5 Ways to Use AI for Bookkeeping

When we talk about AI, it can often feel like more inventive and strategic use cases get the most attention. Here at Ambrook, for example, we’ve covered how AI can help with farm financial planning or assemble financial health reports.

Those stories are always exciting to share, but there are also times when AI is especially useful as an efficient administrative tool. In this lesson, we take a look at five examples in bookkeeping. You’ll hear from Aryn and Haley, two account managers who are in the books with Ambrook customers every day, about how AI helps them sort large amounts of data, format complicated spreadsheets, and more.

Table of Contents

Here are five bookkeeping workflows we’ve used AI to help with, and that you can try too:

1. Build the spreadsheet: Putting financial data in the right format, so you can import or organize it in your bookkeeping system.

2. Calculate the splits: Getting the math done when you want to allocate income or expenses to the right parts of your business.

3. Clean up categories: Organizing the labels and tags that keep your books square ahead of tax season.

4. Suggest transaction tags: Matching a batch of transactions to enterprises, categories, and projects based on historical data.

5. Spot reconciling items: Finding errors or discrepancies when the books aren’t lining up as expected.

Before you jump in, review the notes from our first AI lesson on using the technology safely and connecting your books to AI safely too. Then, read on to learn about AI in bookkeeping.

Build the Spreadsheet

For Aryn and Haley, part of working with operators on their books is making sure historical data gets imported and reflected properly in Ambrook. That could be anything from previous years’ profit and loss statements to information about the assets they own.

Half the work is getting the data in the right format, like a CSV file that the system can read. Haley explains that this is one of her most common use cases for AI: “I use it to make me spreadsheets all the time,” because creating the documents by hand can get tedious and time-consuming.

For example, Aryn uses AI to turn asset depreciation data into an updated balance sheet. She built an AI skill that takes information about an operation’s assets, matches the items to Ambrook account types, then creates a spreadsheet she can help her customers import into the platform.

For operators, here are a few bookkeeping situations where this application of AI could come in handy:

• You need to import old transactions from a PDF statement or a paper record, so you ask AI to turn them into a CSV you can upload to your new bookkeeping system.

• You need to transfer vendor and customer contacts to a new bookkeeping tool, so you have AI build a spreadsheet you can import.

• You need to log a batch of business purchases you made on a personal card in your ledger, so you ask AI to help separate the relevant transactions and format them for import.

Remember to practice caution when you’re sharing data about your operation with AI. Use AI tools with secured, private accounts and turn off settings that allow them to train the technology on your data.

Calculate the Splits

Aryn also works with producers who track their costs down to a particular unit: logging how much they spend on an individual planting block, for example, or on every field. This allows them to pinpoint what it takes to run each part of their operation and break down their profitability in detail.

But the logistics can get complicated: If you write one check to pay for supplies you’ll use differently across three fields, you have to figure out how to split the transaction in your books. It’s possible to do the math manually, but it takes time that adds up with every new transaction that needs to be split.

Instead, Aryn and her customers turned to ChatGPT to make the process easier. This typically looks like handing AI invoices, receipts, or other payment details so it can match line items to the right projects in Ambrook, then asking AI to return the percentages to assign to each project.

Here’s what an example prompt could look like:

I’m attaching the check I wrote to pay 3 invoices (also attached). Review the invoices and match the line items to Project A, Project B, and Project C in Ambrook. Based on that, can you calculate what percentage of the transaction I should tag to each project?

From there, owners can double-check AI’s math before splitting the transaction in Ambrook.

Clean Up Categories

As our team works with customers to tag transactions and organize the books, the categories in Ambrook can sometimes use a refresh. Maybe certain categories end up being used less frequently than expected, or there are two categories that now seem to overlap.

When it comes time for a clean-up, Aryn and Haley use AI to help audit operators’ lists of categories, understand how operators are using them, and recommend changes to match. “Go read all of the categories,” Aryn will prompt AI, “figure out which categories have transactions and which ones don’t.”

They’ll ask AI to check things like:

• Which categories only have a few transactions tagged to them? Suggest categories that could be archived.

• Are there categories that are similar, in name or tagged transactions? Propose which categories could be combined.

• Return a list of the categories you recommend keeping, combining, and archiving.

As Aryn describes it, AI is doing a “rough read for clean-up.” She and her customers can then review the suggestion together before making improvements to the structure of their books.

Suggest Transaction Tags

Another time the team uses AI is when the workflow is about recognizing the similarities in large batches of data. “Anytime there’s a mass amount of data that I need to find patterns in, condense, or correlate, that’s what I use AI for,” Aryn explained.

One example is an AI skill Haley built to help customers catch up on tagging transactions. Here’s what she asked AI to do for a given operation:

1. For a specified period of time, find all the untagged transactions in the Ambrook ledger.

2. Read the descriptions of those transactions.

3. Try to match those descriptions to tagged transactions from the previous year.

4. Based on any historical matches, flag which transactions…

   1. Can likely be bulk-tagged, because matching transactions from last year all have the same categories.

   2. Need to be manually categorized, because they’re brand new and don’t match any transactions from the last year.

   3. Need to be manually reviewed, because matching transactions from last year were tagged differently.

This skill doesn’t automatically tag all the transactions for Haley and her customers, but it gives the team a starting point so they can complete the catch-up faster than before.

Spot Reconciling Items

If AI can help find patterns in data, it can also point out errors or anomalies. At month’s end, this is one way Aryn uses AI tools to help with reconciliations. “I’ll give it a statement and say, ‘This account’s not reconciling in Ambrook like I would expect,’” she explains. “Look at the Ambrook data, look at the statement, and tell me what’s wrong.”

Haley built another AI skill that the team can use as they work through bank reconciliations. In that workflow, they ask AI to perform the following checks:

1. Compare the statement with what’s in Ambrook, and look for any larger setup errors first. Was a loan or line of credit entered in the wrong balance direction?

2. Look for differences in totals between the statement and Ambrook.

3. Go through each line: Does it match in Ambrook and in the statement? Or is it in Ambrook but missing from the statement, or vice versa?

4. Try to explain the cause of the mismatch. Are there outstanding checks, for example, or duplicate transactions somewhere?

With this report in hand, Aryn and Haley can review with their customers and work out the right way to reconcile their accounts.

Resources to Dive Deeper

Those are a few ways our account managers use AI to help Ambrook customers keep the books on track. For more ideas on how to adapt AI workflows for your own operation:

• Learn how you could build an AI skill to review your ledger.

• Jim Eitel, Texas rancher and Ambrook product specialist, shared his tips on building a custom farm command center.

• Read how the whole Ambrook team is building workflows and tools with AI.

• Learn more about using AI effectively from the team that built Claude.

FAQs

Can AI reconcile my account?

AI tools can help you diagnose why an account isn’t reconciling the way you expect, by comparing a statement with your books, but you and any financial experts you work with should review its suggestions to make sure they’re accurate.

Can ChatGPT or Claude make a spreadsheet from my data?

Yes, you can try asking AI to organize data into a spreadsheet with the specific columns, totals, or formatting you need. Before you import data into a bookkeeping platform or other tools you use, check AI’s work and confirm that numbers or information from your original dataset were preserved.

Can I connect my books to ChatGPT or Claude?

If your bookkeeping tool has an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, that will allow you to connect your books to AI tools. Ambrook’s MCP, for example, gives ChatGPT or Claude access to read your books directly but not to make any changes to your data in Ambrook. Our first AI lesson walks through how it works in more detail, how to connect to the Ambrook MCP, and notes on doing it safely.

How can I check AI’s work on calculations or splits?

One way to check AI’s math is to pick a specific number it returned (like a line item or a total), then calculate that number by hand or confirm that it matches your bookkeeping software. You can also ask AI explicitly to walk you through its logic and calculations.

What information should I avoid sharing with AI?

Avoid sharing highly sensitive details about yourself, your operation, or the people you work with. Before you use AI tools, make sure you’ve set up a secure and private account and turn off settings that will train the technology on your data.

This resource is provided for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute professional tax, legal, financial or accounting advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.