3 Ways AI Can Help Manage Your Business Accounts

Having their own independent business is a dream for many people, and quitting traditional employment structures to pursue it can be incredibly exciting. The liberation and sense of pride that comes from a successful venture of your own is exhilarating, but you will face challenges along the way. 

One unfortunate challenge for any budding entrepreneur is getting to grips with, well, the business side of business – the kind of administrative tasks that all businesses have to complete and which have nothing to do with your products or service. Many of these tasks relate to accounting. 

Fortunately, we live in a world where AI is growing smarter every day, and more and more routine tasks are becoming automated as it does. Keeping on top of your business accounts is full of time-consuming, repetitive tasks that are ripe for automation. These are the ones which AI could be helping you with right now. 

Accounting areas where AI can be helpful

But wait, isn’t this what accountants are for? Not exactly. You will still need professional accountancy services to handle big, complicated tasks like getting your tax return or any public filings ready. But when you need up-to-date information to make a quick business decision, or you want to look at trends in your sales or spending, it is your responsibility to gather the information you need to do that. 

AI can be a big help when it comes to these kinds of daily accounting tasks, which can include:

1.Categorising and tracking expenses: If your business is successful, you might handle thousands of transactions every month. If you are relying on manual data entry, this can be an enormous struggle, not to mention consuming a lot of valuable time and being prone to errors.

There are already AI solutions which can track expenses in real time and sort them into predefined categories like travel, meals, and accommodation. It can even analyse spending patterns to help spot fraud or highlight areas where money could be saved. 

2.Invoicing and billing: This is an area where automation can greatly improve the efficiency of your business. In fact, some estimates say that automated invoicing and billing can make workflow up to seven times faster. How? Because computers can follow the same steps as humans but much quicker and with fewer errors. 

Whereas it might take a human several minutes or even hours to match an invoice with a purchase order, seek approval to make a payment, then actually make it, it would take AI much less time. The AI also has the added benefit of analysing your invoicing and billing process to suggest areas of improvement. 

3.Bookkeeping: There is software on the market today which means that even business owners with no accounting knowledge are able to keep their own books. Many of the software offerings now include AI features to help business owners spot sales and spending patterns that they might have otherwise overlooked. 

There are many digital tools and software available which can help your business. They are especially effective in areas like accounting, where being accurate with numbers is important. They can do these types of tasks faster and better than people, freeing up your time to focus on keeping your customers happy.