The Must-Have AI Tools for Accountants

Do you probably need an AI refrigerator or toothbrush? No, but that certainly hasn’t stopped companies from making them.

The AI craze has led to a rush of rebranding and research, intended to push AI into all kinds of products—whether it’s truly useful or not. This trend is even more pronounced in SaaS, where nearly every software company of note has added an AI feature or updated their website to highlight a new, AI focus.

In spite of these changes, the real question is and remains to be – will these AI tools actually make a difference in your work?

To save accountants some time and analysis paralysis, we’ve compiled a list of both embedded AI and general purpose AI tools that can actually impact accounting workflows by leveraging AI in a meaningful way. 

For a deep dive into how AI is changing the accounting industry, read Numeric's complete guide to AI for accountants.

Tip: Clean your data, early and often 

But first, a disclaimer for eager accounting teams: as the saying goes, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. 

No matter whether your shiny, new software is AI-driven or not, it only works as well as the data that you can provide it. 

Great accounting teams can build equally great accounting systems – however, these systems are only as good as their foundation: the underlying financial data maintained in ERPs, workpapers, and other sources. If you’re looking for major ROI from your accounting tech stack, make sure that you’ve also done the work to clean and maintain that data.

Accountants should also bear in mind that good data on their end also helps to fuel good FP&A tools. From financial statements to forecasting, clean data is core to doing just about any finance task well. From there, software serves to streamline and scale those tasks, not to remedy existing problems with data hygiene. 

Best AI accounting tool for cutting down on the month-end close 

Numeric

Tool Breakdown

Numeric helps accounting teams to organize their close, streamline reconciliations, and leverage AI for auto-drafted flux analysis and lightning-fast reporting. 

The platform automatically pulls account totals from workpapers and your GL's trial balance. With a deep ERP integration, Numeric users can then click into underlying transactions across accounts to investigate discrepancies in real-time.

How AI comes into play 

Struggling to run flux on key balance sheet accounts? Numeric’s AI flux writer takes the first pass at writing variance explanations by combing through all transaction-details in an account and identifying key drivers of change. That’s not to mention an auto-generated flux reporting feature that easily compares accounts MoM or QoQ, helping teams to spot anomalies or layer in insights. 

Teams also see benefit from using the technical accounting AI bot – trained on GAAP guidance, public company filings, and more, the accounting AI bot can provide answers specific for any standard (US GAAP, IFRS, UK GAAP) and for guidance from any Big 4 audit firm. 

For text generation, data calculation, & other simple tasks

ChatGPT 

Tool Breakdown

In the current AI zeitgeist, ChatGPT runs supreme, as far as popularity is concerned. It’s a household name that boasts a monthly active user count north of 200 million. Generally, it’s great for quick text summaries, a Google search equivalent, or spinning up a quick image.

How AI comes into play

ChatGPT is a great general purpose tool capable of generating first drafts of emails or memos, performing rapid calculations, or summarizing long-form text both quickly and succinctly. 

But it’s also ideal for a number of accounting functions as well – creating journal entries, writing policies, extracting data, and formatting spreadsheets. For a full look at how to get the most out of ChatGPT as an accountant, we’ve written a handy guide on the tips and prompts most geared for AI accounting success. 

‍

Claude  

Tool Breakdown

Since ChatGPTs debut in late 2022, a tidal wave of chatbot challengers have come in its wake. The foremost of these competitors is Anthropic’s Claude. 

How AI comes into play 

While Claude performs virtually all of the same functionalities as ChatGPT, it’s been credited with being a far better and more humanistic writer. As such, if ChatGPT’s writing comes off as too cold or sterile, Claude is a great alternative for nailing down the tone and voice you desire. 

For handling AP bottlenecks 

BILL 

Tool Breakdown

BILL excels at managing bills, namely accounts payable and accounts receivable, all in place and is a popular AP choice for most companies. The platform simplifies onboarding for international and domestic suppliers and tax handling is easy thanks to its automation features. 

How AI comes into play 

BILL AI automates data entry to reduce human error and accelerate your AP workflows. With the auto-extraction and auto-entry of invoice data in addition to an AI that’s been trained on millions of invoices, BILL customers can be sure that their invoices are accurately scanned and documented. 

Glean.ai

Tool Breakdown

Glean.ai helps take AP automation to the next level by using AI to optimize accounts payable processes and extract financial insights from invoices and payments. 

How AI comes into play

The platform automatically categorizes vendor spending, and intelligent algorithms benchmark spend data against industry standards, helping businesses make data-driven decisions. Glean.ai’s AI-driven dashboards and reporting tools offer a comprehensive view of financial performance, enabling finance teams to optimize cash flow, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency. It also integrates with popular ERP platforms, facilitating the automation of tedious tasks like invoice matching, approvals, and journal entry creation. 

For making document review easier 

Klarity.ai

Tool Breakdown

Klarity.ai is a document processing tool that optimizes contract review and compliance checks. 

How AI comes into play

Its AI-powered engine automates the extraction and analysis of key information from contracts, legal documents, and financial statements, ensuring accuracy and compliance. Klarity.ai also identifies risks and discrepancies, especially with regard to tricky guidances like ASC 606,  presenting them clearly for quick decision-making. 

For figuring out lease accounting 

Trullion

Tool Breakdown

Trullion helps to simplify financial reporting, with a focus primarily on lease accounting, revenue recognition, and audit readiness. 

How AI comes into play

On the AI front, Trullion’s OCR technology automatically extracts critical data from contracts, documents, and financial statements, translating unstructured information into structured accounting entries. This ensures compliance with ASC 842, IFRS 16, and other global accounting standards. Beyond this feature, Trullion’s AI tools significantly reduce manual workload with automated data validation and reconciliation: thus, teams can be confident that financial data is accurate in both their contracts and their books. 

For expense management 

Ramp

Tool Breakdown

Fast-growing Ramp is a popular spend management choice for companies of all sizes. With the platform’s credit cards, teams can uncover phantom subscription spending, route approval workflows, and limit spending per category. 

How AI comes into play

AI is integral to Ramp’s ability to automate and optimize business expense processes: for one, it powers Ramp’s approvals workflows, automatically routing expense requests to the appropriate managers based on company policies. Concurrently, Ramp’s AI continuously learns from user behavior, improving over time to deliver more personalized and actionable insights. This allows businesses to control spending, enhance compliance, and drive smarter financial decisions.

Brex

Tool Breakdown

Brex offers a comprehensive suite of financial services including corporate cards, cash management accounts, and expense management tools. 

How AI comes into play

Brex refers to itself as “the AI-powered spend platform” and that’s evident across its capabilities. One unique offering comes in the form of AI-generated suggestions that help to streamline GL coding and merchant mapping, all made possible by Brex’s integrations with most major ERPs. In addition, teams can embed their company policies in Brex’s platform and AI will auto-enforce custom controls across Brex cards, reimbursements, travel platforms, and invoices. 

Tools Don’t Make the Teams, Teams Make The Tools

Implementing new software is a process that should be conducted only after teams can answer several key questions. To read about this process in full, check out our piece on building out the accounting tech stack. 

The first is which gap or silo the tool aims to address, the second is who on the team will manage tool use, implementation and training, and third is how the new tool will fit within the existing tech stack. 

New applications only run as well as the teams behind them; as such, taking the adequate steps to prepare your team before fully onboarding a new product will help ensure that you see the most immediate impact after implementation. 

Having clear expectations for product output, clear communication and alignment among team members, and strong systems architecture are essential for maximizing any tool's effectiveness.