10 ways AI is transforming the CFO Suite

Here were the highlight takeaways:

🧠 1. Automating journal entries and accruals

• AI agents are being used to book journal entries directly into ledgers, including debits, credits, and reversal dates.
• Unlike NetSuite, some platforms allow these entries to be saved and reviewed live, offering transparency and auditability.

📩 2. Intelligent document processing (IDP)

• A VP of Finance with no technical background used OpenAI to build an agent that reads check PDFs, extracts payment data, and outputs CSVs — saving hours weekly.

🧠 3. Autonomous research and market scanning

• Strategic finance teams are using AI (OpenAI + Perplexity) to analyze 120+ companies from a market map for M&A, partnerships, and competition, a task that previously required weeks of analyst work, done in 15 minutes.

📊 4. Revenue recognition checks

• Controllers are using GPT to check revenue recognition logic, uploading contracts and even Deloitte’s 700-page rev rec guide to verify their own logic.
• Even when automation is in place, teams value “trust but verify” capabilities using AI as a second opinion tool.

🧮 5. Model drafting from founder notes

• AI is used to convert founder emails and conversations into financial models, offering a 70-80% head start before refining manually.

🔄 6. Transaction classification & coding

• AI mimics how a junior finance hire would learn by observing past GL code patterns, department tagging, and expense policies.
• It can classify transactions, suggest 2 or 3 coding options, and learn from human selection to improve next time.

💸 7. Cash collection & dunning optimization

• Instead of rigid rule based workflows, AI adapts based on Slack discussions or context ("don’t chase this customer yet"), enabling context aware dunning sequences.

🔗 8. Multi-step agentic workflows

• Teams are experimenting with multi-step agents that:
  • Research unknown bank transactions
  • Lookup GL coding options
  • Suggest accounting treatments based on past behaviors

📅 9. AI in month-end close

• Agents are being deployed across checklist items (e.g. “what did I miss?”, “what accruals should I add?”), helping catch audit issues before they happen.

🧬 10. Toward the AI-first finance team

• The vision: one person orchestrating a network of AI agents + fractional support, handling a $100M business.
• Challenges:
  • Human context switching
  • Edge case handling
  • Key-person risk if one person holds too much domain knowledge
• Ideal candidates: curious, technical tinkerers, not necessarily AI experts