Accountants and Auditors
Automation risk
High Risk (61-80%): Jobs in this category face a significant threat from automation, as many of their tasks can be easily automated using current or near-future technologies.
More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.
User poll
Our visitors have voted that it's quite likely this occupation will be replaced. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 71% chance of automation.
What do you think the risk of automation is?
What is the likelihood that this occupation will be replaced by robots or AI in the next 20 years?
Growth
The number of 'Accountants and Auditors' job openings is expected to rise 5.6% by 2031
Total employment, and estimated job openings
Updated projections are due Sep 2023.
Wages
In 2022, the median annual wage for 'Accountants and Auditors' was $78,000, or $37.50 per hour
'Accountants and Auditors' were paid 68.4% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $46,310
Wages over time
Volume
As of 2022 there were 1,402,420 people employed as Accountants and Auditors within the United States.
This represents around 0.95% of the employed workforce across the country.
Put another way, around 1 in 105 people are employed as Accountants and Auditors.
Job description
Examine, analyze, and interpret accounting records to prepare financial statements, give advice, or audit and evaluate statements prepared by others. Install or advise on systems of recording costs or other financial and budgetary data.
SOC Code: 13-2011.00
Resources
Can ChatGPT pass an accounting interview?
Here's a video from Certified Accountant Kostadin Ristovski on Chat GPT and accounting, where he asks it questions which an accountant should know the answer to, he's not impressed!
If you're thinking of starting a new career, or looking to change jobs, we've created a handy job search tool which might just help you land that perfect new role.
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Comments
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Not a black-and-white issue.
Imho accountants will just become business analysts or advisors.
Y’all need to chill cause accounting is here forever.
If an AI can do your job, you simply just suck as an accountant.
Anyone plz reply, because I will decide to go for SAP FI CO coaching or not?
You may be able to automate a supplier voucher to a known cost description and automate its processing but as soon as you change suppliers or a supplier provides multiple products or services, a human will need to recode.
R&D, mining, construction etc. all require significant judgement to reflect the financial reporting position which cannot be automated.
I'm not saying private accountants will be replaced entirely but there's simply no need to hire tons of them when a few can do the job just as well. Can't say the same about public though. They may still provide some use.
Are you guys for real? The Big 4 has been adopting lots and lots and lots of A.I and tech assisted audit techniques. And what has been the result?
Fraud has grown to unprecedented levels. Pls read the book "Audit & Accountancy pitfalls". Even basic teeming & lading frauds are missed by big 4 audit teams. With all their logic and A.I.
Lol. Now y'all want A.I to be the next generation auditors? Who the heck told you people financial reporting & Auditing are logical & scientific?
Fraud at times may be as easy as observing the stutter of an director when asked an uncomfortable question by the audit team.
So when A.I logic fails to the dubious genius of fraudsters who will be held responsible? The robo auditors of the institute of Chartered A.I?
Come off it people. Accountancy has been threatened with extinction as far back as the advent of adding machines and bookkeeping software.
The big with all their noise about A.I taking over are still at college campuses hustling naive students. Hmmmph.
1. Big 4 is in the auditing, tax and consultancy business. As a staff, I notice that Big 4 automation consists of designing "beautiful & modern-looking" dashboards, applications and software to simplify their "data presentation" for paying clients and staffs. E.g. client can login to Big 4 Software to "live-view" how many of their expatriate staffs income tax return have been filed in the form of graphs and charts.
2. That said, Big 4 certainly did not focus on creating a software to self-destruct (i.e. automate away their huge billing hours of auditing or tax compliance manpower) their own billion dollars international business model.
3. In fact, all the major accounting software that are automating away manpower - none are created by Big 4. Instead these automation software are created by SAP, Xero, Quickbooks, etc.
4. It would be crazy to think that Big 4 would want to automate themselves out of their giant manpower billing hours, considering how tough it is to move into a new industry or business model that can generate that same massive amount of revenue. E.g. Google themselves have failed to break into the mobile phone industry despite being a tech giant. Big 4 accounting firm partners and CEOs are made up of 90% accounting grads, same as all their audit & tax staffs - which technology company do you think Big 4 can immediately transition into?
5. If I were the Big 4 accounting partners (i.e. age 40 or so whom had slowly climbed up the corporate ladder of minimum 8 bottom levels/positions), I would spend the next 25 years sucking up whatever bonuses and salaries I can - instead of killing my own business model - it is a good bet.
6. Software companies like SAP will have to generate year-to-year revenue and cut out some portion of their net profit into R&D to automate away the accounting processes over time - hence the slow automation process. I stand correct of course.
Auditing can benefit from automation of repetitive tasks that are done the same way no matter who is doing them or where or when they are carried out. However, a good auditor is like a detective who can spot anomalies or detect fraud and conduct investigations to delve deeper into the situation.
Putting fraud detection solely into the hands of algorithms or AI is irresponsible on the part of the auditor. Instead, automate the portions of work that can save resources so that auditors have the bandwidth to conduct proper audits and investigations.
The sad thing is that savings from automation are usually not reinvested back into the function, but rather go directly to the bottom line.
But when seismic financial malpractices lead to another stock market crash as in 2008 or another ENRON and WORLDCOM scandal, will A.I be held responsible?
You really believe A.I will give us assurance about the integrity of financial statements in future? Auditing involves much more than numerical skills. Fraud at times involves investigation beyond the books. Psychological evidence may well need to be obtained.
I think the team relegated Accountancy to bookkeeping and routine tax prep.
I took an accounting class and was bored of it. Because it's not analytical and doesn't involve understanding complex concepts. It's definitely something I want to take out of the college curriculum so we can focus on classes that enrich our understanding of the world rather than think of transactions, debits and credits and where they go.
I took 2 classes in accounting and barely passed but I aced theoretical mathematics and economics classes, so I have this bias about accounting. I think there things u remember for it will eventually burn you out because you are not using the side of your brain that involves complex thought.
However, saying such words is irresponsible, especially for those potential accounting students. We all know Big4 are adopting AI very fast to replace our employee. What happens if those graduate don't even have an offer after graduation? Think about that.
I guess Audits could be done with GANs? I.e. you feed it correct books versus fake books versus incompetently prepared books and it learns to recognize each (?)
P.S. I thought the Oxford study showed up the % of tasks in a job that could be automated. This seems to say it’s a 94% of chance of “computerization”. What level of computerization occurs? Few/no jobs will be 0 or 100%.
I think some prospectus research, the legal advice/business development portion, and some investigative portion of audits can’t be automated. I’d say like 70%-80% of tasks.
It could be come a hard profession to get started in because the basic processes are automated but the non-entry level functions of explaining why the numbers are what they are will be hard to automate.
2. System interfacing allows vendors to enter invoices to ERPs by them selves
3. Robotics process Automation, in automates almost anything one can do in a system
The profession will die.
The only thing preventing comps from achieving it is the insane amounts of computing power needed required for the current state of AI to progress to the subsequent stages.
With the rise of quantum computing and meta-learning, that won't be for very long.
P.S. Actuaries are the best woop woop
In their recent book, The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly, Ian Gow and Stuart Kells contend:
“The probability that some types of accounting, auditing, and tax jobs will be automated in the next decade is 100%. The repetitive work of auditing is well-suited to robots. Large swaths of audit and advisory work can be replaced by smart algorithms and cognitive artificial intelligence.”
I wholly agree - but it's important to add that by the end of the decade, the race will have already been run. The profession will largely be done-for within five years; something I've written and spoken about extensively (and as recently as today):
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6529673667536830464
These men and women obtain plenty of management and marketing skills that make them useful. Accounting has been an ever-growing field for several decades, and many people still prefer human interaction with an accountant than automation.
While I respect your opinion, I believe that "Highly Likely" is not possible in this scenario.
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