More than three-quarters (76%) of accountants and bookkeepers believe that some accountancy and bookkeeping work will be automated in the next five years thanks to AI, according to new research.
However, the survey from cloud accounting software FreeAgent also found that despite this just under half (46%) of respondents believe that they will broadly be doing the same day-to-day tasks at work in five years’ time. Some 16% believe that almost all or most of their work will be automated in the same time frame.
The survey, which sought the views of accountants and bookkeepers on the future of accounting services in the age of automatisation and digitisation, also found an appetite for using AI within accountancy and bookkeeping work for repetitive tasks.
Two-thirds of respondents (66.6%) want AI to help chase clients for missing data and prevent them from entering information incorrectly or in the wrong category. And more than half (53.7%) of respondents would like to use AI for accurately auto-reconciling data in clients’ accounts, while 40.6% want to use it for the pre-analysis of new clients’ accounts.
Despite wanting to use AI in monotonous tasks, only 3.8% of accountants and bookkeepers would let a robot deal with their clients, highlighting the importance of the personal touch in the accounting/bookkeeping profession.
