an accountant) it can help businesses to better visualise their financial information and get accounts in order. It can also provide suggestions for resource allocation and even financial improvements.

Perhaps its most useful feature is the ability to quickly create charts and graphs based on data sets input by the user. This can save lots of time for accountants and be a great way to communicate financial data with the wider business.

The Problem With ChatGPT

While ChatGPT has a wide range of potential applications for accountants, there are also some drawbacks to consider.

One major concern is the possibility that ChatGPT is providing inaccurate or incomplete information, which could lead to mistakes or misinterpretations.

Additionally, there may be a learning curve for some accountants who are not familiar with how the system works and what its capabilities are. Perhaps the biggest challenge is learning how to ask it the right questions to get the correct output.

Despite these challenges, ChatGPT can still offer significant benefits to accountants. It can improve efficiency, act as a learning tool and even help to draft written texts like emails and reports.

By understanding both the potential benefits and limitations of ChatGPT, accountants can start to explore AI and all of the potential it has to offer the industry – I know I will be.

By Janita Kapoor, The dot HQ

The dot HQ will be exhibiting at Accountex London on the 10-11 of May 2023 at stand 921. You can register for a free ticket here. 

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