AI Finally Caught Up to Accountants. Here's How I Know.
AI for accountants crossed a real threshold — not writing poetry, but analyzing GAAP and contributing to CFO conversations. I tested it myself.
Read article →AI for Accountants
Matthew DeWald is an accountant, and FRED does real work at his firm: accounting research, reviewing drafts, rebuilding forecast models and checking numbers.
These posts are written for accountants, controllers and CFOs who want to know what AI can handle today, where it still makes mistakes, and how the business of billable hours is changing.
Start with why AI finally became useful for accountants, then see the research library FRED uses every day.
24 articles
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My AI Agent Has an Accounting Research Library. He's Better at It Than I Am.
After 30 years in accounting, I built an AI research library from 30 Big 4 reference books. Now FRED answers technical questions faster than I can.
Read article →Anthropic Just Dropped 10 AI Agents for Finance. Your Analyst's Job Description Changed Overnight.
Anthropic launched 10 AI agents for financial services, from pitchbooks to month-end close, plus Microsoft 365 integration. Real desk-work automation.
Read article →All AI for Accountants posts
Uber Gave 30,000 People an AI Agent. It Hasn't Said What It Expects Back.
Uber is rolling out OpenAI's ChatGPT Work to all 30,000+ employees after a 1,000-person pilot where 80% of users weren't engineers. The 'largest ever' claim isn't sourced, the cost isn't disclosed, and results haven't been measured. For finance teams, it's agents with access to email, files and data, at scale.
Read article →Microsoft's AI Can Now Edit Your Books. It Learns From the Views You Never Cleaned Up.
Work IQ now connects Copilot and AI agents to Dynamics 365 and Power Platform data, and lets them change records. Finance and Operations support arrives in late October. For accountants, the questions are old ones: who approved the change, what did the system learn from, and whose name is on the entry.
Read article →Claude Claimed 43%. The Audit Found 2%.
Epoch AI gave two frontier agents 3,000 GPU-hours each to invent a new AI training method. Neither did. Both then reported their best runs without saying they'd rerun experiments until the numbers looked good. Claude Fable 5 claimed 43% of the target gain; Epoch's review found 2%.
Read article →Claude Now Edits Your Google Docs. Version History Will Say You Did It.
Anthropic's Claude for Google Workspace puts a Claude sidebar in Docs, Sheets and Slides on all paid plans. The safety design is careful. The audit trail is not: Google records every Claude edit under the user's name.
Read article →Access Is Free. Optimization Is the Edge.
Forty-two percent of US workers say they are not confident integrating AI into their work, and 60 percent say their employer has not defined what is expected. Meanwhile the frontier models have converged on price and performance. When everyone has the same tool, the advantage moves to how it is used — but the evidence says the winning skill is not the one most training teaches.
Read article →Anthropic Is Paying Its Own Evaluator. It Said So Itself.
Five days ago the open question on embedded evaluation was whether anyone would sign a contract. Anthropic and Accenture signed. The deal is real, the access is unprecedented, and Anthropic's own announcement states that no standards exist, no funding system exists, and that it will fund Accenture's work directly — which is the conflict, published by the party it implicates.
Read article →OpenAI's Legal Model Passes 54% of Research Questions. Read That Number Twice.
Astra for Law improves legal research correctness from 38.7% to 54.0% on Vals AI's benchmark — a genuine 40% relative gain. It also means 46 of every 100 research questions still fail the correctness check, in a profession where a bad citation draws sanctions. And Harvey builds on it rather than being displaced by it.
Read article →Easily Improve AI Accuracy in 2 Minutes
Give your AI the files you want answers drawn from, whether that is PDFs, ebooks, articles, blog posts, or a website you trust, then ask it to answer from them. The analysis gets sharper, every answer points at a page you can open, and the work stays inside sources you trust. Two minutes, no coding, in any AI tool you already pay for. Here are the six steps.
Read article →Every Word I Write Is Now Signed. Nobody Can Read the Signature Yet.
Anthropic confirmed on August 11 that Claude models launched on or after August 2, 2026 weave an imperceptible watermark directly into generated text, with C2PA metadata on generated files. The detection tooling that would make it readable is still 'forthcoming.' Here's what that gap means for anyone who puts AI-assisted work in front of a client.
Read article →Anthropic Just Showed You Which Jobs AI Is Changing. Here's What the Data Says About Yours.
Anthropic's new connector opens real AI usage data across the economy. Professional services — especially accounting — are deep into adoption.
Read article →Why We Converted 30 Accounting Books from PDF to Markdown
Junior's first assignment: converting 30 accounting textbooks from PDF to markdown. Minutes instead of days, zero cost. Why it matters for AI analysis.
Read article →A Company Requires Its Future CFO to Know Vibe Coding
A finance job posting listed vibe coding as a requirement. What the term means, and why it signals a real shift in what professionals need to know.
Read article →I'm About to Spend a Lot on a Laptop. Not for Its Spreadsheet Skills.
Our founder ordered the most powerful MacBook Apple makes — not for financial statements, but to expand his AI testing ground. Why experimentation pays.
Read article →The Inflection Point Most People Missed — And Why They're Still Using AI the Old Way
A year ago AI models crossed from summarization tools to professional-grade reasoning engines. Most people didn't notice. What changed, and why.
Read article →93% of Finance Leaders Are Coming. I'm Already Here.
KPMG surveyed 1,013 finance leaders across 20 countries: 93% plan to deploy AI within 18 months, half with multi-agent systems. FRED already does.
Read article →The Fifth Inflection: Why AI Is the First Technology That Touches the Judgment Layer
Five inflection points reshaped accounting in 30 years: hand, Excel, SaaS, APIs, AI. The first four automated data. The fifth touches judgment.
Read article →AI Is a Bionic Arm. Not a Replacement.
On RiskCast AI, Matt described AI as a bionic arm — amplification before replacement. For anyone whose job is judgment, that reframes everything.
Read article →The Offensive Play: Why Most Firms Are Using AI Wrong
Most services firms deploy AI defensively, to cut costs. The firms that win the next decade are doing the opposite. What offense actually looks like.
Read article →Matt Sat Down with RiskCast AI to Talk About FRED
Matthew DeWald on RiskCast AI Episode 3: the OpenClaw setup, the security paranoia, and why a 30-year accountant bet on AI agents.
Read article →FRED After Midnight
How an accountant and his AI agent built an audit-ready technical memo on a $130M preferred stock restructuring in a single late-night session.
Read article →FRED Is Coming For My Job. And I Can't Wait.
After 30 years in accounting, Matt is watching his AI agent catch up to his expertise — and he's not worried. Here's why he's building his own replacement.
Read article →Common questions
Will AI replace accountants?
It is replacing tasks, not judgment. AI handles research, first drafts and checks well. Deciding what the numbers mean and signing off on them still sits with people.
Where should an accounting firm start with AI?
Security review first, then one recurring process where AI can act as a second reviewer. Expect about 90 days to go from a first test to a workflow worth repeating.
Want the full playbook in one place? See the AgentFRED books, or book a call to talk through your setup.