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Accountants shouldn’t drown in employee purchase reconciliations

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Among the challenges accountants face is accounting for purchases employees make to get their work done. While the expense report process attempts to address this, it often falls short in providing accurate accounting because it relies on non-accountants entering financial data. The result is typically a time-consuming process for accountants, who must review, reconcile and correct the accounting entries submitted by employees.

The emergence of virtual cards, especially when combined with AI-powered fintech apps, offers accountants a new approach to solving this long-standing challenge.

What is a virtual card?

As many may already know, virtual cards are a type of company-paid credit card that functions like a traditional, physical card with one key difference: There’s no physical card involved. This allows for the creation of an almost unlimited number of unique card numbers, highlighting the brilliance behind virtual cards: intended use.

The concept of “intended use” recognizes that employees have specific scenarios in mind when using a virtual card. This could be to cover the expenses involved in an upcoming business trip, purchasing construction materials for a job or covering necessary permits or fees for cell tower repairs.

Fintech apps can issue virtual cards to employees based on intended use. These apps leverage intended use to determine the appropriate accounting for purchases made with each virtual card. Utilizing virtual cards through a fintech app, the employee experience becomes streamlined, making the process user-friendly. Employees simply select an intended use from a list provided by their organization and enter the desired spending limit. Unlike expense reports, they do not need to enter accounting codes or other financial details. The fintech app automatically determines the correct accounting in the background, eliminating the need for employees to manage complex accounting information.

AI can help improve accuracy

While intended use allows fintech apps to predict the correct accounting, some intended uses allow for an amount of accuracy that isn’t adequate.

An example is the business trip intended use discussed above. The accounting accuracy depends on the chart of accounts for travel-related expenses. If the COA has only one account for travel, then the trip’s intended use will have the necessary accuracy.  If there are expenses for subaccounts such as airfare, lodging, ground transportation and so forth, the trip needs to involve more detail to have the necessary accuracy. This is where AI can help.  

Fintech apps can use AI to analyze purchases made with a given virtual card and its intended use to arrive at the precise accounting for each purchase. The AI involved analyzes large sets of purchases by employees, looking for patterns in accounting. AI is able to consider a wide range of parameters found in these purchases and consider a vast array of possibilities to arrive at the correct accounting.  AI is especially impressive for sophisticated, multidimensional COAs because of its ability to analyze complex patterns.

AI ensures accurate accounting happens automatically, thus avoiding the need for accountants to review the accounting prior to booking purchases into the general ledger. Some fintech apps can automatically make these bookings by posting them to the GL, delivering accountants a completely automated process.

Reconciling credit card statements

In addition, some fintech apps, when combined with virtual card use, can automatically reconcile credit card statements, saving dozens of hours of month-end accounting work. These apps compare the transactions on a statement with purchases made using virtual cards and, because the accounting for these transactions is already confirmed, mark them as reconciled.

They also flag transactions paid with a physical card, instead of a virtual card; how these are handled depends on the fintech app. Some apps integrate with expense management services to verify if accounting data is available for these transactions. If so, the app uses this data and marks the transactions as reconciled.

For transactions without expense management data, AI-enabled apps can automatically predict the appropriate accounting. These apps then give accountants the choice to either use this predicted accounting as final or treat it as an accrual until the transactions appear in the expense management service. In both cases, the apps mark the transactions as reconciled, resulting in a fully reconciled credit card statement, ready for period close.

Streamlining the process

AI-powered fintech apps create a streamlined purchasing and accounting process for both employees and accountants. Before purchasing a good or service, employees simply request a virtual card and indicate its intended use, eliminating the need to input accounting data manually.

These apps can save accountants hours of work by automating the correct accounting for employee purchases and reconciling monthly statements from card issuers, ensuring a smoother, more accurate and efficient process.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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