AI is pushing accountants into a different role

Where will accounting firms and accountants provide value in the future? Hint: It’s not more technical accounting expertise.

Morning Brew’s recent research report, The state of finance hiring & careers, shows organizations and firms are already thinking of what skills they’ll need down the road. Strategic thinking and problem-solving. Communication and data storytelling. Cross-functional collaboration. Those are three of the top five skill sets most important for the next generation of accounting and financial professionals, according to the 352 finance leaders we surveyed for the report.

Further down on the list: technical accounting expertise. Bad news for the increasing number of undergraduates who are studying accounting after talk of accountant shortages? Not really, for two reasons: One, accounting is “the best background to have to go into business,” Joshua Chananie, a partner in charge of the consumer and industrial products practice at Sax, told CFO Brew. “If you can read and understand numbers, you have a leg up on everybody else.”

And two, “The highly, highly technical…accounting and tax folks are [who] eventually will become the commodity,” Chananie said.

Isaac Heller, founder and president of accounting workflow software provider Trullion, said that with AI, “the labor dynamics are certainly changing; for accountants and auditors, there were never enough to begin with.”

“[AI agents] are going to automate a lot of the basic accounting. I just think that they can’t be end to end solutions,” Heller said. While [those agents] “might work in engineering or even marketing, accounting is based on judgment and traceability, the ability for the human to judge.” With AI, “you’re going to have a curve of things that can be handled by agents like journal entry testing, but things that fundamentally can’t be handled by agents, like goodwill and fair value testing or unrecorded liabilities.”

The advisory role. The crux of the question is really where accountants (and accounting firms) will provide value.

Sax, a 70-year-old firm with 78 partners, has a client base that is mostly family owned, privately held small to medium-sized business. “I look at technology, AI, as a way to enhance the data that’s available,” Chananie said. The accountant’s job is “being able to take that information and communicate it and present it in a way that is exciting for the client, to get them not only more excited about their business, but excited about the industry,” he said. “The face to face of what I do and the consulting around the business is not going to be replaced.”

Transitioning or adding to business advisory is an imperative for accounting firms, too, given the economic factors. The consulting side of Sax’s business “drives the firm’s ability to get good rates and rate increases, versus the commodity side,” where fees are under pressure and clients are more fee-sensitive, Chananie said.

As when the large accounting firms started outsourcing some accounting work across the globe, “the addition of technology is only going to put a tighter squeeze on that.” Because as Sax invests in technology, clients “expect to be the beneficiaries of some of that efficiency,” Chananie said.

“It doesn’t necessarily allow us to get a premium for the work that we’re doing. And we’re starting to feel that. We’re definitely starting to feel that even today.”