AI seems to be everywhere at the moment. Depending on what you read, it's either going to transform every business on the planet or steal everybody's job by next Tuesday.
The reality for most finance teams is rather less dramatic, but potentially much more useful.
AI is already appearing in everyday accounting and financial management software, helping with everything from processing invoices to spotting unusual transactions. Used properly, it isn't about replacing your finance team. It's about taking some of the repetitive work away and making it easier to get useful information from the financial data you already have.
So, where can it actually help?
Manual data entry is probably nobody's favourite part of working in finance.
Invoices arrive by email, somebody has to extract the information, enter it into the finance system, check the supplier and coding, then send it through the appropriate approval process. AI can increasingly help with that first stage by reading documents, extracting information and helping to automate routine tasks.
Sage has a useful overview of how AI is being used in accounting, including some of the ways technology can help reduce repetitive finance work.
The idea isn't to remove people from the process. It's to let your finance team spend more time checking the things that genuinely need their attention, rather than typing information somebody has already typed somewhere else.
This is where AI gets particularly interesting.
A finance team might process thousands of transactions. Finding the one that doesn't look quite right isn't always easy. AI can analyse large amounts of financial information and flag unusual transactions, discrepancies or patterns for somebody to investigate.
It doesn't mean the AI has discovered something terrible. It means it's spotted something worth a human taking a closer look at.
Sage is already introducing AI powered finance capabilities across its products, including tools designed to help finance teams analyse information and automate routine work.
This is probably one of the developments we're most interested in.
Traditionally, getting information out of finance software means knowing which report to run, applying the right filters and, quite often, exporting everything into Excel afterwards.
AI is beginning to change that. Imagine being able to ask, “Why were expenses higher this month?” or “Which areas are slowing down month end?” and have your finance system help analyse the underlying information.
Sage CoPilot is one example of Sage bringing AI into everyday business software, with the aim of making information easier to access and reducing some of the manual work involved.
For businesses considering Sage Intacct, AI and automation are becoming an increasingly interesting part of modern financial management.
AI can also help finance teams identify trends in historic information and use them to support forecasting and cash management.
That doesn't mean asking AI what your bank balance will be next Christmas and treating the answer as fact!
It's more about identifying patterns and bringing useful information to your attention earlier. Combine that with good financial reporting and dashboards, and finance can spend less time explaining what happened last month and more time helping the business decide what happens next.
Financial information is sensitive. Using AI doesn't mean uploading your management accounts, payroll information or customer data into whichever free AI tool happens to be open in your browser.
Businesses need to think about what information they're sharing, where it is going, who can access it and whether the tool they're using is appropriate for confidential company information.
The Information Commissioner's Office provides guidance around AI and data protection, while the National Cyber Security Centre has useful information about AI and security.
The UK Government also provides guidance on using AI responsibly as the technology becomes a bigger part of everyday business.
There still needs to be human oversight too. AI can analyse information, highlight something unusual and make suggestions. Somebody who understands the business should still be checking the answer and making the decision.
The most useful AI probably isn't the cleverest looking tool. It's the one quietly removing a job your finance team currently spends hours doing manually.
That might be processing invoices, spotting unusual transactions, helping with month end, improving cash visibility or simply making financial information easier to find.
And that's probably the best place to start. Rather than asking, “How can we use AI?”, look at the jobs your finance team repeatedly does manually and ask whether technology could make any of them easier.
If you're already using Sage 200, or you're interested in seeing what AI and automation look like in Sage Intacct, have a chat with us.
You can also take a look at our Sage 200 Modules and Sage 200 Training pages. Sometimes the first step isn't buying something new at all. It's finding out whether the technology you've already got could be doing more of the boring bits for you 😊
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