- Sorting work into "AI drafts", "a person checks" and "a person decides"
- A task-by-task table for admin and accounting
- What to decide first: who checks, what may be entered, what gets recorded
The short answer
Asking "can AI automate accounting?" will not get you a useful answer, because it treats a whole job as one thing. Once you break a job into tasks, it becomes clear which parts AI can take on and which parts should stay with people. A good rule of thumb: drafting, sorting, reading and suggesting matches are easy to hand to AI, while confirming amounts, making payments, interpreting rules or laws and sending things outside the company are decisions for people.
Sort the work into three kinds
Automation here means handing work that people did by hand over to a system. Back-office tasks such as admin and accounting are easier to sort when you use three groups.
- AI drafts: drafting text, sorting documents, reading fields, suggesting matches
- A person checks: comparing what AI produced against the original documents or internal rules
- A person decides: confirming amounts and account codes, making payments, interpreting rules and laws, sending anything outside the company
AI output can contain mistakes even when it looks convincing. So the harder a mistake would be to undo, the more firmly that task belongs in the "a person decides" group.
Split back-office tasks into three
- First drafts of text
- Sorting documents, reading fields
- Suggesting matches
- Compare AI output with the original documents
- Compare with internal rules
- Final amounts and accounts
- Making payments
- Interpreting rules, sending outside
Sorting admin and accounting tasks
For example, imagine a company of about ten people where one person handles both admin and accounting. Sorting their common tasks might look like this. The table illustrates the approach; it will not fit every company.
| Task | Easy to hand to AI | A person checks or decides |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving invoices | Reading supplier, date and amount with AI OCR | Comparing the amount read against the original |
| Bookkeeping entries | Suggesting account codes | Confirming the code, judging unclear transactions |
| Matching payments | Suggesting which payment matches which invoice | Judging and confirming items that do not match |
| Expense claims | Reading receipts, flagging items that may break the rules | Approval, interpreting the rules |
| Internal notices | Drafting the text | Checking dates and steps, deciding to send |
| Staff questions | Drafting answers based on internal rules | Answering questions the rules do not cover |
| Payments | Preparing a list of scheduled payments | Approving and making the payment |
Reading documents with AI OCR and suggesting bookkeeping entries save more effort the more items you handle. Payments, on the other hand, should stop at preparing the list; approval and execution stay with a person. When matching incoming payments to invoices, the items that do not match exactly are the ones that most need human judgment.
What to decide before handing anything over
Japan's AI Guidelines for Business, published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, ask organizations that use AI in their work to understand the accuracy and level of risk of AI output before using it, and to take care not to enter personal or confidential information inappropriately. Before starting, decide these three things.
- For each task, who does the human check
- Which information may be entered into AI, and which may not (such as salaries or home addresses)
- Where to keep AI's suggestions and the corrections people made
This article does not cover the requirements for keeping books and documents as data. For matters such as storing electronic transaction data, check the National Tax Agency's guidance on the Electronic Books Preservation Act.
In summary
Checklist
- Did you break each job into tasks?
- Did you decide, for each task, whether AI drafts, a person checks, or a person decides?
- Are payments and confirming amounts in the "a person decides" group?
- Did you name who checks each task?
- Did you separate information that may be entered from information that may not?
One thing to check today
Write down five tasks you are responsible for, and put each one into "AI drafts", "a person checks" or "a person decides".