There’s an AI for that: 9 AI tools for accountants to try now

Eighty-six per cent of Australians are using AI tools at work, according to a recent survey, with 16% of respondents saying they use AI ‘all the time’. The amount of time spent using AI tools varied greatly by the size of business – employees in larger businesses reported twice the time spent using AI tools as their small business counterparts.

When Deloitte polled professionals in Switzerland who “could, in principle, use generative AI in their work” in 2023, six in 10 respondents said they already used AI. Of those using AI tools, 63% said those tools improved efficiency.

Only 10% of respondents to the Deloitte survey in 2023 disagreed with the statement ‘Using AI tools significantly reduces the time I spend on tasks’.

That survey also found that the ‘power users’ of AI tools, those who use them more than two hours per day, are concentrated in IT-intensive functions – just 8% of power users are in finance functions.

Among those power users, 80% believe that learning about AI tools is important for their career development and employability.

For those who haven’t yet started using AI tools or understanding their capabilities, it’s likely time to start. In the past 12 months, AI tools have proliferated and capabilities have changed drastically. Users are no longer focused solely on ‘can Chat GPT write this for me?’, but are using standalone platforms to create entire presentations in seconds, or to track the time whole teams spend in meetings, documents and apps to generate invoices on demand. .

Below, we’ve compiled suggestions of AI tools you can try when you are looking to solve common challenges. Click each ‘card’ to reveal a tool that can help. Of course there are many more available – think of this as a starting point that will help you consider what’s possible.

 Read next: 12 ChatGPT prompts for accountants.