Collection · 7 articles
AI and client data for accountants.
An accounting practice cannot adopt a tool that reads client mail on the strength of a feature list. The questions are not the ones a marketing team would ask: what happens to a client's financial data, who can see it, whether it trains somebody's model, what the engagement letter should say, and what the Code of Professional Conduct expects of you when software is doing part of the work. These guides take those in the order a firm actually meets them, starting with whether it is safe at all and ending with a written policy short enough that people follow it. Where the honest answer is that it depends on the vendor, the guide says which question to put to them.
-
Is it safe to use AI with client financial data?
Why the answer turns on what the data is, what the AI is allowed to do with it, and the confidentiality lines inside a practice that no software can see.
-
Using an AI inbox without breaking confidentiality
Confidentiality in a practice ran partly on the cost of reading. An AI inbox removes that cost by design, and here is what to put in its place.
-
What to put in your engagement letter about AI
The letter can say how your firm works and who stays responsible. The consent most firms try to put in it belongs on a sheet of its own.
-
AI and the CPA Code of Professional Conduct
The AICPA Code has no AI rule and does not need one. Connecting an AI tool is the outsourcing question, and three interpretations already answer it.
-
Questions to ask any AI tool about your data
The list is the easy half. What decides whether the exercise was worth anything is what you accept as an answer, and that is a skill you already have.
-
Keeping client data out of AI model training
No vendor promises your mail never reaches a model. The promise worth having is narrower, and retention decides more of it than the training clause does.
-
A simple AI policy a small firm will actually use
A template hands you principles nobody can follow. What a small practice needs is a short record of five decisions, and one rule for the tool nobody bought.