Even with advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence, private equity and venture capital fund accountants say manual data entry continues to be a time-consuming part of their job, according to a new report from Dynamo Software, a cloud platform for alternative investment firms.
The second annual Dynamo Frontline Insight Report: Trends, Challenges, and Insights from Leading PE/VC Fund Accountants finds that fund accountants are facing rising expectations for AI while still grappling with persistent operational bottlenecks.
A year ago, fund accountants were less inclined than today to call AI and automation “game changers.” Now in 2026, however, the overwhelming majority (78%) expect automation and AI to play a major role in their profession. That’s up from the 61% who said the same last year.
Nearly nine in 10 fund accountants placed automation and AI adoption among the key industry trends expected to gain momentum in 2026. What’s more, the group of skeptics who predicted no significant reliance on automation and AI shrunk this year to just 1%.
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“The accounting industry as a whole is nearing a real threshold, but fund accountants are getting there first,” Nield Montgomery, managing director of Dynamo’s accounting business unit, said in a statement. “Because of the added complexity of fund accounting, there has been a strong and swift embrace of technology that promises to unlock insights. Fund accountants are looking for quicker access to the kind of action-oriented analysis that really matters to the CFO.”
Data entry continues to eat up time
Automation and AI tools deliver the greatest outcomes when they are fed clean, well-structured data. Frustratingly for fund accounting teams, getting to that data is difficult with information often spread across multiple siloed systems. As result, manual data entry and labor-intensive reporting are still cited by respondents as persistent operational headaches.
In 2026, “time-consuming reporting” and “manual data entry and reconciliation” remained the biggest operational pain points with 66% of respondents citing them as top challenges. Results were similar to 2025’s findings in which 64% named “time-consuming reporting” a top challenge, and 61% included “manual data entry and reconciliation” in their list of key pain points.
“Accountants’ long-standing challenges with data entry busywork don’t always disappear in the early stages of AI adoption, especially if the software isn’t integrated with other functions or designed specifically for their particular industry,” Montgomery said. “This is especially true in the alternative investments space where complex, non-standard data and fragmented workflows still keep too much of a fund accountant’s job manual.”
Integration woes persist, but the tide may be turning
Montgomery’s observation is supported by further survey respondent sentiment: Nearly half (45%) of fund accountants say a lack of integration across customer relationship management, fundraising, investor relations, and analytics portals remains one of their top challenges.
The good news is that number is down from 56% a year ago, suggesting progress is being made. Still, the demand hasn’t faded. Sixty-five percent of respondents this year say system integration is essential to their workflows.
Data security tops the charts in tech priorities
Among the reasons integration may be rising in the ranks in terms of prioritization is the similarly rising importance of data security. More than eight in 10 (82%) respondents said the data security of software they are evaluating is considered extremely important at their firms, up from 78% in last year’s survey.
Poor integration means more logging in and out, more copying and pasting, and more manual work. With each data handoff, the workflow becomes both less secure and more prone to errors.
Given the highly sensitive nature of the data that fund accountants must manage, nearly 75% of respondents said they prefer to work with an all-in-one platform that integrates multiple functions as opposed to a patchwork of point solutions tailored to specific tasks.
Photo credit: Deagreez/iStock
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