AI is coming for accounting after coding
Ai agents in accounting firms are way less effective than Ai agents in law firms for example. writing contracts is where an LLM shines, it's basic building blocks are formal words. Formal is the key term here.Accounting if different. More precise, it tolerates less mistakes. The rules that govern it are much less open to intrepretation.
In accounting, the rules are more grounded. Not in precedent but in a generally accepted specific rulebook. Gross profits mean the same in the US as it does in Bangladesh, and it will mean the same 100 years in the future.
In accounting, probability is very bad. A single bad journal entry in a 100,000 ledger can distort the entire balance sheet. And we know that no LLM will ever reach 100% accuracy rate because its reasoning is probabilistic, not absolute. Campfire raised $65m and built an entire accounting module from scratch, they only managed to achieve ~95% accuracy rate.
It might feel like 95% is very close to 100%, but that is not how it works. Accounting follows the same power law as football. In a 100k ledger entries, that means ~1k bad journal entires. You can hire someone to go through the bad ones, its definitly a cost saver, but it's not the same as coding or legal:
1. In those two, a task would not be ruined by a single mistake in the system. An app would run fine with a couple of bugs if the system design was decent. A contract would still be enforceable with an additional weak sentence in most cases. But in accounting, 1 digit error would ruin the entire balance sheet.
2. The cost of making a mistake. Worst case scenario, the system goes down for a couple of hours, you might lose a case because of a bad contract. But losing track of the financials is a different story, it can easily destroy the whole company.
3. Trust is harder to establish with accounting. You can outsource legal without understanding much about the law. But if you outsource accounting without understanding the numbers; you are toast.
Also, all the major labs are going after it soon, margins are going down fast.
Yes, most accountants have an accuracy rate below 90%, but humans are allowed to make mistakes because YOU CAN SUE A HUMAN. That might not be a big deal in other areas, but when it comes to finance, companies suddenly get very risk averse. Bookkeeping can be divided into smaller tasks and automated fine, but accounting is a different story.
Humans have a MAJOR advantage over AI; we can be held legally accountable. If it weren't for that, most of us will be obsolete already. Under Sarbanes Oxley, any company no matter how small must have a "human" finance officer (CFO), and a "human" controller.