Next Starts Now: AI Ponderings and Practical Applications
By Kathleen Hoffelder, NJCPA Content & Communications Manager –
June 17, 2026
When artificial intelligence (AI) is mentioned in the same breath as accounting, most realize it means automating routine tasks, garnering faster data insights and creating efficiencies wherever possible.
Few understand, however, that AI is not only enhancing daily functions, but helping to shape and transform accounting careers — creating new opportunities with every practical application.
Better Efficiencies
Dr. Sean Stein Smith, CPA, CFE, CGMA, CMA, DBA, a professor at the City University of New York Lehman College, noted that AI is particularly useful in automating invoice and accounts payable processing. “Many companies now use AI tools that read invoices, extract vendor information, match invoices with purchase orders and automatically code transactions into accounting systems. This significantly reduces manual data entry and shortens payment cycles,” he said.
Contract analysis and document review are commonplace usages of AI, for not only accounting professionals but law firms and corporate legal departments. According to Stein Smith, AI is increasingly used to scan large volumes of contracts and identify key clauses, risks or compliance issues. It’s typical to use AI instead of reviewing thousands of pages manually, he added, and to highlight relevant sections and accelerate due diligence processes. But it’s also being used for predictive forecasting and business planning, he noted. “Companies are using AI models to analyze historical financial data, sales patterns and market indicators to improve forecasting accuracy.” These tools, he explained, “help finance teams build more dynamic projections and respond more quickly to changes in business conditions.”
Faster Customer Service
Another area where AI is in full swing, according to Stein Smith, is customer service automation relating to accounting and financial services. “Many banks and financial platforms use AI-powered chat and support systems that handle routine client inquiries such as payment status, account balances or transaction disputes,” he said. “These tools operate continuously and allow human staff to focus on more complex client needs.”
Similarly, Marie Torossian, CPA, CGMA, MAcc, a 10X Certified Business Coach, owner and founder of The Profit Lab, LLC, uses AI tool GoHighLevel (gohighlevel.com), including AI voice agents and workflows, to handle first-touch responses with clients, appointment confirmations, follow-ups and other routine communication. “When someone books a call, they receive an immediate response. For example, if a prospect calls our main number, our voice AI agent handles the call. If a client texts me to schedule a time to talk, the Conversation AI agent helps them book a call. We’ve integrated AI and automation wherever possible to keep things moving without requiring someone to manually manage every step,” she explained.
Torossian sees the usefulness of AI automation in both her CPA practice and in her coaching. “I didn’t start using AI because it was trendy. I started using it for the same reason I’ve adopted every other system in my business over the years: to reduce friction in the day-to-day work and create more space for thinking, advising and coaching,” she said.
She uses another tool, Sintra AI (sintra.ai), for personalized AI help. “I have different workspaces one for my CPA firm and another for my coaching business. I train the ‘brain’ for each workspace, so each set of helpers learns the business it supports. One helper provides a daily summary and reviews my calendar. Another prepares draft email responses for my review,” she said.
Video creation doesn’t typically come to mind when assessing AI usage, but Torossian views it as essential. “When I record longer trainings, workshops or podcast-style conversations, we use Opus Clip (opus.pro) to automatically find useful segments, turn them into short clips, add captions and format them for social media,” she noted. “What used to take hours of manual editing now happens in the background, and a single recording session can produce weeks of content without extra work from my team.”
Strategic Affiliations
As a CPA and Professional Certified Coach, Thomas Metelski, PCC, CPA, founder of Jump Coaching Connection, noted that AI is similar to a thinking partner. “It reduces administrative drag. In engagements, I use AI to synthesize anonymized feedback, compare patterns across leadership assessments and generate structured reflection prompts tailored to individual development goals,” he explained. It doesn’t replace professional judgment it removes the compilation work so I can focus on analysis, insight and the quality of the human conversation that follows.
As Metelski acknowledged, “Next Starts Now,” the theme of the NJCPA Convention & Expo (njcpa.org/convention), is exactly right for how AI is transforming accounting and careers. “The next wave in our profession will belong to those who combine technical credibility with technological fluency. AI will not reward passivity. It rewards curiosity, ethical judgment and disciplined experimentation,” he said.
Bridging the Gap
Still, AI creates an even larger opportunity to be used by CPAs when delivering advisory insight to clients that they cannot get anywhere else, explained Sharmila Damarapati, CPA, managing director at DBS Partners. “On a recent engagement, our team was brought in to help a service company understand its profitability at a deeper level,” she said. “The general ledger showed total revenue and expenses, but nothing about which customers, employees or service lines were driving margin. That gap is common across small and mid-sized businesses, and it is exactly where CPAs can step in.”
Using AI, her team integrated the client s existing data across multiple systems: accounting records, field service logs, time tracking, payroll and inventory. She added, “Service visits were mapped to individual customers and matched against labor hours, materials and billing method. The result was a gross profit model at the customer and employee level, produced in hours, not weeks.” In this particular example, Damarapati explained that company’s overall gross margin was healthy at approximately 46%, but the averages masked real problems. Also, on the labor side, a gap existed that never shows up on a P&L but matters enormously for staffing decisions, she said. “The analysis also flagged a billing inconsistency in how materials were charged on certain visits that was quietly compressing margins.”
Damarapati admitted the analysis did not require proprietary software or a data science team. “It required a CPA who understood cost structures, recognized the gap between the general ledger and operational reality and used AI to bridge it,” noting that while the technology processed the data, “professional judgment shaped every conclusion.”
Marie TorossianMarie Torossian, CPA, CGMA, MAcc, is a 10X Certified Business Coach and owner and founder of The Profit Lab, LLC. |
 | Sean D. Stein SmithDr. Sean Stein Smith, CPA, DBA, CMA, CGMA, CFE, is an associate professor at the City University of New York – Lehman College. He is a member of the NJCPA and active on several NJCPA interest groups. More content by Sean D. Stein Smith: |
 | Sharmila DamarapatiSharmila Damarapati, CPA, is the managing partner and founder of DBS Partners. More content by Sharmila Damarapati: |
 | Thomas W. MetelskiThomas Metelski, CPA, PCC, is CEO of Jump Coaching Connection, Inc. and host of The Value of Values podcast. |
This article appeared in the summer 2026 issue of New Jersey CPA magazine. Read the full issue.