Professionals · code 2411

Accountants

AI can prepare the accounts. Signing them off is still an accountant.

AI could take a fair chunk of half the eight tasks, led by preparing financial statements and designing costing systems. Auditing the books and investigating fraud or insolvency are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Accountants plan, organize and administer accounting systems for individuals and establishments. Some occupations classified here examine and analyse the accounting and financial records of individuals and establishments to ensure accuracy and compliance with established accounting standards and procedures. Tasks include - (a) advising on, planning and installing budgetary, accounts controlling and other accounting policies and systems; (b) preparing and certifying financial statements for presentation to management, shareholders and statutory or other bodies; (c) preparing tax returns, advising on taxation problems and contesting disputed claims before tax officials; (d) preparing or reporting on profit forecasts and budgets; (e) conducting financial investigations in such matters as suspected fraud, insolvency and bankruptcy; (f) auditing accounts and bookkeeping records; (g) conducting investigations and advising management on financial aspects of productivity, stockholdings, sales, new products, etc.; (h) devising and controlling systems to determine unit cost of products and services. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Accountant - Auditor - Certified accountant - Chartered accountant - Financial controller - Insolvency trustee - Management accountant - Tax accountant Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Finance manager - 1211 - Accounting assistant - 3313 - Bookkeeper - 3313

accountant

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

49 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 3

379 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 51.3 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 51.3 = 48.7.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 3”: Most of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 14.4 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Accountants 49

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

Preparing financial statements.
Forecasts and budgets.
Routine audit checks.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Signing off and taking responsibility.
Advising on tax and strategy.
Investigating fraud.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

AI auditing tools.
Sustainability reporting.
Advisory work.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

50 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 74 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

14 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 10 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

14 How
hands-on

10 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 16.7 · hand skill 9.5 · cramped spaces 2.8 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 65, against an average of 51. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

65
Preparing and certifying financial statements for presentation to management, shareholders and statutory or other bodies

Medium
60
Devising and controlling a system to determine unit cost of products and services.

Medium
56
Conducting investigations and advising management on financial aspects of productivity, stockholdings, sales, new products, etc.

Medium
52
Preparing or reporting on profit forecasts and budgets

Medium
47
Preparing tax returns, advising on taxation problems and contesting disputed claims before tax officials

Low
46
Advising on, planning and installing budgetary, accounts controlling and other accounting policies and systems

Low
43
Auditing accounts and bookkeeping records

Low
42
Conducting financial investigations in such matters as suspected fraud, insolvency and bankruptcy

Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you: 74
AI does it for you: 50

Sidekick wins, by 24 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2211, 2212

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.21% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should accountants be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of the job are changing fast. Financial statements, costing, investigations and forecasts are rated Medium; tax, policies, audits and fraud investigations are Low. Automation takes on routine accounts; judgement and advice stay human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.