System agnostic AI the next frontier for accounting firms: Dexterous Group

With accounting firms and organisations typically using a multitude of differencing accounting software providers all with different AI features, some firms are now looking at how AI can be used to reduce the time spent navigating between the different systems, explains Dexterous Group founder and managing director Nick Urry.

Speaking to Accounting Times, Urry said at this point most accounting firms have become AI-enabled businesses in some shape or form as accounting software platforms roll out more and more AI features.

"It’s like the old theory that the rising tide lifts all boats and so you're going to become an AI-enabled firm because you've got AI built into the software you're using whether that's your CRM, your accounting system, workflow tools or project management tools," he said.

"The AI is being passed through their existing systems."

However, some accounting firms are now looking to leverage AI that is system agnostic and can work across many different workflows, he said.

"If you think about the role of a junior accountant or a junior bookkeeper, they work across different systems and AI can be used to manage that kind of role and navigate between the different systems."

"An example could be pulling an invoice from an email inbox such as Outlook or Gmail and putting it into an accounting system. So the Xero will have some AI, the Outlook has AI and that'll only become more and more prevalent but it's unlikely that these AI bots will talk to each other."

Urry said there is huge value in having AI that is system agnostic and can work across various software providers.

"Businesses and firms at the forefront of this kind of usage are engaging a consultant to look at workflows and remove some of those more manual, tedious and time-consuming processes that humans are doing today to streamline that and elevate the level the employees are working at," he said.

Urry said there is a wide range of other areas where AI is having significant benefits, such as reconciling payments.

"Where we've seen some success recently is where companies are using an ERP, that might have outgrown Xero and they need to reconcile payments received from customers. They might be in a high volume industry with low dollar value [amounts] and have hundreds of payments received overnight that they're trying to match to invoices."

"At the moment they might have two to three accounts receivable people and they're matching them one by one but often the customer doesn't use the right invoice number or they may not use one at all and so there's still a human needed in that loop to do that quality control and mange the executions.

"Many systems now will match the one payment to the one invoice automatically and it's just a verification process but where we can see AI being used is where there's one payment that settles five or six invoices, for example."