Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved beyond a futuristic buzzword to become a must for any tax and accounting firm. By making workflows efficient and eliminating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, AI allows firms to be future-ready. “Agents” are powerful, capable of converting data into information that can easily be communicated to your clients. The goal? Carving out time in your day for higher-value work.
Introducing Agentic AI: Your virtual team
Agentic AI is a transformative innovation that automates workflows and complex processes, allowing you to access a virtual team working on your behalf. These agents are your new digital teammates, working behind the scenes to proactively surface key insights, execute tasks, and let you know when something is needed for your approval or additional consideration.
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Intuit’s AI agents, embedded in QuickBooks, focus on making different parts of a business easier and faster to run. These include the following:
- Accounting Agent: Keeps your books clean and accurate by automatically categorizing transactions, detecting and resolving anomalies, and reconciling accounts.
- Payments Agent: Helps businesses get paid faster (by an average of five days) by monitoring cash flow and optimizing invoicing and payment collection.
- Payroll Agent: Appears as part of the Business Feed in QuickBooks to fast-track payroll prep. It takes the burden off your shoulders, handling the collection of hours and all the necessary payroll data all through simple, intuitive text messages.
- Finance Agent: Analyzes financial data and automatically creates forecasts, highlights variances, and pinpoints the source of irregularities to help businesses make smart decisions.
- Customer Agent: Streamlines customer relationship management by sourcing leads, drafting personalized client responses for review, and tracking customer opportunities.
Dig into your AI toolkit
A variety of AI tools enhance efficiency across every part of your practice:
General tools (Generative AI)
- ChatGPT: Can understand nuanced questions and provide highly accurate responses. The paid option provides faster responses, priority access, and access to more advanced training models. A helpful prompt might be, “In 200 words, update me on tax news since Monday, and provide links to your sources.”
- Claude: Conducts in-depth analysis and the handling of large volumes of information, such as summarizing lengthy PDFs in a flash. Claude often produces a more natural writing style in client communications—and who doesn’t want that?
Business client tools
- Gemini (Google’s AI assistant): Ideal for spreadsheet and financial statement analysis. Accountants can use the prompt, “Review this P&L and point out any irregularities or areas to investigate.”
- Copilot (Microsoft): A powerful tool suite, especially when using Excel, that can generate financial models, analyze trends, create pivot tables, and identify anomalies.
Practice Management
- Karbon: Designed for tax and accounting firms, this tool features client management, workflow automation, and time tracking. It integrates seamlessly with Intuit ProConnect Tax and QuickBooks Online.
- Ignition: Creates brand proposals, client onboarding, and automating invoicing and workflows. It integrates with Intuit ProConnect Tax.
Client communications
- Otter.ai and Fathom: These tools are AI meeting assistants that record, transcribe, and summarize virtual meetings (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams) in real-time. They automatically generate a log of action items for meeting participants.
- SmartVault: Streamlines the client intake process for tax preparation using AI to automate custom questionnaires and document requests based on prior-year returns.
Tips to help you integrate AI into your firm
Once AI is integrated into your firm, clear communication with clients is crucial, but some firms may hesitate to let their clients know they are using AI. Here are some tips.
1. Communicating your use of AI with clients. Explain that AI makes your team more efficient by offering improved financial forecasting and enhanced accuracy of their books and returns. This new efficiency allows you to dedicate more time to the complex, strategic advisory work that requires human insight.
2. Acknowledge and address security concerns. Clients are often skeptical about data security, especially when sensitive financial information is involved. You must be able to assure them that:
- Client data is encrypted in transit (moving between your browser and the server) and at rest (stored in the tool’s database).
- Data is never used to train external AI models.
- Your firm’s processes are fully aligned with IRS Publication 4557, Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, which outlines the required safeguards for taxpayer data.
3. Disclose and obtain consent. As a best practice, you should disclose exactly what your firm uses AI for (from GenAI chatbots to Intuit agents). It is worth being as transparent as possible, so obtain explicit consent from clients to share their information with the third-party tools you work with in your practice.
Free white paper now available
Ultimately, no matter how you employ AI, emphasize to your clients that they are still receiving your professional expertise. AI is a helpful tool to automate low-value work, but it is not a replacement for your experience and knowledge.
Download a white paper, “How to implement AI in your tax and accounting practice,” for step-by-step prompts and more content on many of the concepts in this article.
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