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Tell HN: AI coding is sexy, but accounting is the real low-hanging target

56 points bmadduma | 4 comments | 11 Dec 25 22:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.873s | source

Working on automating small business finance (bookkeeping, reconciliation, basic reporting).

One thing I keep noticing: compared to programming, accounting often looks like the more automatable problem:

It’s rule-based Double entry, charts of accounts, tax rules, materiality thresholds. For most day-to-day transactions you’re not inventing new logic, you’re applying existing rules.

It’s verifiable The books either balance or they don’t. Ledgers either reconcile or they don’t. There’s almost always a “ground truth” to compare against (bank feeds, statements, prior periods).

It’s boring and repetitive Same vendors, same categories, same patterns every month. Humans hate this work. Software loves it.

With accounting, at least at the small-business level, most of the work feels like:

normalize data from banks / cards / invoices

apply deterministic or configurable rules

surface exceptions for human review

run consistency checks and reports

The truly hard parts (tax strategy, edge cases, messy history, talking to authorities) are a smaller fraction of the total hours but require humans. The grind is in the repetitive, rule-based stuff.

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missedthecue ◴[16 Dec 25 20:14 UTC] No.46293790[source]▶
"It’s verifiable. The books either balance or they don’t. Ledgers either reconcile or they don’t. There’s almost always a “ground truth” to compare against (bank feeds, statements, prior periods). It’s boring and repetitive. Same vendors, same categories, same patterns every month. Humans hate this work. Software loves it."

These are all true statements, but all of those things are solvable with classic software. Quickbooks has done this for decades now. The parts of accounting that aren't solvable with classic computing are generally also not solvable by adding LLMs into the mix.

replies(3): >>46294069 #>>46296551 #>>46302613 #
1. alex7o ◴[16 Dec 25 20:36 UTC] No.46294069[source]▶
They might not be solvable but you can get 5-10% Improvement on them, unfortunately you can't do a new product that is exactly like QuickBooks but 5% better at reconciliation etc.
replies(1): >>46295879 #
2. danudey ◴[16 Dec 25 22:58 UTC] No.46295879[source]▶
LLMs by their inherent nature cannot be relied on to be true and correct, which by coincidence are the only traits that matter in accounting.

If you want better software, then sure, maybe a coding assistant can help you write it faster, but when it comes to actually doing accounting I would not rely on an LLM in any way shape or form any more than I would do so for law.

replies(1): >>46298223 #
3. irvingprime ◴[17 Dec 25 04:22 UTC] No.46298223[source]▶
Bingo! You found the prize! Putting tech that is prone to hallucination in charge of anything that has serious consequences when it's wrong is a terrible idea. You do not want hallucinated payments or receipts, or legal citations. You want these things to be both true and correct, EVERY TIME.
replies(1): >>46304402 #
4. TheNewsIsHere ◴[17 Dec 25 19:35 UTC] No.46304402{3}[source]▶
“We had to re-state our financials and amend our taxes because the AI screwed up and we didn’t have anyone who understood accounting look at our books.”