Finance

Built an internal AI tool called Alfred with Deloitte and Nvidia. It pulls the numbers and writes the analysis for weekly performance reviews, instead of a hundred pages of slides.

Tool used Deloitte

Put AI through the invoice process, contract review for revenue recognition (when a sale counts as income), and regulatory notice handling. More than nine in ten finance staff now use AI tools in their day-to-day work.

Alphabet's finance team put AI agents on paying and matching invoices, and on treasury work — managing the company's cash. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the automation reaches small back-office teams.

Gave every assurance professional worldwide access to AI agents inside EY Canvas, its audit platform. The agents summarise audit documentation and search accounting guidance. EY expects them to reconcile documents to outside evidence this year.

What it fixes. Money leaking through software subscriptions and expense reports nobody has time to read.

Good fit when. More than a handful of departments buy software on their own cards.

Skip it if. Your card programme is already centralised and you can see every purchase before it happens.

Start with. Pull last quarter's software spend and count how many tools you did not know you had.

What it fixes. Analysts re-keying lease and revenue recognition terms (when a sale counts as revenue) out of PDFs.

Good fit when. Heavy lease and contract work, with documents scattered across systems your auditors have to trace.

Skip it if. Simple contracts where a spreadsheet still does the job without anyone complaining.

Start with. Ask your auditors where they spend the most time on your file, then start there.

What it fixes. The model only one person understands, which nobody else can check before it goes to the board.

Good fit when. You already pay for it, so try it before you buy anything else.

Skip it if. Your spreadsheets have outgrown themselves and you need a real planning system, not a better spreadsheet.

Start with. Pick your most fragile recurring model and ask it to explain the formulas back to you.

What it fixes. An AP clerk keying invoices by hand, and duplicate payments nobody catches until the audit.

Good fit when. You process enough invoices that a full-time person is doing data entry, and they arrive as PDFs and email attachments.

Skip it if. A few hundred invoices a month. The setup and the integration work cost more than the clerk's time you would save.

Start with. Count what one invoice costs you to process end to end today. Without that number you cannot judge any quote you are given.

What it fixes. Sample-based testing that checks a few hundred entries and hopes the rest look like them.

Good fit when. You own internal audit or financial control and want the whole population looked at rather than a sample.

Skip it if. Your ledger data is inconsistent between entities. It will flag your data quality, at length, before it finds any fraud.

Start with. Run it over one closed prior period where you already know what the issues were, and see whether it finds them.

What it fixes. Expense audit that samples 2% of claims, so the other 98% is trust.

Good fit when. Large travel and expense spend across several countries, where nobody can read every claim.

Skip it if. You have no written expense policy. There is nothing for it to check against, and it will not write one for you.

Start with. Write down the three policy rules broken most often today. Ask any vendor to show you those three being caught.

Reviewers split on setup cost. BlackLine users say configuration takes a long time; Adra users find it quicker but slower to load.

Also worth a look. FloQast, BlackLine Financial Close Management, Workiva, Adra by Trintech, OneStream

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Audit firms are shipping AI agents into every engagement while the PCAOB (the US audit regulator) warns the same tools erode professional skepticism.

Also worth a look. AI for drafting and summarising, AI for matching records, Fully automated posting with no human review

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The surveys disagree. Only 30% of finance chiefs expect any cut at all, and most of those expect under 10%.

Also worth a look. accounting and month-end roles, supplier payment roles, cash collection roles, tax, treasury, investor relations

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Buyers argue about audit evidence more than accuracy. A tool can get the right answer and still fail an audit because it cannot show its work.

Also worth a look. Workday Financial Test Suite, Medius, Uber's in-house build

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