Mountain View, CA: March 1, 2024
The accounting and financial services industries are built around the needs of the client: understanding their goals, providing efficient service, and safeguarding their financial information. To successfully deliver on these objectives, family wealth managers, CPA and private equity firms, and other organizations need intelligent tools with functionality that improves key processes.
Accounting and financial reporting platforms with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) fit that need. Though much has been said about AI over the last couple of years — some of it positive, some of it negative — the reality is that AI has a valid place within these platforms largely because it provides greater accuracy and efficiency than human effort alone.
AI in accounting and financial services is particularly useful for automating workflows, reducing errors, creating greater transparency, meeting and maintaining compliance, managing risk, personalizing client products and services, and identifying new opportunities that can strengthen client relationships.
Recognizing these benefits, we previewed our plan to add AI to the Forest Systems platform last year. Here’s a closer look at how we’re using AI today to streamline fundamental document and accounting processes while ensuring safety and integrity.
Document management
AI capabilities speed up and improve document creation and management by safely and efficiently storing, retrieving, “reading,” and analyzing data from a variety of different documents. With AI, firms and managers can upload and manage documents in the Forest platform with a greater degree of confidence. The following are some examples:
Private equity firms:
Distribution cover letters with breakdowns of payments
Capital call letters
Quarterly statements
K-1 statements
Facility leasing providers:
Rental agreements
Monthly rent agreements
HOA assessments
Employees:
Employment letter agreements
W-4s
Vendors:
Invoices for services
W-9s to give data for 1099s
Data extraction & journal entry creation
Once AI learns where to find correct information, it can automatically extract complete and accurate data for each transaction when creating journal entries, reducing the risk of errors from wrong or missing information that can impact financial reporting and decision-making.
AI powers the data extraction and journal entry workflow in Forest, enabling users to:
Create a table with the financial data extracted using AI applications
Include a description and the amount
Create a debit and credit entry based on the description and amounts from the above table
Export the journal entries in a format that can be read by Forest Enter
Posting & reporting
With the AI model in place, users can review and approve journal entries to ensure all information is correct.
AI streamlines the posting and reporting workflows in Forest, enabling users to:
Import journal entries from the AI model into Forest Enter
Review or assign the accounts based on the entity Chart of Accounts
Post the entries in the entity records in Forest
Produce reports to review entries and financial results
AI with integrity
Incorporating AI applications into any accounting and financial system has to be a thoughtful endeavor. AI needs to bring efficiency and time-savings to existing processes without eliminating the need for human talent or support. Ideally, AI frees staff from the burden of paper-based processes to spend more time and attention on strategic work that can bring additional benefits and value to client relationships.
As AI capabilities and use cases continue to evolve, the accounting space is wide open for opportunity. Yet the important takeaway is that when used with integrity, AI can enable human talent to retain a critical and valued place within the ecosystem — with AI as a complement, not a threat.
To learn more about Forest Systems, book a consultation with one of our team members.