How AI is Helping Businesses Manage Their Accounts

Plenty of people dream of escaping the rat race and starting their own business. And while doing so can be exciting and liberating, as well as a source of great pride, it is far from easy. One of the many challenges involved in launching a venture of your own is getting to grips with all of the administration that’s required to run a legitimate business.

Perhaps you’re a great chef who has decided to start your own restaurant. You want to cook great food and serve it to people for money. But the taxman wants to know how much you’re making, so you’ve got to keep records for him. Others want to know that you’re paying employees fairly, so you’ve got to keep records for them too, and so on. It’s a lot to handle.

Luckily, advancements in AI mean that many of these tasks can now be automated. Accounting is one area that has been significantly impacted by this change. This article takes a look at how AI is helping businesses manage their accounts today.

Tracking expenses

Regardless of what business you are in, you will have to do some amount of accounting. The bare minimum is recording your revenues and spending to make sure that your business is actually making money. However, doing this manually can result in errors, and it can be cumbersome if you are making hundreds or thousands of transactions every month.

However, there are software solutions that can accurately record all of this for you, and many of them now incorporate AI to sort and analyse the data. This can then be used to provide you with new insights about your business model.

Invoice management

When an invoice is received, most businesses go through several steps before payment. These generally include finding the earlier purchase order and seeing if the details match the invoice, then having someone senior sign off that they match before finally making the payment. This can take a person anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Meanwhile, invoice management software can do it almost instantly and make fewer mistakes in the process.

This can have a significant impact on business efficiency. It has been estimated that automated invoicing and billing is up to seven times faster. And this is another area where AI can help provide useful insights, such as which suppliers are the most consistent and reliable.

Bookkeeping

In the past, bookkeeping was often a specialism handled by a dedicated member of staff. Today, thanks to technology, even business owners with no background in bookkeeping or accounting can keep their own books.

You might wonder if this means that we don’t need accountants either. We’re not quite there yet. Automated solutions are good for freeing up your time and retrieving information to help you make business decisions, but you’ll still want your tax return or public filings to be prepared by a professional.

Conclusion

It’s no overstatement to say that AI is changing the world, from the way we write to the way businesses are run. Using it in tools and software to handle the numbers side of business is just one way in which it is helping businesses become far more efficient and focused.