According to the 2025 Generative AI in Professional Services Report by the Thomson Reuters Institute, 95% of accounting professionals believe generative AI will become central to their organization’s workflow within the next five years. Yet, a glaring disconnect remains between this certainty and organizational readiness. The report reveals that while optimism has surged, with 55% of respondents now expressing excitement or hope about the technology, preparedness has lagged. A staggering 64% of professionals have received no training on these tools, and 52% report that their organizations still lack policies governing their use.
This gap between inevitable adoption and practical preparation defines the current moment in the accounting sector. As businesses race to close that divide, leaders from four of the industry’s most well known platforms, QuickBooks, Sage, Xero and FreshBooks, suggest the future of finance will not be about machines replacing accountants, but about liberating them from the “non-negotiables” of their trade.
I met up with Aaron Harris, CTO at Sage; David Hahn, EVP at QuickBooks; Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO at Xero and Shaheen Javadizadeh, CEO at FreshBooks which outlined a vision where AI shifts the role of finance professionals from data entry doers to strategic reviewers.
For more like this on Forbes, What Is ‘Human-In-The-Loop’ And Why It Matters For AI In Finance.
Video: Aaron Harris, CTO at Sage
The End of the “Non-Negotiables”
For small business owners and finance leaders, the workday is often consumed by administrative drudgery, tasks that Harris at Sage calls “the non-negotiables.” These are the invoices that must be sent, the bills that must be paid, and the books that must be closed.
“They can’t choose not to do [these tasks] because there’s something more valuable they could be spending their time on,” Harris said.
The primary promise of the current wave of AI is the automation of this low-value, high-necessity work. Harris noted that Sage has deployed AI agents capable of handling complex workflows, such as analyzing a company’s payables against a set budget. Instead of a human manually selecting which vendors to pay, the AI can suggest an allocation strategy based on cash discounts and supply chain criticality.
This sentiment was echoed by Hahn at QuickBooks, whose team is leveraging “Intuit Intelligence” to automate the administrative burden for users of his platform. Hahn shared the example of a general contractor who, prior to AI adoption, waited weeks for their team to input bills and tag them to specific projects. This lag meant he rarely knew which projects were profitable in real time. “With AI, all the administrative work that happened before… gets pulled off the plates of the team members,” Hahn said. “It means that insights and intelligence in QuickBooks, such as the costs on a given project, are available now in real time.”
For more like this on Forbes, The Responsible Use Of AI In Retail And Finance.
Video: David Hahn, EVP at QuickBooks
The Consumerization of Business Tech
Singh Cassidy at Xero, argues that the push for AI isn’t just coming from enterprise efficiency needs, but from consumer behavior. Small business owners are consumers first, and their expectations are being shaped by their personal use of tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
“They might be going on ChatGPT to plan their personal travel at the same time that they’re starting to dip their toe in the water into what it can do for their business,” Singh Cassidy said. “Why is that important? Because I think that’s the standard they’re going to expect even in their SaaS applications or work.”
She envisions a progression from simple information retrieval, asking natural language questions about cash flow, to complex agentic actions. Xero has already deployed tools like “auto bank reconciliation,” which Singh Cassidy notes can turn hours of weekly work into minutes.
But she cautions that moving from information to action requires a massive leap in trust. People wouldn’t just give away their ATM card and pin and tell someone else to go to their bank and get their money. Singh Cassidy concluded, “I think when it comes to people’s money, they want to know they’re in control.”
Video: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO at Xero
The Trust Barrier and the Human in the Loop
This “trust barrier” is a central focus for all four leaders. The 2025 Generative AI in Professional Services Report highlights that concerns about accuracy and reliability remain top obstacles to adoption.
Harris emphasized that building trust requires a humble approach to the technology’s limitations. “We have to accept that AI is fallible,” Harris said. “You establish rules with your engineers, like ‘don’t let an LLM do math.’ That’s kind of an obvious one.”
To mitigate these risks, QuickBooks maintains a philosophy of keeping a “human in the loop,” particularly for high-stakes compliance tasks. Hahn noted that while customers are comfortable with AI handling 95% of their books, that final 5%, the “high trust, high judgment” decisions, often requires human validation.
Javadizadeh at FreshBooks observed that for many small business owners, the hesitation isn’t about the technology itself, but the uncertainty it represents.
“People don’t fear technology, they fear uncertainty,” Javadizadeh said. “And as leaders, our job is to replace that uncertainty with clarity and confidence.” He argues that for AI to be truly effective, it must be “almost invisible” within the workflow, removing the intimidation factor.
Video: Shaheen Javadizadeh, CEO at FreshBooks
Making Accounting “Sexy” Again
One of the most surprising potential impacts of AI is its ability to rebrand the accounting profession itself. Singh Cassidy noted there is a talent shortage in the industry, with fewer college graduates choosing accounting.
“We have been told that Xero makes AI accounting sexy again,” Singh Cassidy said. By removing the repetitive toil, the profession moves closer to high-level advisory work, exit strategies, legacy planning, and tax strategy, which is more appealing to the next generation of talent.
Harris agrees, predicting that the industry is on the verge of a “rapid period of growth.” “Far from AI killing the industry, it’s going to be the tool that empowers the industry to create much more value,” Harris said.
The Road Ahead: Paranoid Optimism
As the industry hurtles toward this AI-enabled future, the leaders agree that agility is key. Singh Cassidy describes her approach as being a “paranoid optimist.”
“You’d rather be building the tools and waiting for adoption than having your competitors build the tools… and getting the learnings elsewhere,” she said.
For Javadizadeh, the ultimate goal is empowerment. “I don’t see it as a job replacer, but a job enhancer,” he said. “Time is our most precious resource. It’s something we don’t get back.”
As the 2025 Generative AI in Professional Services Report concludes, the “secret is out.” For finance leaders and small business owners alike, the mandate is clear: bridge the gap between interest and implementation. The organizations that succeed will be those that move beyond viewing AI as a novel tool and begin treating it as a reliable, strategic partner.
