89% of accountants report AI ROI, but data security gaps persist

Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding! David Jani: [00:00:00] Half of the people that we spoke to, 52% specifically have experienced a data breach at some point in recent times. So the last two years or beyond that, basically. And while I don't have any specific information on whether AI is the cause behind that, what we do see is a bit of a worrying habit, which is that most companies don't have clear guidelines on how their A, how their AI tools are used with sensitive data. Blake Oliver: [00:00:37] Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmarked.app in your web browser, take a short quiz and get your certificate. Welcome back to the Earmark Podcast. I'm Blake Oliver Capterra just dropped their 2026 Accounting Software Trends report on how AI is changing accounting, work skills and strategy. More than half of accountants are now using AI in their software, and 89% say it's delivering ROI. But nearly half are checking every output, and a third are catching errors at least half the time. My guest today is David Janey, senior content analyst at Capterra and the author of the report. David, welcome to the show. David Jani: [00:01:24] Hi, Blake. Thanks for having me on. Blake Oliver: [00:01:27] David, before we dig in, tell us a little bit about your role at Capterra and the kind of research you do. David Jani: [00:01:34] Well, okay, so I'm a senior analyst at Capterra, and the research mainly focuses on software applications and software uses. So I mostly spend my time looking at accounting software. Um, and for this, we look at how software is used in businesses, a selection of software and the sorts of decisions that businesses need to make and the questions that they might ask when selecting software, basically. Blake Oliver: [00:02:00] So tell us about this software trend survey. Who did you talk to and what were you trying to learn from this report? David Jani: [00:02:08] So what we did was we asked 500 accounting managers in the US about software that their companies are buying or that they're using. We looked at elements like the benefits and challenges of adopting AI tools, and also how companies are managing operations and modern challenges in the current moment. Blake Oliver: [00:02:29] So was there one single finding that surprised you the most? What did you learn that if I if you had to pick one thing you would would share with me? David Jani: [00:02:39] I'll have to say there's a couple I would want to pick, but if I have to just pick one, I think it's going to be about the staffing really, because I think despite a lot of, you know, reports say predicting the end of accountants, it's not really what we found. We found that automation is present in accounting work at the moment, and companies are adopting AI into their tools, and a lot of accountants are using them. It's not necessarily affecting hiring decisions in the same way. There's a lot of companies that are actually more focused on upskilling than they are on elements such as automation through AI to replace employees. Blake Oliver: [00:03:18] That's interesting that you say that, because I have felt this way for a long time following AI and automation, starting with cloud computing in the in the shift that happened with cloud in accounting, we didn't see jobs drop. We saw them grow. We saw more and more bookkeeping and accounting work being done by accounting firms and client accounting services. Cast has been growing year over year for ten years now. And I think last year it was like 17% in accounting firms in the US. So we also saw this, like if we go way back to the invention of the electronic spreadsheet, Visicalc, Microsoft Excel, there are predictions back then that accounting jobs would disappear now that spreadsheets can do the work. But here we are, and we have more work than ever. David Jani: [00:04:12] It does seem to be the case. Yes. I think in some ways, you know, everything old is new again, in that sort of in the trend in terms of the trend at least. Blake Oliver: [00:04:21] So I want to come back to that staffing question because that's a big one for everyone. But first, let's talk about AI adoption. Right? Where are we today? How widespread is it in accounting right now? Are we still in the early adopter territory or are we now more in the mainstream? It's been about a few years since GPT 3.5 came out. So I'm curious to get your take. What is the survey data telling you about that in terms of adoption? David Jani: [00:04:53] Well, this was really interesting because I think we've gone beyond the point of it being, you know, companies testing the water with this stuff. It does seem that accounting software is commonly used with AI in it. So we saw more than half of the accountants that we surveyed saying that they use it in their accounting software now. Blake Oliver: [00:05:11] More than half using it in their accounting software. Now, I guess that that makes sense, right? Because we are seeing, uh, QuickBooks, we're seeing Xero, NetSuite, Sage, all these different accounting gles add ons, right? Different types of apps that we plug into the Gles. They're all adding in AI, AI agents. Um, there's this big software stack now in accounting, we're using dozens of apps, often with each client perhaps, or internally. I'm curious to know where in the stack is AI showing up the most. What categories of tools are leading on AI? David Jani: [00:05:56] Just to clarify, what do you do? You mean like as in terms of features or in terms of like the actual types of software? Blake Oliver: [00:06:02] Um, I guess I'm thinking like in terms of, yeah, like the areas of the software types of software, like when we say AI in accounting and we're using it in our software, what does that mean? David Jani: [00:06:13] Well, it seems to be showing up a lot in areas such as, um, how the users interact with it. So for example, the most common use of AI in accounting was through chatbots or assistants for the most part. There's also data entry, which I don't think came as much of a surprise, because I thought that would probably be where it would end up being before the survey, and I think that was proven true. So that's about like half of the it's just under half in this case, but a lot of it's coming through fraud and risk detection, which I think was quite interesting for this in this case. Blake Oliver: [00:06:48] So how does AI adoption break down by company size? Are our small firms keeping up? Is this mostly mid-market? Is this mostly enterprise? Where is it the strongest? David Jani: [00:07:02] It's kind of strong across all different types of businesses. That was the interesting finding from this. It shows what we found was that most smaller companies aren't adopting it at the same rate as bigger companies, which is pretty much where you would expect things to be. But smaller companies are still finding are still adding it to their stacks. It's still there. They're a bit more tentative, and the ways they're applying it tend to be a little bit more cautious, I would say, compared to bigger companies, which are much, you know, using it for much more sophisticated situations. But for smaller businesses, it's still there. It's still common. Blake Oliver: [00:07:39] So you mentioned chatbots. It seems like when I talk to accountants, pretty much everybody is using chat bots. 8,090% or more. We're using it for research analysis when we talk about AI enabled software. Is that what we're talking about? Are our firms choosing software that is specifically AI enabled, or is this adoption happening because the AI is getting bundled into the tools they already are using? David Jani: [00:08:10] Well, we've got a bit of a split in this situation, and it seems to be a bit of both. Is the simplest answer to that now. It's most common that businesses are paying for it, so they're making a conscious decision to adopt it. So that's happening with over half, but really just a few percentage points fewer. And you get a similar and you find that people adding it as a as a free add on. So let's just use the comparative numbers. There's 52% will do it as a paid add on and Uh, 8% will have it just added by the vendor. Blake Oliver: [00:08:49] So it's a mix of both. David Jani: [00:08:50] It's about it's about equal, but with a slight preference towards the paid option. However, there is another section of users who are also adapting it by asking for it specifically. So asking for a. There they're changing their software specifically or choosing the software for AI features specifically. So in some cases it's juices, juices, switches. But I'd say that the preference tends to be more for paid, but only just. It's very close. Blake Oliver: [00:09:26] So let's talk now about where AI is delivering the value, because I think that's what we want to know as accountants is, is where can we in our firms get the most value from this? You mentioned accountants are using chat bots a lot. Data entry. We're using it for data entry, getting the information into the system. Fraud and risk detection. Um, anywhere else that you notice that accountants are using AI AI actively day to day? David Jani: [00:09:58] Well, aside from. David Jani: [00:10:00] Those select examples mentioned before, we're also seeing it in elements such as predictive analytics. We're seeing cash flow forecasting as well, um, invoicing, smart invoicing and elements such as bank reconciliation. So it's been used in quite a wide number of cases, but there does seem to be a bit of a coalescence around analytics and process driven tasks. Blake Oliver: [00:10:29] That makes sense. I mean, we're already using it for analytics. Uh, at least we have been with chatbots in a lot of ways. All right. Le