An accounting team can process 500 invoices faster with AI and still lose time on the project. The reviewer may have to reopen source documents, correct false matches, reconstruct missing support, and chase exceptions that went to the wrong queue.
Judge the pilot by the whole workflow, including review and correction. Good early candidates have familiar inputs, rules the team already uses, visible exceptions, and an answer that can be checked before it reaches the ledger. A difficult accounting conclusion does not become a good candidate because software can produce a fluent answer.
The AICPA and CIMA AI resources for accounting and finance give finance teams a starting reference for responsible use. In practice, responsibility stays with the people who approve entries, payments, filings, and management reports.
Begin with the work on the desk
Choose one recurring workflow and sit beside the employee who completes it. Follow the email, spreadsheet, accounting system, approval queue, and any manual notes. Record where information enters, who changes it, what rules they apply, and which exceptions take the most time.
Do not start with a software demonstration. A demonstration usually shows the clean path. Your process includes a vendor that changed its invoice format, a credit memo without a purchase order, a duplicate sent to two inboxes, and a manager who approves by chat.
Write down what a correct result looks like. If two experienced employees would handle the same item differently, the team needs a policy decision before it needs AI. If the answer is clear but the employee spends hours copying fields or checking routine matches, there may be a useful test.
The NIST AI Risk Management Framework uses governing, mapping, measuring, and managing as core functions. Applied to one accounting workflow, those functions lead to practical questions: Who owns the result? Which records may the tool read? How will the team count errors and review time? Which condition sends an item to a person?
A bounded intake task is easier to inspect
Invoice intake can work as a first pilot when the scope stays narrow. Limit the test to one mailbox and a defined group of vendors. Ask the tool to propose the vendor name, invoice number, date, purchase order, and amount. Keep every field in a review queue until an employee compares it with the original invoice.
Build the test set from ordinary work, not a folder of perfect PDFs. Include poor scans, handwritten notes, credit memos, missing fields, duplicate invoices, and vendors with similar names. Track which documents fail and how they fail. A 95 percent extraction rate says little if the remaining errors concentrate in high value invoices or bypass review.
Retain the source document and a record of any change. IRS Publication 583 describes invoices, receipts, account statements, and canceled checks as support for entries in the books. An extraction tool can organize that support. It should not separate the proposed entry from the document that allows someone to verify it.
Matching works when the rule is already settled
Transaction matching is another possible candidate. The accounting team might approve an exact amount and reference match, then require a reviewer to handle conflicts. The system can propose the pair and show both records side by side. It should not bury an unresolved item because the match score looked high.
Limited cleanup can follow a similar design. The tool may standardize dates to an approved format or flag likely duplicates while preserving the original value. The employee can then see the proposed change rather than trusting an invisible correction.
Drafting needs tighter limits than many teams expect. AI may prepare variance comments or a collection note, but the report owner has to trace every number and explanation to the accounting system. Confident prose is especially risky here because it can make a guess look finished.
Leave accounting policy, unusual transactions, material estimates, fraud conclusions, payment approval, and ledger posting with qualified people. AI can gather support and surface an item for attention. The accountable employee makes the decision.
Price the control work into the pilot
A false label in an internal queue creates rework. A false match used for payment can move cash. Give those outcomes different permissions, thresholds, and approvals.
For public companies, PCAOB Auditing Standard 2201 addresses reliable financial reporting and internal control. The specific requirements apply in that setting, but the operating lesson travels well: adding a tool does not remove the need for access controls, evidence, approval, or separation of duties.
Review the vendor's data terms before loading records. Confirm what the service stores, who can access submitted information, and whether inputs may be used to train a model. Restrict access to the records needed for the test. Employees also need a written rule for information that cannot be entered.
Count the time spent preparing data, reviewing output, correcting errors, and documenting approval. A fast extraction step can be expensive if an experienced accountant must inspect every field without any reduction in total effort.
Replay work the team has already approved
Use a completed period with a known answer. Run the tool outside production on one entity, vendor group, or report. Compare every result with the accepted record, then investigate every difference.
Track false matches, missed exceptions, unsupported explanations, reviewer minutes, and the input conditions behind each failure. The NIST Generative AI Profile provides further guidance on evaluating and managing generative AI risk. Your operating procedure should name the reviewer, rejection rules, evidence retained, and conditions that pause the pilot.
A useful test leaves the accounting team with a clearer process even when the tool does not pass. It exposes unclear rules, undocumented workarounds, and exceptions that lacked an owner. Hope Financial Consulting helps teams map accounting workflows, select bounded uses, replay historical work, define human controls, document the approved process, and train the employees responsible for it.
For a first conversation, bring one workflow that absorbs too much staff time. Talk with Hope Financial Consulting about the current process, including the review work that happens after the software produces an answer.