AI is here and it will impact your finance office. Evaluating the efficiencies it can bring to your operations is a step you can undertake now, and many organizations are doing just that.
Where to begin the process of planned AI implementation? One practical starting point:
Your offices job descriptions may describe roles in general terms — “prepares monthly journal entries,” “assists with rate case support,” “reconciles subsidiary ledgers to the general ledger.” That’s accurate, but it’s not specific enough to tell you what’s exposed to automation and what isn’t.
Start with a task-level inventory, not a job description rewrite.
For each position, list the actual tasks performed in a given month, and roughly how many hours each one takes. Not “accounts payable” — instead, “keys invoices into the ERP, averaging 6 hours a week.” Not “financial reporting” — instead, “pulls consumption data from the billing system, builds the variance schedule in Excel, and drafts the narrative explanation for board packets, averaging 10 hours a month.”
Once you have that list, sort the tasks into three categories.
1. Mechanical and rules-based. Data entry, reconciliations that follow the same steps every time, pulling data from one system to format it for another. These are the tasks AI agents handle well today, with staff review before anything is finalized.
2. Judgment-based but pattern-driven. Drafting the first pass of a variance explanation, flagging accounts that deviate from historical trends, building a first draft of a rate impact summary. AI can produce a competent first draft here. A staff accountant still has to verify it against what’s actually happening at the utility.
3. Judgment-based and context-dependent. Explaining to a board why a rate case assumption changed, interpreting how a new FERC or RUS requirement impacts your utility or co-op, building the narrative case for a capital project. These stay with your staff. The value is in knowing the utility, not in producing the document.
The inventory itself is the deliverable. Once you have hours attached to each task, you can see where the automation conversation should start — not with the newest tool on the market, but with the tasks eating the most hours in category one.
That’s the starting point. Next week: what to do with that inventory once you have it — how to redesign the role around categories two and three, and what that means for training.
About the Author
Russ Hissom, CPA is a principal of UtilityEducation.com, a firm that provides power and utilities rate and expert witness services, and on-demand professional education classes in co-op and utility accounting, finance, ratemaking, artificial intelligence, and management.
Russ was a partner in a national accounting and consulting firm for 20 years. He works with electric investor-owned and public power utilities, electric cooperatives, and gas, water, and wastewater utilities. His goal is to share industry best practices to help your business perform effectively and efficiently and meet the challenges of the changing power and utilities industry.
Contact Russ at [email protected]
The material in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal or accounting advice provided by Utility Accounting & Rates Specialists, LLC or UtilityEducation.com. You should seek formal advice on this topic from your accounting or legal advisor.