More than 300,000 accountants and auditors have left their jobs in just three years, while 720+ companies cited insufficient accounting staff as a reason for potential errors in their financial reports, a 30% increase from 2019. Marko Glisic, CPA and partner at GreenGrowth CPAs in Los Angeles, CA believes artificial intelligence holds the key to solving this crisis while fundamentally transforming firm operations and profitability.

Having spent eight years as an Audit Senior Manager at Deloitte, managing billion-dollar engagements before transitioning to a CPA partner, Glisic saw firsthand how the profession changed. The professional focus has shifted away from core competencies.

“Most auditors spend their time in the field doing the work, learning about the client,” Glisic explains. “Since the 2000s, with the introduction of computers, this has flipped. Now we spend 90% of our time on documentation and only 10% doing the work, which is not good.”

Documentation crisis

Global accounting firms invested $4 billion during 2023 alone, with McKinsey projecting $10 billion by 2025. Studies analyzing 100+ companies implementing AI automation reveal:

  • 30% reduced accounting staff expenses while maintaining output quality
  • 40% greater output per accountant
  • 60% fewer errors versus manual processes

Research documented AI reducing inventory count procedures from 681 hours to 19 hours, achieving a 97% efficiency improvement. Yet the real crisis isn’t time but competence. An experienced audit manager reviews a junior auditor’s workpapers and finds over 100 pages of perfectly formatted documentation, but when asked basic questions about the client, the junior auditor draws a blank.

“We’ve gotten to the point where an audit file will have a hundred-plus working papers,” Marko Glisic notes. “You go and talk to the staff performing the work, and ask them basic questions about the client. What are their revenue streams? What’s the headcount? How do they make money? How do they distinguish themselves from the competition? What are their locations? They wouldn’t know.”

Automating core procedures

AI transforms audit efficiency through targeted automation. An auditor receives 80 pages of bank statements in PDF format, then spends hours manually cross-referencing transactions against the general ledger. AI now handles this entire process in minutes, automatically flagging discrepancies and unusual patterns.

“What’s powerful about AI is that you’ll be able to analyze how solid those documents are,” Marko Glisic explains. “AI can compare the template to other templates. Is this a valid bank statement? It looks at how things are structured.”

Rolling forward depreciation schedules from prior year workpapers traditionally consumes days of junior auditor time. AI completes this work in hours, immediately highlighting variances requiring investigation. Rather than auditors spending afternoons hunting through supporting documentation, AI identifies exactly which transactions need human review.

Economic impact: Preserving margins

Audit firms currently bill clients the same fees while AI handles work that previously required multiple staff members. A small audit engagement that once required three junior auditors for routine procedures now requires only one person to oversee AI systems.

Research indicates that AI saves firms 18 hours per month per employee, but capacity expansion creates the real value. Your firm traditionally assigns four staff members to review 500 expense transactions over a two-week period. AI now processes the entire population of 5,000 transactions overnight, flagging only the 50 requiring human investigation. You deliver a more comprehensive audit with half the staff time.

Firms maintain current audit fee structures while reducing variable labor costs. Despite efficiency gains, audit partners report no fee reductions due to high investment costs in AI and ongoing compliance requirements. Early adopters preserve pricing while reducing labor expenses, creating a competitive advantage.

Glisic’s firm tracks audit adjustments as performance indicators, achieving adjustment rates of 60% or higher compared to industry averages. “We do track our audit adjustments on our clients because we say, well, this is the most important part. Are we finding audit adjustments? Are we not?”

Restoring professional focus

Auditors often face the frustration of needing to understand a client’s business model to identify risks, while being overwhelmed by documentation requirements. AI changes this equation by handling routine work, freeing auditors to focus on what they were trained to do.

“If AI can handle a lot of these basic procedures and documentation, that’s going to leave the professionals to spend the time with the client,” Marko Glisic emphasizes.

Audit teams frequently find themselves overwhelmed with workloads that leave little time for meaningful client interaction. AI-driven efficiency creates time for advisory conversations that clients value. Instead of sampling 25 transactions from thousands, AI analyzes complete populations, identifying risks that traditional sampling methods miss.

Auditors ultimately come to know their clients’ businesses, including revenue streams, key personnel, competitive advantages, and operational challenges. This knowledge enables more effective audit adjustments and valuable client insights.

Talent retention

Current adoption statistics reveal a significant opportunity:

  • Only 48% of accounting firms use AI
  • 71% of accountants believe AI will significantly impact their jobs
  • CPA exam candidates dropped 33% from 2016 to 2021

“We have kids coming out of college who studied accounting, and now we’re putting them in positions where they’re doing documentation and technical writing,” Glisic observes. “They want to be doing exciting stuff. They want to be out in the field meeting with the CFO, getting introduced to the CEO, looking through the company’s books and records and processes.”

AI transforms this dynamic by eliminating routine procedures that drive talent away while preserving the analytical work that initially attracted people to accounting.

Implementation focus

Successful AI deployment starts with identifying your biggest time drains. Glisic emphasizes measuring economic impact:

  1. Target High-Volume Tasks: Focus on procedures that consume the most billable hours, such as bank reconciliations or fixed asset testing.
  2. Measure Margin Impact: Document current time requirements and calculate potential cost savings before investing in AI tools.
  3. Start with Proven ROI: Begin with procedures where other firms have demonstrated clear efficiency gains rather than experimental applications.

Professional review remains critical since AI systems can produce inaccurate information, requiring human oversight. Experienced auditors become supervisors of AI output rather than performers of routine tasks. Understanding the key components of internal audits becomes essential as AI reshapes traditional audit procedures.

Current vision

Marko Glisic’s vision isn’t hypothetical but happening now. Audit firms today use AI to complete inventory counts in hours instead of days, automatically validate document authenticity, and process entire populations of transactions rather than small samples.

“AI isn’t just about making things more efficient and faster. It’s going to provide greater assurance. The quality of the audits is going to get better.”

While some firms struggle to staff engagements adequately, AI-enabled firms deliver more comprehensive audits with smaller teams. They identify more audit adjustments because AI analyzes complete data sets, and they retain talent because junior staff engage in meaningful analytical work from day one. Drawing from his extensive experience across multiple industries, including his analysis of cannabis business valuations, Glisic brings a unique perspective to how AI can transform financial analysis across sectors.

Firms implementing these tools today preserve their pricing while reducing labor costs, creating sustainable margin improvements. They build capacity for growth without proportional increases in headcount. Most importantly, they deliver superior audit quality through comprehensive data analysis that human teams cannot match. His insights on how regulatory changes reshape financial landscapes demonstrate the forward-thinking approach needed as technology continues to evolve.

Which firms will accelerate their adoption and capture the competitive advantages determines future market position?

DISCLAIMER – “Views Expressed Disclaimer – The information provided in this content is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, legal, tax, or health advice, nor relied upon as a substitute for professional guidance tailored to your personal circumstances. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any other individual, organization, agency, employer, or company, including NEO CYMED PUBLISHING LIMITED (operating under the name Cyprus-Mail).