59% of accountants use AI to save about 30 hours a week

A comfortable majority of accountants in the U.S. and U.K. say they use AI at work and, through the technology, have saved hours of labor per week. Accountants in particular were found to be higher than average in terms of both AI adoption and hours saved.

These were among the findings of a recent poll from business solutions provider Intapp, which also included those in the finance, legal and consulting professions. The poll did find, though, that accountants are taking to AI with more enthusiasm than other sectors. While an average of 48% of respondents across professions said they use AI at work, accountants were well above average at 59%; only those in the finance trade had a higher proportion, at 64%.

The main things professionals want to use AI for include data entry (79%), data summarization (76%), document generation (73%), recommendations (70%) and voice queries (68%). However, when it comes to the specific things an accountant does, the poll found they believe AI can automate about 45% of their manual tasks. And through automation, according to the data, accountants have already saved more time per week than other professions: 31 hours, well over the 25 hours that represents the average of all professionals. Specifically, accountants said automating data entry saved them six hours a week, using voice queries saved them five hours, automating data summarization gave them seven hours, automating document generation provided seven more hours, and generating recommendations saved them five hours. The poll noted that professionals of all stripes believe that automation will provide positive dividends.

"Consequently, more than half of respondents believe that AI will help them achieve better work-life balance," said the survey. "And 61% of respondents believe AI tools will give them time back to focus on delivering higher-level work for their clients."

The survey also found that, on average, professionals including accountants have to log in to four systems per day.

"Even if a professional knows exactly where everything is stored, it's still burdensome to work across disjointed systems. On average, staff log onto more than four internal or external applications, systems and platforms each day to access information and do their work. They must also navigate through any associated security protocols for each of those applications. This practice is time-consuming and disruptive," said the study, which noted that only finance professionals had more daily logins at five.

The Intapp survey stands in contrast with data from a survey recently published by Accounting Today. It found that while accountants were intrigued by the possibilities of AI, there were few tasks that respondents thought they could trust AI with: just researching and fact checking (55%), assisting staff with routine inquiries (55%) and information reports for internal use (51%). Fewer than half trusted it with any other task, from creating promotional and marketing materials (48%) to employee training and onboarding (35%) to regulatory reporting and/or SEC filings (13%) to making layoff decisions (2%). The Accounting Today survey found 12% don't trust AI to be mostly-to-wholly responsible for anything at all.

We also found that accountants are more concerned about the pace of AI advancement than other professions. Our data shows 70% of accountants said AI was evolving too quickly, versus 60% of wealth managers, 57% of bankers, 53% of fintech workers and 52% of insurance professionals.