Deanne Firth, director of Tactical Super, said in the latest SMSF Adviser podcast that, coupled with the decreasing number of auditors in the sector, the current profit margins are not enough for auditors to be able to survive without increasing the number of audits they do each year.
“The ATO seems to give us more compliance tasks, but the fees don’t go up comparatively.”
“You definitely need to use tech as efficiently as you can to be able to maintain some profitability. I love AI and the improvement in ChatGPT since 2022 in writing things like management letter points or emails.”
Firth said AI in the audit process isn’t just used for processes like writing, and a lot of software now enables auditors to do a lot more than previous generations.
“We also use it a lot for reading deeds, leases, contracts and things like that. You can put in your questions, and I know AI does sometimes make things up, but if you always ask it to tell you where in the document it is, it is a great tool.”
“At Tactical Super, we have a paid version, so we’re not sharing client information publicly, but if you drop a trust deed in and ask it to pull out the clauses for certain things that then saves having to read through it all. You can go back and check to make sure it hasn’t hallucinated anything as well.”
She continued that AI is also beneficial for applying different formulas for a variety of scenarios.
“If you’ve got some information and want to do a random sample [it is useful]. Our formula originally came from just talking to ChatGPT and telling it what we wanted it to achieve. It’s easier than working it out in Excel because you can just use normal words and it comes up with these great formulas for you,” she said.
“You can tell it what you want to do and ask for the outcome, whereas in Excel, you’ve got to add in the mathematical elements and try and work it out that way. It’s definitely made our life easier.”
She added that AI is also useful in the audit process for tasks such as researching property value trends or rates for specific areas and suburbs which can then be used to double-check appraisals.
Aaron Dunn, chief executive of Smarter SMSF, said that currently AI is being used mainly to fast-track processes and accelerate the completion of work, but warned that it is always best practice to test the application first to ensure a specific outcome.
Firth added that one way to double-check information that may be generated by AI is to ask for the source, which can then be manually checked to ensure accuracy.
“You can click on a link and follow where it comes up with the information. My tip is to always tell it to justify itself,” she said.
“You do always have to just double-check, but I’ve also taught my ChatGPT. I’ve told it to tell me when it doesn’t know something and not make it up. And while it doesn’t improve it 100 per cent, it’s definitely improved the accuracy.”
