AI is everywhere right now. It’s in your inbox, on your LinkedIn feed, and in every software vendor’s sales pitch. Accounting is no exception. The promise? Faster closes, fewer errors, and smarter decisions, all on autopilot. The reality? That’s a little more nuanced — and a lot more interesting if you’re paying attention.
While nearly 9 in 10 finance leaders say they’re using AI in some capacity*, fewer than half are using AI tools actually built for finance. That’s a huge gap, and a real opportunity. Especially since tools like Sage Copilot are showing up not just on vendor roadmaps, but in real workflows.
What does AI in accounting actually mean right now? What’s happening with Sage Intacct and AI? What’s worth experimenting with, and what’s just noise?
AI is Not Magic—and it’s Not Your Next Hire
Despite the hype, AI isn’t going to stroll in and replace your controller. It won’t magically fix your tangled chart of accounts or untangle the workflows that have been patched together over the years.
What it is doing—quietly, steadily—is handling some of the more repetitive, rules-based parts of accounting. Searching transactions. Reconciling accounts. Reading vendor invoices and entering data, highlighting outliers. The kind of tasks you wouldn’t call “strategic,” but that eat up hours every week.
So no, it’s not replacing your team. It is changing the nature of what your team does. As Sage’s CTO puts it, AI creates the bandwidth for finance professionals to step into more strategic roles. It handles the grunt work so that people can focus on insights, not inputs.
AI in accounting might not take your job, but it will likely take the tasks that don’t require your judgment. That’s not meant as a threat. That’s the opportunity.
Search is the Gateway
Let’s talk about one of the simplest—and most effective—AI features in Sage Intacct right now: natural language search.
With Sage Copilot, anyone on your team can ask a question like, “What was our total spend on professional services in Q2?” and get an answer instantly. No custom reports. No menu diving. No waiting on accounting.
It’s not flashy. It’s not even new in the grand scheme of AI. It’s incredibly useful though. It gets people answers faster and lets finance teams spend less time answering the same five questions over and over.
Here’s the key: Sage Copilot isn’t just any AI assistant—it’s a generative AI that actually understands accounting and finance, and it’s built specifically for business workflows. That means it’s tuned to deliver relevant, actionable answers to the kinds of questions your team asks every day.
Some companies are already seeing real results. One agricultural company cut AP processing time in half using AI to read and extract data from bills.* A nonprofit uses AI to flag outlier transactions in the GL—automatically. That’s more than search. That’s impact.*
What’s Next: From “Tell Me” to “Do This”
Generative AI is great at helping us find answers. The next phase—agentic AI—is about taking action.
Tools like Sage Copilot are already edging into this territory: recommending actions, assisting with workflows, and eventually triggering tasks across systems. That could mean initiating a vendor payment, building a forecast, or creating a workflow based on pattern recognition.
We’re watching and studying, but we like where this is going. As AI tools become more agentic, they’ll stop being just helpers—and start becoming doers. That shift will reshape how finance teams get things done.
What does this actually mean for your team?
Time savings is the obvious answer but it’s not the whole story. If AI helps your team close faster, what do they do with that time? If it reduces manual AP work, do you reallocate that headcount or expand without needing to hire?
It’s also worth asking: will everyone benefit equally? Will only a few super users dig in, or will tools like Copilot become everyday essentials for your whole team?
These tools are real, but their value depends on how you use them. AI in accounting can improve accuracy, reduce busywork, and surface insights—but only if your team is ready to lean in and experiment.
What You Should Be Doing Right Now
There’s no universal AI playbook (yet), but there are smart steps you can take today:
- Start small. Ask Copilot a question. See how it responds. Figure out what it can’t do yet.
- Fix your data. AI is only as good as the structure and quality of what you feed it.
- Choose a pain point. Don’t try to automate everything. Pick a high-friction task and test the waters.
- Get your team involved. Make AI curiosity part of the culture. Let people explore and experiment.
Set real expectations. AI won’t solve all your problems—but it might eliminate a few that waste your time.
This isn’t about shiny objects. It’s about capability building. Sage is investing heavily in AI, and tools like Sage Copilot are already adding value. If you wait until everything’s perfect, you may miss the momentum that’s building now.
The Sage of it All
While other vendors are still talking about AI, Sage is shipping it. From AP bill automation to close management and real-time search, Sage Intacct is bringing AI into accounting workflows in ways that are both useful and impressive.
At BT Partners, we’re here to help you separate the signal from the noise. Whether you’re ready to try something now or just want to map out what’s coming, we’ll help you build a smart, realistic roadmap for AI in your accounting operations. You don’t have to go all in. You just have to start.
Curious? Let’s talk.
