AI will change accountancy, but the firms that benefit most will be the ones that rethink how their people, processes and capacity fit together.
If AI is going to improve productivity, free up senior people and help firms deliver better client service, then firms need to look at the work around it. Who is doing the production work? Where are managers getting stuck? Which people have the time and headspace to test better ways of working? And are your best accountants spending enough time with clients, or are they still buried in files?
The upcoming Chartered Accountants Ireland’s 2026 AI Conference says a lot about where the profession is heading. The conversation has moved beyond whether AI matters. The focus now is governance, productivity, practical tools and how AI starts to affect the way accountants work daily.
The firms that benefit most from AI will not simply be the firms with the newest tools. They will be the firms that redesign how their people work. And this is such a big question for firms that most – rather than think about it, continue in their day-to-day.
The best way to eat an elephant is one spoonful at a time, so here are some simple tasks you could work on over the summer months to implement a small, but powerful improvement using AI/Automation so when you return from summer holidays, you are starting September one step closer to being a firm of the future.
Below are more details on how to implement these tasks:
Most firms already have people who could lead a better use of AI – and they are usually not in IT. They are senior accountants, managers and experienced production staff who know where time is lost.
The problem for these folks, if they take on this role, is that they are already busy.
So, if a firm is serious about AI, it has to take some work off their desks. Not all of it. Just enough to give them space to improve one part of how the firm works.
While it is important to pick people who are interested in AI, they also need to be people who understand the work. The right people are close enough to the process to see where time is wasted (or too much time is spent) but experienced enough to know what can realistically be changed without creating quality issues.
Pick one to three people and give them a clear role, not a vague instruction to “look at AI”. Give them a specific brief like “find repeatable tasks that waste time across the firm and can be improved using AI, automation or a better process design”.
This is where many firms will fall down. They will pick good people, give them responsibility for AI or process improvement, and then leave all their existing work on their desk.
That won’t work.
If you want senior accountants and managers to improve the firm, you need to create time for them. That means giving them proper support. Not a junior who needs constant mentoring or a loose outsourcing arrangement.
This is where Teams PLUS can help.
We can provide you with a strong qualified accountant at 50% of the salary cost of hiring locally. Someone who can take on accounts preparation, reconciliations, schedules, follow-up work, file clean-up and first-draft working papers. Your local worker (the one who is now on the AI working group) still controls quality and judgement, but they no longer spend the same time on production alone.
A Teams Plus accountant can work inside your firm’s systems, follow the firm’s processes and support the senior accountant directly. The aim is not to replace the Irish team. The aim is to give your best people more room to do the work only they can do.
For a firm starting out, this does not need to mean hiring lots of people. Start with adding one or two strong ‘Number 2s’ to sit alongside these people. Move enough production work to the support accountant to create proper thinking time for the senior person.
This is when your investment in driving AI efficiencies becomes practical.
If you move decisively now, by June the working group will be in the middle of conversations with the teams doing the work every day.
Not just partners or managers. Talk to the people preparing accounts, chasing clients, reviewing files, managing bookkeeping, dealing with VAT, preparing management accounts and answering repeated queries.
The important point is that the task does not need to be huge. A task that saves 2 hours per client across 100 clients creates 200 hours of extra capacity. That is more than 5 working weeks, or almost 27 working days, based on a 37.5-hour week. Find three tasks like that and the saving is 600 hours. That is 16 working weeks, or close to four months of working time. That is not theory. That is real capacity being built that allows you take on more clients in the future without further increasing headcount.
Once the list is built, don’t try to fix everything. Pick one or two areas where the saving is meaningful and the implementation is realistic.
The best early projects usually have three features: they happen often, they follow a pattern, and they waste time.
When your AI Working Group (or person) are interviewing the various teams, record the meetings and then upload all the meetings to co-pilot or ChatGPT or Claude and ask them to summarise the notes, highlight the bottlenecks discussed or suggested improvements to be made and create a workflow of the process from the meeting notes. Make sure to use a paid version for the best experience and ensure enhanced security is on in your settings.
Always remember that no personal information (yours, your clients or the firms) should be uploaded to any AI tool before confirmation from your IT provider that you are working in a private space. If in doubt, redact!
Before engaging a developer or AI process expert, write a short scope document which sets out the current process, the outcome desired and the ideas for automating certain steps.
This does not need to be complicated. One or two pages are enough. Again, AI will do this for you if you give it a good prompt.
Use the free version of Wisprflow to dictate your prompt so you don’t have to do lots of typing. This tool allows you to speak freely and it cleans up your thoughts, removing all the ums and ahs.
You can then use the free version of Prompt Cowboy to refine your prompt before putting it all into an AI tool like Claude, Co-Pilot or ChatGPT.
The type of information in your prompt should include areas such as;
Once the scope is clear, the firm can decide what support is needed. Sometimes the answer may be a better internal process, an AI tool, a small automation or sometimes it may involve a third-party developer. The key is not to start with the technology, it’s to start with the work.
At Teams PLUS, we help firms through this stage too. If you are a client of ours (which you will be after step 2), our AI and Process Consultants in Ireland work with your team to understand the process, refine the scope, source the right development support where needed, and help project-manage the implementation.
This matters because many accountancy firms know where the pain is, but do not always have the time or internal resource to turn that into a clear project.
The aim is to keep the work practical. Small enough to implement, clear enough to measure and useful enough to matter, before the next busy period rolls round… because there’s almost never a ‘quiet time’ that allows you get these things done.
There is another benefit to this.
The people who lead these projects will not just improve your internal processes. They will also build practical AI knowledge.
They will learn where AI helps, where it does not, how to control quality, how to protect judgement, and how to explain the benefits in plain English.
That knowledge has value beyond the firm’s own operations. Many SME clients will soon face the same challenge. They will not need abstract advice about AI. They will need help identifying where small process improvements can save time, reduce admin and improve decision-making.
The accountancy firms that learn this inside their own practice first will be better placed to advise clients later. That creates a bigger opportunity. Your senior people get time back. Your firm builds capacity. Your clients get better service, and your team starts developing the kind of AI and process knowledge that could become a future advisory service.
The firms that start now will be ahead by September.
AI will not replace accountants. But it will change how the best firms use their accountants. The firms that benefit most will not be the ones that wait for the perfect software. They will be the ones that start with the work, support their best people, build capacity around them and make small improvements that add up.
If you want your firm to be the type of firm clients want to choose because of how you lead by example in the AI space, now is the time to start.
That is how AI becomes more than a conference topic. That is how it becomes capacity.
No commitment, no hard sell – just a straightforward chat with someone who can tell you whether it makes sense for your firm. A 20 minute conversation to learn more may be a good investment.
Email info@teamsplus.ie to set up a call with Jimmy, our Managing Director and your contact point in Ireland.