How to Build AI Skills Across Your Firm

Most firms know they need to be using AI, and plenty of accountants are already figuring it out at their own desks. While this is a great starting point, it’s up to the firm to set the team up for success with AI. When the whole team shares an understanding of how these tools work, what they're good for, and how to check the results, no one on the team gets left behind, and neither does the firm.

This guide is for those firms that don’t know where to start when it comes to AI. It’ll walk you through the three steps you can take as your firm’s practice lead so that everyone on your team has the foundational knowledge they need about AI to get the most out of it.

#1 Teach prompting as a formula

The quality of what comes out of an AI tool depends almost entirely on what goes in. Prompting is the skill that turns a vague request into something your accountants can actually use.

A good prompt contains three components: Context + request + output = high-quality prompt.

• Context is what the tool needs to know before it starts: who the audience is, what the situation is, and what constraints matter. It knows nothing about your client or your firm unless you give it the right context.
• Request is what you want done, stated as an instruction. "Write," "summarize," "compare," or "list the issues in." "Help me with" is far too vague for it to know what you’re expecting it to do.
• Output is what the result should look like. A five-sentence client email. A variance summary as a table with one row per account. An instruction manual an intern can follow. Tools default to whatever they believe is best unless you decide for them.

#2 Know which tools to use for what task

Once your team can prompt well, the next skill is matching the tool to the task. There are general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude, and then purpose-built AI accounting software.

General-purpose AI handles a wide range of accounting work: drafting client communication, explaining a variance, reviewing a reconciliation you paste in. It's a strong analyst when you bring it the data. What it can't do is connect to a client's books, run the same process across all of your clients every month, or remember how your firm handled the same transaction last close. Every task starts from a blank window.

A purpose-built AI accounting platform connects directly to your clients' books, runs the same close process across every client, every month, and learns how your firm categorizes, reconciles, and explains its work.

Where general-purpose AI gives an accountant a faster way to work, a purpose-built platform allows the firm to automate recurring work and handle ad hoc work in your client’s GL.

#3 Choose an easy-to-use platform

The right platform for a firm is the one your team can use on real client books this week, that fits the review process you already run, and that a new hire can pick up in days. When setup gets out of the way, all the training time goes to outcomes.

There are four things you should look for in every tool. These four things separate platforms that get adopted from platforms that get abandoned.

• Who built it? A platform built inside an accounting firm reflects how a close actually runs.
• Whether it does the full process or parts of it. Plenty of tools automate parts of the process, where fewer do the categorization, reconciliation, journal entry review, and checklist work themselves.
• Where your team reviews. Your accountants should review the completed close, see what the platform did and why, and step in where judgment is needed.
• How much you have to build before it works. Some platforms require your team to configure the rules, write the prompts, and build the workflows. Others arrive ready to work, with the skills built in.

Ready to start skilling up your team? We made it easy with a full four-week playbook that includes the prompt formula, AI tool comparisons, and what to consider when you look for a purpose-built AI accounting platform.

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