How Artificial Intelligence Helps with Accounting

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming organizations, and the accounting sector is no exception. Financial transactions are increasingly complex. Regulations are constantly evolving. Vast amounts of data are generated every day. Amid all that, ML offers innovative solutions that enhance accuracy, efficiency, and decision-making in accounting. In this blog, we discuss how artificial intelligence helps with accounting, especially for redefining the future of financial processes.

Enterprise Finance AI: OneStream's Commitment to the Office of the CFO

To speed the adoption of AI for finance and accounting, OneStream is committed to ensuring the Office of the CFO can obtain material value from AI and GenAI development. OneStream's approach to AI, called Enterprise Finance AI, focuses on empowering finance and accounting teams to fully leverage AI’s potential. This commitment improves workflows, ensures accuracy, and delivers meaningful insights.

Enterprise Finance AI includes three critical areas AI must meet to speed adoption and significant return on investment for the Office of the CFO:

• AI must be trusted

Finance leaders need to trust the data they work with. With Enterprise Finance AI, OneStream ensures both first-party and third-party data are verified and provide 100% transparency into how the insights and answers were formed. Having trusted data ensures AI models built on the data are reliable and can be trusted to provide accurate insights.

• AI must be secure

Security is paramount in the finance and accounting world, especially when dealing with sensitive financial data. OneStream’s AI solutions are built on a secure, enterprise-grade platform, providing accounting teams with assurance that their data is safe and compliant with regulatory standards.

• AI must be purpose-built

AI is most powerful when seamlessly unified into existing workflows. Accordingly, OneStream’s AI solutions are designed specifically for finance and accounting workflows. This tailored design allows accounting teams to take advantage of sophisticated AI models without needing to be data science experts.

How Artificial Intelligence Helps with Accounting: The Power of Quantitative AI and Generative AI

OneStream’s Sensible AI portfolio provides a set of purpose-built AI solutions tailored for accounting teams. Here are a few of those solutions:

Sensible AI Library: Embeds pre-built AI models across all workflows within OneStream. These models allow reporting and close & consolidations teams to reduce manual and error-prone tasks using capabilities such as AI-powered anomaly detection and fuzzy matching.

• Anomaly Detection

One of the routines within the AI Library is anomaly detection. Anomaly detection, in the context of machine learning, is a function that identifies data points that significantly deviate from the expected pattern within a dataset. When ingesting data into OneStream, anomaly detection identifies unusual patterns or discrepancies. First, OneStream’s unified platform connects to any open system, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, bank feeds, accounting software, spreadsheets, and other systems. Then ML-powered anomaly detection helps ensure the data is accurate and complete when being ingested from different systems, preventing errors in the final consolidated financial statements. Thus, anomaly detection enables users to elevate processes with more advanced, exception-based analysis.

• Fuzzy Matching

Within the AI library, fuzzy matching automatically identifies records or transactions that are similar but not identical, such as misspellings or formatting differences. This ML feature is particularly useful where data inconsistencies occur, such as transaction matching, account reconciliations, and intercompany processes. By allowing for approximate matches, fuzzy matching reduces manual review. And in doing so, the ML feature increases efficiency and automatic matches for improved accuracy, compliance, and decision-making.

Sensible GenAI: A purpose-built chatbot inside the OneStream platform. This solution brings business context to the platform’s secure, financially intelligent data. In turn, tedious, time-consuming tasks — such as creating reports, researching, and entering commentary to explain variances — have been reduced. Instead, just a simple conversation between a user and a financially intelligent, secure chatbot is needed.

Quantitative AI and Generative AI — A Winning Combination

The combination of quantitative AI capabilities and the power of generative AI will create a significant shift in how accounting teams operate. With generative AI, accounting professionals can interact with their data more intuitively, asking complex questions and receiving insightful answers in real-time. This capability accelerates decision-making processes and helps reduce the bottlenecks often associated with data interpretation and reporting.

By unifying generative AI into existing finance workflows, OneStream is positioned to enhance the performance of every employee in the finance function. Mundane tasks are automated to enable more strategic thinking. This synergy allows finance teams to operate at their best, contributing more effectively to the overall success of the business.

Unlocking the Future of Accounting with Artificial Intelligence

The future of finance is increasingly AI-driven. OneStream’s Sensible AI portfolio is not only improving the speed and accuracy of accounting processes — but also fundamentally transforming how accounting teams operate. By automating routine tasks and providing deep, actionable insights, AI is freeing up accounting professionals to focus on what matters most: driving business performance to Take Finance Further.

Learn More

To learn more, visit the OneStream AI Hub.