Artificial intelligence is on the verge of reshaping the financial services business. Before the pandamic, 40% of respondents indicated they spent at least a quarter of their time on manual, repetitive jobs, according to one poll. Because remote labour has its limitations, many organisations are turning to automation. Knowing what to automate and how to manage the disruption with the correct technologies can usher in a new era of increased productivity and efficiency.

As the world’s economies shift toward remote and hybrid work arrangements, 77 percent of CEOs say they trust AI to manage their company’s finances rather than manual techniques. This frees up financial staff to focus on more dynamic responsibilities like budgeting and crisis management.

Every day, accounting teams are bombarded with data – business documents, vendor information, and other insights – that they must sift through in order to make key choices and keep a company’s financial engine operating. And, given the volume of data, manually entering everything is impractical without risking mistyping or overlooking critical elements.

AI: An accountant’s best ally

According to a new research of over 9,000 employees from 14 countries, 97 percent of Gen Z employees are afraid to handle their company’s money, and another 52 percent admit to losing sleep over budget and overall targets. With millennial and Gen Z talent’s objectives shifting, businesses have an opportunity to think outside the box and modify policies to attract new talent. We now have the technologies to make accounting more efficient, accurate, and productive. It shouldn’t be a chore to enter data into the system, and closing the books shouldn’t take a week.

A rising number of accountants are turning to artificial intelligence to deal with heightened financial concern and pressure to perform at work (AI). In comparison to human techniques, nearly 77 percent of business leaders say they trust AI to handle their company’s finances.

Does this imply that AI will take the position of accountants? Definitely not. The debate about whether AI will replace accountants assumes that both AI and humans have equal abilities, which they do not. However, when the two are integrated, they can help a company’s finance arm become more productive and efficient. Accountants may shift their time to high-value, high-impact jobs by using AI-enabled solutions to automate repetitive operations like data input.

Companies can put an end to tedious and laborious data entry with the help of accounts payable (AP) automation software like Focus.  Focus’s AI-powered technology retrieves invoice data, saving accountants time by eliminating the need to code line item characteristics such as descriptions, unit costs, and quantities. It has a 99 percent accuracy rate and cuts data entry time by more than 80 percent.