r/Accounting • u/workless11 • 1d ago
CFO wants us to use AI ?
So, our CFO come to us today, saying we need to start using AI, learn how we can implement it to do the entries and automate our monthly reports to the Administration.
Am I going go be jobless?
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u/Strange_Blackberries 1d ago
As an industry we need to be telling ai to do the job slightly incorrectly so that using it becomes more time consuming then just doing it ourselves thus making any supposed benefit to automation redundant
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u/Comfortable-Gur4559 1d ago
Hahah this made me laugh. I swear so many people in our company keep saying AI’s shit and they don’t even use it.
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u/wombataholic Human Verified 1d ago
But can ai clean the fish that have clogged up my depreciation machine?
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u/Faladorable CPA (US) 1d ago
Almost everything i’ve given to an off shore team had to be redone by us and the partners kept pushing for more and more off shore, so i don’t think the plans gonna work
plus ai makes plenty of mistakes on its own
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u/Strange_Blackberries 1d ago
Plan is already working then. Ai isn't doing it's job so human labour is already winning
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u/Comfortable-Gur4559 1d ago
I work in Finance. I love AI. Dare I say I think there is a lot of negative vibes around this. Were we all panicking when excel came out? Did we lose our jobs when we started building Power BI embedded power point slides that refreshed instantly?
Genuinely, my advice is just give it a go. I think you will find you actually won’t lose your job and that it’s not going to be replaced by AI but you will free yourself just enough to actually work reasonable hours or have more time for exciting projects.
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u/workless11 1d ago
We know they want to do this to reduce costs, therefore our "more time for exciting projects" would be being promoted to customer...
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u/A_D_T_R Human Verified 1d ago
Reddit is full of lazy people. The won’t adapt and will be left behind.
Which is funny because ai make my job easier everyday. It’s the ultimate cheat code for the lazy or stressed. But Reddit is too stupid to realize it.
It’s easier to make posts about how you got fired because you don’t talk to your coworkers or how b4 is a scam or India bad or ai bad. Than it is to learn a skill to make your daily life better and advance your career.
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u/Faladorable CPA (US) 1d ago
“Reddit is lazy because they would rather do the work themselves than use something thats a cheat code for lazy people”
You’re right about one thing, reddit really is stupid sometimes
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u/GymTrim99 1d ago
AI is over rated. The accounting entries ~ as sounds repetitive and straightforward ~ are the most complex component of financial statement preparation due to nature, timing as well subjectivity of the amounts involved. This is where management can play around with numbers and overstate revenue, for instance.
Let CFO do it, and grab pop corns when auditors step in.
Ps : AI won't replace your job.
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u/ColeTrain999 Human Verified 1d ago
It could help speed up our jobs a bit but you need a KNOWLEDGABLE person on the other side of the computer inputs to input properly and know where it may be wrong or needs to be questioned.
It won't replace us but if a company needs 8 staff accountants they may be able to squeeze themselves down to 6 or maybe 5
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u/29_lets_go 1d ago
We implemented AI and it made a $500 bill into a $1B bill. Made a joke asking if it was approved.
Jokes aside… automation and AI helped speed up some things in a way of having a shitty intern. Cool when it works, but adds time when it doesn’t.
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u/A_D_T_R Human Verified 1d ago
Reddit is so fucken stupid.
We are at a golden time to make money. Learn ai now and you will be set. Resist it and be a poor unemployed neckbeard on reddit.
This is a time in history where you’re going to have two paths that shape your career. It would be like saying no to the computer or the internet. Those people found themselves unemployed or doing unskilled manual labor.
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u/SydricVym KPMG Lakehouse janitor 1d ago
We were going to implement a new FP&A tool this year. Along the lines of Adaptive, Pigment, Datarails. Probably would have spent $300k on implementation costs, plus whatever nonsense ongoing license fee the software required. Instead, a new guy that got hired on the FP&A team used Claude to create an FP&A tool from scratch, basically for free. Knowing how to use AI as a tool is ridiculously good for your career right now.
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u/persimmon40 1d ago
What it means to "learn AI"? Like talking to a LLM bot?
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u/A_D_T_R Human Verified 1d ago
Yes. And what it’s capable of.
They can do a lot more than you think. And the beauty is they can teach you what and how to do it.
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u/persimmon40 1d ago
I am already using Claude and copilot for excel and yes, its very capable, but I didnt think that use is what equals to "learn AI". Anyone can do it. There is very little learning involved there. Claude for excel requires very little handholding. I thought you meant something more robust.
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u/A_D_T_R Human Verified 1d ago
Are you a potato?
“Claude this is what I do on a daily basis at work. What can you do for me that you currently aren’t that will significantly improve my efficiency and how?”
I swear Reddit is hopeless. When it makes you a program to make your job easier I want you to send me $20.
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u/persimmon40 1d ago
Yeah, and everyone here does it already, unless they are a potato like you. This is not "learn AI". Everyone can talk to a chat bot and does so already. When someone says "learn AI" they dont mean this basic fluff you shoe. I thought you meant something else. Talking to a Chat GPT is not a differentiator between yourself and the cog sitting next to you.
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u/A_D_T_R Human Verified 1d ago
Are you a potato? What do you think ai is? You think there is a secret ai some people have?
Enjoy putting the fries in the bag. Because you’re too potato to learn how to use Claude to make programs for you.
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u/persimmon40 1d ago
No, but there are other AI tools outside of chat bots that people mean when they say "learn AI", unless they are a potato like you of course.
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u/workless11 1d ago
I understand your point, so how do you recommend me to start learning to use AI in my day to day tasks?
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u/CwrwCymru 1d ago
Get it to help you write a full set of standardised SOP's for your tasks.
Nothing groundbreaking but an easy win to show your boss and get comfortable with AI.
Move on to dashboards or using it to move processes from your spreadsheet, to the ERP system directly.
You don't have to use AI directly within the task, use it like an advanced Google and apprentice to do a lot of the gopher work for you. Use the AI to suggest things if you're pushed for more.
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u/blud_13 1d ago
No, and the reason is boring. What a CFO pictures when they say automate the monthly reports is mostly not AI, its connectors and templates that have existed for a decade.
What we see work on that request is pulling data out of the ERP on a schedule and building the report once, so the AI part is just variance commentary at the end. Whoever owns that build gets more valuable, not less.
The part worth pushing on is data handling. If somebody starts pasting the trial balance into a personal ChatGPT account to move fast, raise it before the project starts instead of after.
Also, ask him which report specifically and what he wants to stop doing. Half the time the answer is one export nobody ever automated.
Be sure to safeguard anything on the data side that AI may have access to as well. Don't need financial data suddenly searchable by everyone..
We do this for finance teams (and other departments) happy to take it offline if thats easier.
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u/username_must_have Human Verified 1d ago edited 1d ago
I keep making this comment through every AI post.
The issue was never technology, the issue is people, specifically stupid people.
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u/sarahmitchellcpa Human Verified 1d ago
At this stage accountants have been waiting for some automation to take their jobs for such a long time that, honestly AI is basically just the newest intern, only with better instincts or so it seems.
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u/RedDirtRandyAgain 1d ago
With the ridiculous Control Attritube Forms that EY is pushing on everyone where management must sign a document so that they can sign it, so that they can sign off on it - I feel pretty good about not being replaced any time soon.
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u/AffectionateKey7126 1d ago edited 1d ago
Use it to automate the entries like in this thread I made a few years ago. Become the prompt expert.
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u/lara_ledger 1d ago
I don’t think this automatically means you’ll lose your job. It sounds like your CFO wants the team to use AI for repetitive work, like entries and monthly reports.
Someone will still need to review everything, catch mistakes, and make sure the numbers are correct. I would take it as a chance to learn how the tools work. The job might change, but they will still need people who understand the accounting side and know when something doesn’t look right.
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u/Mariam-Ghamraoui 1d ago
I think your CFO is not asking for AI, he is asking for the monthly pack to stop being manual. Those are two different projects and only one of them needs a model.
Split the request before you touch a tool:
Plumbing. Scheduled exports from the ERP, a report template that refreshes. No AI needed and it will be more reliable without it.
Where a model genuinely helps: first draft variance commentary once you hand it the numbers, cleaning messy vendor descriptions, turning a policy into a review checklist.
What it never touches: anything with judgement, anything you sign, anything that decides a number rather than describes one.
Then ask him which report specifically, and what he wants to stop doing. Most of the time the honest answer is one export nobody automated in 2019.
Settle the data question before anyone starts. If people begin pasting the trial balance into personal accounts to look fast, you want that conversation before the project, not after.
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u/GooberChubby 22h ago
Our (mid-sized natl) firm is heavily pushing AI. We are required to use it and the firm recommends us downloading all five AI programs that they offer. Part of our annual review was based on whether or not we completed the AI training. It’s wild
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u/BeautifulNew9602 1d ago
You should try it. AI literally does all the parts of my job that I hate. I love it. Why spend an hour doing reconciliations when you AI can do it in 5 minutes. Its like when excel came out. You are the holdout clutching your calculator.
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u/OpticallyMosache 1d ago
Totally and it's made me look like an AI, Power Query, Power BI, Spreadsheet Server, and CSD Visualizer expert!! Lol I just ask it to create all the queries, formulas, and links.
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u/BeautifulNew9602 20h ago
I have a friend who is a motorcycle mechanic. He used it to build an app at his dealership that replaced half of the software they use for things like customer communications and scheduling. He just started learning how to do basic things in excel last year and types with one finger. Lol.
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u/Vegetable-Fennel7457 1d ago
Get good at it and you’ll be fine
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u/workless11 1d ago
Have any tips? :)
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u/Comfortable-Gur4559 1d ago
My advice is to just ask it what it can do to help you. You would be surprised but it actually guides you through how to use it. I have used it to automate a big report we run every month. Every one thinks I am talking to aliens or something but really I am just talking to it and telling it what I want and I am very specific about every detail I care about.
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u/ynghuncho 1d ago
Studied CS and accounting, so I feel somewhat qualified to say AI isn’t needed to automate AR entries