The majority of accountants are comfortable with technology taking over jobs previously done by people, according to a new report.
Despite oft-cited concerns that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will displace human accountants, the overwhelming majority (72%) of respondents to a recent survey by Accounting Today and its parent company, Arizent, are comfortable using tech for work that traditionally required human effort.
What’s more, almost two-thirds (64%) say that their firm has already implemented technology for one of those tasks or jobs.
And more than half (53%) reported that AI specifically is already making them more effective, and just under half (46%) believe that accounting firms will need fewer employees because of it.
The AT Role of AI and Emerging Technology survey was fielded online during July 2025 among 201 accountants. All respondents have insight into or responsibility for decisions around what technology is in use at the firm. (For more from the survey, see “
Comfortable, but not enjoying AI
A surprisingly large portion of the accountants responding to the survey said that they are “mostly” (46%) or “totally” (26%) comfortable using tech for a job that traditionally required human effort.
And while around half agreed that AI is making them more effective (54%) and that it is helping their firms expand their capacity (49%), while also making it likely that they’ll need fewer employees because of it (46%), only a third (36%) were ready to say that AI is making their jobs more enjoyable.
AI is already replacing people
Not only are accountants comfortable with the idea of giving human work to technology – most of them are currently working on it. A fifth of respondents (19%) have already done this, and almost half (45%) are considering it, while a third (35%) have ruled it out.
It’s worth noting that not all of this falls into the dreaded category of AI taking accountants’ jobs: Any form of automation would count here, from letting OCR handle data entry to streamlining bank reconciliations up to literally replacing human beings with AI.
If there are no people, are you taking work away from them?
While a majority of firms in all size categories are at least considering handing human work over to technology, it is far more common at large firms (those with over 50 employees). Since those larger firms also tend to report the biggest problems finding staff, it seems like less a question of cutting headcount, and more about filling spots that would otherwise be empty.
Exploring roles for AI
While the conventional wisdom suggests that firms start using AI in non-critical functions, by far the most common area where firms are using AI and seeing benefits is in research and fact-checking (43%), with client communications coming in a distant second (24%).
Still, the majority of firms were interested in exploring AI’s potential for all the categories examined. The only types of work that mustered large cohorts of naysayers were marketing, with 45% saying they’re not exploring AI’s possibilities, detecting and mitigating fraud (43%) and employee training and onboarding (45%).
AI is not just a big firm’s game
Given the investment that AI can often (though not always) require, it should come as no surprise that in almost all types of work, large firms (those with over 50 employees) should be out in front in terms of adopting it.
But smaller firms are still very active. Over half (51%) of sole proprietors reported using AI for research and fact checking, and a third (37%) for client communications.
Time to upskill with AI
Regardless of how comfortable they are with AI replacing people, or the varied work areas they aim to implement it in, everyone agrees that developing skills with this kind of emerging tech is going to matter more over the next few years, with over half (57%) saying it will be “much more important,” and a third (35%) saying it will be “somewhat” more important.
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