AI in Financial Reporting
It has been a while since I posted, but I have been getting a lot of questions lately from clients and from my accounting students about the same topic: Where does AI actually belong in the financial reporting process? Everyone wants to know if they should be using it, and the honest answer is that it depends a lot on which part of the process you are talking about. I have been working with several clients on this over the last few months, plus I have an upcoming speaking session on AI in reporting, so I thought I would put some of these thoughts together here. For each point, I am also going to push back on myself a little, because I think that is a more useful way to think through this than just picking a side. Where AI is actually helping right now The clearest win I have seen is variance analysis. AI tools are good at scanning through a large number of GL lines and flagging the ones that look different from what history would predict. Think of a vendor payment that...