2023's major trends in accounting tech: Cloud, automation, AI and more

November 29, 2023 12:36 PM

Since March, when the weekly Vendor Spotlight feature first launched, we have showcased 34 accounting solutions providers of all shapes and sizes — a wide variety of companies that, despite their differences, all focus on providing the tools that have become a necessity for any professional looking to guide their clients through the slings and arrows of this outrageous modern economy.

As we close out this regular feature for the year, we ask ourselves: What have we learned from and about these vendors? What are the common and consistent themes that came up over and over again this year? And what do they mean for what we can expect next year?

While we can't claim to provide an exhaustive overview of all accounting technology from just 34 vendors, as we prepare for our 2024 season, we can at least look at what these particular vendors taught us in 2023.

Long live the cloud

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Remember years ago, all those people who talked about how soon pretty much everything was going to be in the cloud? Turns out they were right. Today it seems that accounting solutions are almost inevitably cloud-based, regardless of whether they're a tax solution like Avalara, a payment solution like Bill, or a time tracker like CloudCapcha. We tried to find any vendor that does not deal even tangentially in cloud-based solutions, but could not. Cloud connectivity has not only arrived, it has now been around long enough to become the default expectation for any kind of accounting software.

Everything is automation

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Similarly, we could not find a single solution featured in our Vendor Spotlights that did not sport at least some automation capacities. Everyone, it seems, aims to liberate accountants from tedious manual processes that are not only boring, but also create opportunities for human error. And there sure are a lot of them to automate. Some, like Dext, are explicitly focused on automating a specific process, in this case pre-accounting work, while others, like Zoho, offer a wide variety of different automation solutions in its larger suite of products. Regardless of scope and scale, though, vendors seem to believe there's precious little that can't be automated.

AI ascendant

It seems this year everyone has been talking about AI, and accounting solutions providers were no exception. While AI has — in some way, shape or form — been a key component of many solutions for years (see companies like Botkeeper), the recent rise of generative AI products like ChatGPT has raised interest in the technology to a fever pitch. Companies like OneStream and April have embraced the new advance, finding that it fits well into their goals of enhancing automation and providing data-driven insights. While some are cautious about leaning too hard into generative AI this early in the game, its ultimate influence on the profession will likely be profound.

Integrate, integrate, integrate

The problem of software solutions not effectively communicating with each other, thus requiring cumbersome manual workarounds, continues, but so too are the companies trying to address this issue. Vendors increasingly are recognizing that accountants need well-integrated products in their tech stack in order to maximize their workflow automation capabilities as well as break down information silos that can create inefficient bottlenecks in the firm. The question is not whether a solution offers software integrations, but how many and with what products? Some, like Aiwyn, have built their products with integrations specifically in mind, while others, like Wolters Kluwer, added them over time, but either way the clear lesson is that, just as no person is an island, neither is any accounting software.

Real-time is real timely

In this fast-paced world, people don't want to wait, and accounting professionals are no exception. They don't want to wait for their data, they don't want to wait for their billing processes, they don't want to wait for support, they don't want to wait for much of anything, really. If that weren't the case, then why do so many companies this year, such as Pilot and PayEm, tout their capacities to offer things in real time? Accounting, more and more, is turning away from post-facto analysis and more toward actionable information and informed actions done in real-time, without the wait.

Accustoming to customization

The rise of customizable and personalized solutions in accounting software indicates vendors are recognizing that one-size-fits-all doesn't work for all firms. Professionals want their software to fit themselves, not to fit themselves to their software. With this in mind, many solutions stress the control individual users have over various aspects of their product. MindBridge, for example, enables custom analyses for risk detection and sub-ledger data, while AssetMap allows for customized design-thinking presentations to drive more holistic financial decisions. No matter the particular area, though, it seems customers want choices not just in what product they use but in how they use that product as well.

"What's the most exciting new thing you're working on?"

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Based only on answers to the question, asked of everyone in the Vendor Spotlight, of "what's the most exciting new thing you're working on?" we might be able to expect in 2024:

More use of artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, including the development of AI-powered assistants that can be interacted with in natural language.
Continued focus on automation, especially within workflows. Companies aim not only to improve current automation processes but to expand the number of processes that can be automated in the first place.
Digital assets like cryptocurrencies, as well as their undergirding blockchain technology, will likely grow in importance, especially in light of recent regulatory changes, and so too will the number of solutions for this sector.
Integrations are likely to increase as companies pursue more partnerships to ensure their products work seamlessly with others.
Data-driven insights will be even more in demand, and companies are preparing to meet this demand with a variety of analytical tools, many of which are also incorporating the use of traditional AI to examine the data and generative AI to explain it in plain language.
Recognizing the increasingly global nature of business, many companies with strong presences in their own countries are increasingly seeking to go global, pursuing international markets through traditional expansion or local partnerships.