5 Ways ShareFile Helps Accountants Work Smarter with AI

Journals. Ledgers. Financial statements. Budgets. As an accountant, it's your job to sift through hundreds of documents—some of them hundreds of pages long.

No wonder accounting firms waste 3,000 hours a year on bad data and manual checks.

At a time when the industry faces escalating staffing shortages and burnout, it's more important than ever to extract the right information quickly and accurately.

This is where Progress ShareFile's AI-powered document assistant comes in. If you haven't used this powerful tool, now's the time to start. Let's take a look at what it is, how it works and when to use it.

What AI Document Assistance Does ShareFile Offer?

ShareFile's innovative AI-powered document assistant allows accounting teams to extract key insights from large documents in a single click or query. It includes two primary features:

• Document summarization instantly condenses information from your document into a short, easy-to-understand summary.
• Document Q&A quickly analyzes your document to answer specific questions and provide shortcuts to information within it.

You can also list the main points and find action items, all in a matter of seconds. The assistant even adds citations when answering questions, taking you straight to the source within your document.

What Are the Benefits of Document Summarization and Q&A?

AI-powered document assistance is a great way to unlock productivity and get specific insights from unstructured data faster. More specifically, these features allow accountants to:

• Save time: With ShareFile's AI-powered document assistant features, insights that typically take hours can now be extracted in seconds. In fact, many ShareFile customers find the information they need 96% faster.
• Enhance the client experience: Extracting critical information in a fraction of the time frees your team to use those insights when crafting more personalized services for clients.
• Do more with less: For an industry plagued by staffing shortages—recent estimates say there are 340,000 fewer accountants than five years ago—AI-powered document assistance is a low-cost, high-value way to achieve more with lower headcount.

5 Ways to Use the Document Assistant

So, what does AI document assistance look like in practice? Here are five common accounting scenarios to help you get started.

1. Speed Up Learning

Every accountant knows how quickly tax laws and regulations change. In fact, the pace of change is so fast that one industry expert recommends carving out weekly sessions for learning—annual updates and sporadic training aren't nearly enough. But with 99% of accountants already facing burnout, there's little time left to digest updates regularly.

At least, not without AI.

With ShareFile's AI-powered document summarization tool, you can turn any educational document into a brief, easy-to-consume snapshot highlighting the need-to-know information. Simply upload the file to see a summary in seconds and get answers to specific questions about new laws and regulations.

2. Analyze Financial Reports

Accountants often need to review extensive financial documents such as annual reports, tax filings and complex financial statements. Using the "summarize the document" or "list the main points of this document" features, you can rapidly extract key insights of a document, without manually reading through hundreds of pages. This one move alone saves hours of review time, especially when dealing with a log of client documents or preparing for financial audits.

3. Navigate Peak Seasons

Tax season is rough. According to some reports, many accountants work so hard in March they literally make themselves sick. With thousands of documents to sort through, it's easy to see why so many CPAs stay at their desks for 50, 70 or even 80 hours a week.

ShareFile's AI Document Assistant can help with this, too.

For example, you can use the "find action items for this document" feature to quickly identify critical tasks, deadlines or follow-up items embedded deep within a file. It works for tax documents as well as client contracts and financial agreements. This feature not only helps keep you from overlooking important details when working long hours, but also allows you to complete critical tasks faster.

4. Onboard New Clients Faster

When taking on new clients or processing large volumes of financial documentation, you can leverage the AI assistant to significantly reduce the amount of time spent on initial document review and assessment. Whether you need to quickly summarize historical financial documents or identify potential areas of financial concern, ShareFile can conduct the analysis within seconds. You can even use the assistant to extract key financial trends from past tax returns or financial statements.

5. Locate Critical Financial Data

In a rush? Use the Document Q&A feature to extract immediate, precise answers from complex financial documents. For instance, rather than manually sifting through a 100-page budget or contract, ask the AI-powered assistant to find:

• Total revenue for a specific year
• Details of a particular expense category
• Specific contract terms or financial commitments
• Clarification on accounting entries or transaction details

Start Using ShareFile's AI Document Assistant Today

These are just a few examples of dozens of different ways accounting teams can work smarter with ShareFile's AI-powered document assistant. And getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the content viewer of the document you want to review in your ShareFile account and select the AI assistant button in the upper right corner. (Yes, it really is that simple.)

Looking for more ways to simplify your workflows? See how else ShareFile equips your team to fuel growth with AI—no extra headcount needed.