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

57 points bmadduma | 1 comments | 11 Dec 25 22:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | 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.

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1. stuffn ◴[17 Dec 25 17:29 UTC] No.46302613[source]▶
I go the other way and say this is a vast oversimplication of the job by a tech bro doing what tech bros typically do.

I am not an accountant but for many years I worked adjacent to them as a developer. I got a lot of time to ask questions and I was generally curious. Even at the SMB level accountants don't necessarily always have a "ground truth". There are so many ways to bury financial data that it needs almost constant vigilance. Yes, in theory, there is one ground truth (inputs should balance with whats there) but in practice humans are SHOCKINGLY good at committing accounting fraud. GAAP is another thing.