AI Document Reading and Answer Desk for Accounting Practices
Automated Document Reading and Ledger Posting
Supplier invoices, receipts and bank or card statements are read into fields for posting to the ledger. A staff member approves each batch before records are posted to the ledger, and posting is designed so that a repeated run does not post the same invoice twice. A client's batch of photographed receipts is sorted, de-duplicated and screened for unusable images before amounts are read. Invoices that continue onto a second page are read in full, with credits recorded as negative values. The coding of an invoice depends on which client it is filed under. Scanned statements are converted into dated rows with amounts and descriptions for coding.
Client Communications and Reporting
Tax agency letters are read for client, period and amount, and filed with a task opened for follow-up. Client emails are filed to the matching client, a task is created, and unclear items are flagged for a staff member. Outstanding client documents for a period are identified from what has been received, and a reminder is sent. Drafts of engagement letters, management letters and routine client letters are generated from the firm's approved wording, for partner review. The month-end pack is compiled from the ledger and practice system on a schedule. If a data source has not updated, the month-end pack states this rather than repeating earlier figures.
Internal Answer Desk
Staff can ask a question in Teams and receive an answer that names the source file. The answer desk searches documents already held in SharePoint or the practice system; it does not keep a separate copy. Answer desk access is configured in the identity system before any content is indexed.
Security, Accuracy and Implementation
The system runs in a Microsoft or AWS account owned by the firm, and client files remain in that account. Client documents are not used to train the model; each document is read when it is processed. Each request is logged against a named user. The first build covers the single document type that takes the most staff hours, tested on a sample of a few hundred real documents. Extraction accuracy is measured against documents with known correct values during the build, and accuracy is measured again when a supplier changes its invoice layout. A first build for one document type normally takes three to six weeks. Review queues, capacity and spend are sized for the peak period from January to April.
Contact Us
CloudCentric is a managed IT provider in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, serving businesses across Charleston and the Lowcountry. Contact us by phone at (844) 422-7000.