Tax and audit firms
More billable hours in busy season, and fewer late nights before deadlines
Audit, tax and accounting practices sell expert time, then lose a lot of it chasing client documents, re-keying ledgers and formatting working papers. The deadlines don't move, so the lost time turns into late nights and rushed reviews.
Audit, tax and accounting practices
Where the week goes
- Client document requests chased one email and one phone call at a time.
- Trial balances and ledgers re-keyed into working paper templates.
- Manager and partner review squeezed into the last few days before sign-off.
- Filing deadlines for many clients tracked in a spreadsheet one person maintains.
- Staff using AI tools on client financial data with no agreed rules.
- Clients asking for help with electronic VAT invoicing on top of normal work.
Tax and audit firms
The rules we design around
Professional standards
The Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana sets ethical and professional requirements for its members under the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana Act, 2020 (Act 1058). Any automation or AI used on an engagement must keep the evidence trail and the review a quality reviewer would expect.
ICAG profile at IFACElectronic VAT invoicing
VAT-registered businesses that the Ghana Revenue Authority has onboarded to its E-VAT system must issue invoices through a certified invoicing system. Practices supporting clients through the change need clean, consistent invoice data from them.
GRA notice on E-VATClient confidentiality and data
Client financial records are confidential, and personal data in them falls under the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), including when it passes through software providers.
Act 843Reviewer in control
Automation prepares, populates and reminds. Every figure is still reviewed and signed off by a qualified person.
Where to start
How we'd go about it in a practice
You can take any of these on its own or do them in order. How buying works
Step 1Business Process Optimization
The busy-season workflow mapped, from document request to fieldwork, review and sign-off, with the bottlenecks removed.
Step 2AI Workflow Automation
A shared tracker for client document requests with automatic reminders, working papers populated from client data, and deadline alerts.
Step 3Business Data Analysis
A practice dashboard showing work in progress, upcoming deadlines and how much recorded time is actually billed.
Illustrative scenario: Audit firm
Juniors back on audit work, with the formatting done for them.
At an audit and assurance firm, junior staff spend a large share of each engagement requesting documents from clients, copying trial balances into templates and formatting working papers. Seniors review late because the groundwork runs late.
An automation assessment would map the document request and preparation steps across a typical engagement. A likely design tracks client requests in one place and populates standard working papers from client data, with staff reviewing every figure before sign-off.
Illustrative scenario: Tax practice
Every client deadline in view, and documents asked for early.
A tax and accounting practice prepares returns for several dozen businesses. Deadlines are kept in a spreadsheet one person updates, documents are requested by individual emails, and the final week before each deadline is spent chasing clients.
An automation assessment would map the filing calendar and document requests. A likely design sends each client a dated request list with automatic reminders, tracks what has arrived in one shared view and alerts managers to deadlines at risk.
Request an Operating Review
Start with one problem
Tell us which part of the organisation you’d like us to look at and what’s going wrong there. We’ll reply to agree the scope and a fixed fee before anything starts.
- Within two working daysAn email back from someone who’s read your message properly.
- A 30-minute callTo understand the problem and whether we’re the right people for it.
- Within a week of the callA written scope and a fixed fee. You’re under no obligation to go ahead.
By email
Write to info@asledatalabs.com with your name, organisation and role, and tell us: which area should we look at, and what’s going wrong there?
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