What comes to mind when you picture an accountant—a buttoned-up, detail-loving professional with rolled-up shirtsleeves and endless patience for crunching numbers? As new technology like artificial intelligence (AI) revitalizes the industry, that image is getting a 21st-Century revamp, morphing into something a lot closer to a Silicon Valley executive.
A new image is in order, it seems, as the number of employed accountants and auditors has been dropping since 2019, and accountants continue to leave the industry in dramatic numbers.
Even more striking, fewer college students are choosing to major in accounting—and those graduating with accounting degrees are showing less interest in actually becoming accountants, opting to become financial and banking consultants instead.
As the new era of artificial intelligence leads the way to more modern accounting—just as spreadsheets and the cloud modernized accounting in earlier eras—technology promises to rebuild the prestige of accounting and auditing.
Students and new graduates may hesitate to step into accounting because they still think it means being buried under piles of paperwork. But automation is changing the game, as AI takes over mundane tasks like data intake and generating financial reports, allowing accountants to spend their time on the most exciting and qualitative aspects of accounting, such as data analysis and strategy. When young accountants discover AI tools, they’ll find the technology very different from anything they’ve used before.
AI is front of mind for every industry these days, as evidenced by the attention-grabbing ChatGPT. A large language model tool built on massive stores of data and computing capabilities, the AI bot doesn’t really think or speak the way humans do, but it’s a (mostly) convincing imitator. With its huge vocabulary and deep well of information, it can ”explain quantum physics or write a poem on command,” as Sindhu Sundar writes for Business Insider.
For accountants, enterprise software can use AI to ingest data from many sources, examine everything from billing to CRM information to journal entries, identify risks and flag them. Accountants can efficiently access information on demand and auditors can begin their analyses with everything they need on one platform.
That makes collaboration easier for everyone, simplifying communication between corporate leaders and accountants, and between corporate accountants and external auditors. This breakthrough technology is particularly exciting to small and medium-sized firms because it unlocks new value for them: the ability to do things faster, differently, better.
Accounting is the backbone of business, and as such it is not going away. Demand will continue to grow for years to come. Ben Lansford, director of the master’s accounting program at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, got it right when he told Fortune that accounting is “still a good path—a rock-solid foundation” for students and graduates.
As the new era of artificial intelligence leads the way to more modern accounting—just as spreadsheets and the cloud modernized accounting in earlier eras—technology promises to rebuild the prestige of accounting and auditing.
After all, accountants are exceptionally sharp quantitative thinkers, and they dedicate their careers to ongoing education and anticipating new challenges. Ultimately, these are the very minds that will power the entrepreneurial world of the future.
Isaac Heller is CEO of Trullion, an AI-powered SaaS platform that automates accounting workflows for CFOs, accountants and auditors.
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