Bookkeeping, accounts payable and accounts receivable are automating first. Controllers move towards overseeing the automation, FP&A teams get leaner and more commercial, and the top finance seat always keeps a human in the loop. Graduates come in at a higher level, and the skills that decide careers are judgement, communication and a working view of where AI helps.
Will AI replace accountants? The short answer
AI will not replace accountants as a profession. It will replace a large share of the tasks accountants have spent their days on, and that changes how many people a finance team needs at each level and what those people do. My view, which I first posted in early 2025 and still hold: AI isn’t coming for accounting jobs, it’s reshaping them.
We have been here before. When ERP systems arrived, people worried software would remove the need for accountants. What it actually did was give finance teams structure and consistency, create new roles and push finance into a more strategic position. Some tasks went, others were created. I expect AI to follow the same pattern, with new roles we have not thought of yet.
The finance professionals I survey are not panicking either. Our Q1 2026 State of the Market survey polled over 1,100 finance professionals across Australia. Asked for their biggest concern with AI, only 17% said job losses and 54% said accuracy of outputs. As the report put it, finance professionals are not afraid of being replaced by AI, they are afraid of signing off on something that is wrong.
Which accounting tasks and roles AI automates first
AI automates work that follows a set process and produces a checkable output: data entry, receipt matching, invoice capture, transaction coding and routine reconciliations. In practice that is the bookkeeping level, accounts payable and accounts receivable, which is the main level I see starting to get automated.
The numbers on these workflows are already big. On the AccountDads podcast I talked through one finance team that automated its AP invoices and went from three or four AP officers and an AP manager to just one or two staff. In our AI in finance workflow guide, a multi-site not-for-profit now has around 95% of its invoices flowing through without being touched, saving roughly a full headcount across the team.
In an early-stage startup the change is slower, because the founder is usually firefighting and nobody has time to build an automated workflow. The pattern I expect is that a business eventually stops needing a dedicated bookkeeper and instead has an accountant or senior accountant who oversees that level, so the senior finance person can take on the strategic and commercial work. If you want the tooling side, I cover how AI is used in finance and which workflows actually work separately.
What stays human in accounting and finance
Accounting work stays human where someone has to be accountable: signing off numbers, making judgement calls in grey areas, and deciding what the business does next. AI can draft, match and flag. It cannot carry responsibility for a set of accounts.
Even with AI handling the manual workload, the role of the accountant is becoming more critical, not less. The ones who stand out translate what the data says into business action, challenge assumptions and make decisions AI can’t. Accuracy is still the catch: the disadvantages of AI in finance, from errors to data privacy are the reason review still sits with a person.
In the startups I work with there is a second reason. Most founders are not from a finance background. As much as AI takes over, the first finance role will always exist, because finance is too critical to run without a human in the loop, and someone has to build the function and make it usable for a founder who does not speak accounting.
| What AI takes on | What stays with a person | |
|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeper, AP and AR | Data entry, invoice capture, coding, payment matching | Exceptions, supplier issues, checking what the tools miss |
| Accountant or senior accountant | First-pass reconciliations and routine journals | Overseeing the automated ledger and resolving what does not match |
| Financial controller | Assembling month-end reports from set processes | Running the controls, and possibly overseeing the automation for the CFO |
| FP&A and business partnering | Pulling data together and building first drafts | Commercial conversations and the story behind the forecast |
| Head of finance or CFO | Faster analysis and board pack preparation | Decisions, sign-off and influencing founders, board and investors |
How accounting and finance roles are changing
Roles are moving from doing the work to overseeing it. Fewer people process transactions, and more of the team checks automated outputs, runs the controls and explains the numbers to the business.
The financial controller is the role I find most interesting to watch. Depending on how reporting-focused it is, it could become the person who oversees the automation, or the agents, and reports back to the CFO on how it is all running. I think finance teams will get way leaner. How lean, I honestly do not know yet. Every business is trying to lean into AI, particularly in finance. What that means for FP&A is up for discussion over the next five to ten years, but I expect the senior FP&A roles to stay, with smaller teams around them and broader commercial finance and business partnering roles.
What does not change is the top seat. Everything below it might get automated, but you always need someone at the top who makes the decisions and can influence the business. I do not think finance ever gets automated without that number one person. The mixed skill set is not new either. As I said on AccountDads, techie accountants have been around forever; the work is just leaning into it more.
Adoption is real but uneven. Our Q2 2026 survey polled over 350 finance professionals, and 86% of finance teams now engage with AI in some form, and 32% have moved past experimenting into implementation or full BAU use. Teams are also using resignations to rethink roles: one finance leader I wrote about redirected the salary of a role that had become vacant into automation and brought in someone more commercially focused instead. The team came out stronger, not just busier.
What the financial controller role involves, and where it leads.
What AI means for junior accountants and graduates
Graduate and junior roles are where the change bites hardest, because they have traditionally been built on transactional work. There will be fewer accounts assistants and fewer accounts payable roles, and graduates will come in at a higher level, overseeing the ledger rather than keying it.
The supply side is shrinking at the same time. On the Brewed Abroad podcast I gave my read that far fewer people are coming through university accounting degrees than a decade ago. Fewer graduates and fewer transactional roles roughly balance out, but the pipeline of future finance leaders is still something the profession needs to think about.
I still think it is one of the best times in history to get into finance. The laborious work is being taken out of the role, and the generation coming through university is probably the most tech capable ever. The risk is the basics. A graduate approving an automated output is a human in the loop, but they’re not yet a specialist human in the loop. Their early decisions need sense checking by a finance manager or financial controller acting as a mentor. Graduates trying to break into tech are also finding AI is changing what hiring looks like faster than most companies have figured out.
How accountants can future-proof their careers
Build the skills AI is worst at, and get practical with the tools. The accountants and finance professionals who will do well are the ones who treat AI as a tool, use it for controls and data-heavy work, and spend the time it saves on the business.
Finance is relatively slow moving, and right now that works in your favour. AI is becoming prevalent in finance but not widespread, so there is still time to upskill, take advantage of it, not be a victim to it. You do not need to be an AI whiz. What employers want, as our Q2 report puts it, is a credible view on where AI supports finance and where its limitations sit, and that is now part of every senior finance interview.
The bigger differentiator is the human side. Commercial conversations, managing stakeholders and telling the story behind the numbers are what stand out as everything else becomes more tech enhanced. If someone can do all the AI stuff but sits behind a desk and is not a great communicator, they will not get hired. The AI piece can be taught with the right attitude and the right application. Negotiating, influencing and persuading are much harder to teach. I cover the full list in the skills required for accounting and finance roles.
The soft skills that decide senior finance hires.
What it means for a startup’s first finance hire
For a startup, AI changes the shape of the first finance hire more than whether you need one. The founder still needs one person who owns the numbers, and AI makes that person able to cover far more ground on their own.
The classic first finance hire now is a star person who oversees top finance, automates as much as they can and brings in AI within reason, and who is capable enough to step up and cover the strategic gaps when someone is on leave. When I take a brief, I ask where the company is on its AI journey: does it need someone all in on it, or is it dabbling? That shapes the brief.
I run two searches only: the first finance hire, at head of finance or financial controller level from late seed to Series A, and the first CFO from Series A to C, for venture-backed Australian tech, fintech and deep tech companies. If you are a finance professional who wants to be that person, read what it takes to become a startup’s first finance hire.
What it takes to land your first CFO role at a startup.
Common questions
Will AI replace accountants?
No. AI is taking over repeatable accounting tasks such as data entry, invoice processing and first-pass reconciliations, but someone still has to own the numbers, sign them off and turn them into decisions. The profession is changing shape: fewer people doing transactional work and more people overseeing automation and advising the business.
Which accounting jobs are most at risk from AI?
The bookkeeping level, including accounts payable and accounts receivable, is the first to be automated, because the work follows a set process. Junior roles built on transactional work will shrink. Roles closer to judgement, sign-off and commercial decisions, such as financial controller, FP&A and CFO, change shape but are far less exposed.
Is accounting still a good career in Australia with AI?
Yes. Graduates are coming in at a higher level because the laborious work is being automated, and far fewer people are coming through accounting degrees than a decade ago, so the pipeline of future finance leaders is thin. The catch is that graduates still need to learn the basics and have their early decisions checked by an experienced mentor.
What skills should accountants build to stay relevant?
A practical, credible view of where AI helps in finance and where its limits sit, plus the skills AI is worst at: commercial thinking, communication, stakeholder management, negotiating and influencing. You do not need to be an AI expert; employers mainly want judgement and the ability to explain the numbers.
Do startups still need a finance hire if AI can do the bookkeeping?
Yes. Most founders are not from a finance background, and finance is too critical to run without a human in the loop. What changes is the profile: one strong person who oversees the finance function, automates as much as is sensible, brings in AI within reason, and can step up strategically when needed rather than processing transactions.
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we work with. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.