Intuit on continuous close: AI lets accountants shift from year-end catch-up to daily advisors
Dixie McCurley, Intuit's resident managing partner, said at Intuit Connect that continuous close—closing the books daily rather than weeks after month-end—is becoming possible as AI shortens the lag between transactions and advice, allowing accountants to move from passive year-end adjustments to providing daily counsel. Intuit has launched Intuit Accountant Suite for accounting firms handling hundreds to thousands of client ledgers. McCurley stressed that numerical accuracy is the foremost test, and said efficiency is merely the baseline threshold, with AI set to unleash right-brain creativity.
Topics
Body
Continuous close, in which a company’s books are closed every day instead of weeks after month-end, could change how accounting firms serve clients. As artificial intelligence shrinks the lag between a transaction and the advice built on it, year-end cleanup can become a running conversation.
Software makers are retooling their products around the firms that advise businesses, not just the businesses themselves. Intuit Inc. is pushing finance toward automation with that audience in mind, and trust in the numbers sits at the center of the effort, according to Dixie McCurley (pictured), managing partner in residence at Intuit.
“I think that being an advisor has always been difficult because we’ve always had to wait till year-end to then make all of the adjustments that actually make the financials make sense,” McCurley said. “I’ve had so many clients over the years that couldn’t get to an audit, even by October. The reason that is, is because we were always reactive. That is all changing today.”
McCurley spoke with Alison Kosik and Christophe Bertrand at Intuit Connect, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI is changing the accountant’s role, why trust in the numbers matters and what continuous close could mean for client advice. (* Disclosure below.)
Continuous close moves advice from year-end to every day
Intuit has laid out an expanded intelligence platform for accountants, including Intuit Accountant Suite, which is built for firms juggling hundreds or thousands of client books. Accuracy is the first test. McCurley recalled a panel where the same amortization table, run through two AI tools, came back correct from one and as a complete hallucination from the other.
“I was thinking about it like this: When AI gives you back an answer, it reminds me of when my junior accountants would give me back an answer,” she said. “They try so hard to go out and find the right answer, but they may not have the best experience to know, oh, actually it depends on a lot of context.”
That gap is where accountants earn their keep. A $5 million company runs differently from a $50 million one, and judgment fills in what the software can’t, according to McCurley.
“I don’t think it’s about efficiency. To me, efficiency is table stakes,” she said. “What it’s going to do is it’s going to open up creativity of the right brain.”
The biggest payoff is continuous close itself. It’s a goal 20 years in the making for McCurley, who learned long ago how to cut a month-end close from 21 days to two.
“How much more can we advise them? It doesn’t have to happen 21 days after the close,” McCurley said. “It doesn’t have to happen four months at the end of the year. Now we can do that every single day. Our days are changing with AI.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Intuit Connect:
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Intuit Connect. Neither Intuit, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
Photo: SiliconANGLE