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AI for Accountants: Monthly Update & Implementation Lab - October

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Overview  

New artificial intelligence tools, features, and regulatory guidance are released faster than most accounting professionals can track. Without a structured way to evaluate them, a practice either falls behind or adopts AI in ways that expose it to Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), confidentiality, and professional-standards risk. 

Keeping up with these monthly developments is essential to implement them in a way that is responsible, ethical, and secure. Each monthly session cuts through the noise, curates what actually mattered from the past month, and turns it into practical, compliant workflows you can apply immediately. 

Join Nestene Botha CA(SA) to master the latest practical AI workflows and understand your professional compliance obligations. 

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Learning objectives  

Attending this webinar will equip you with the following skills: 

• Identify and interpret the AI developments of the past month that matter to the accounting profession, separating real utility from the hype. 

• Evaluate new AI tools, features, and software updates for use in an accounting practice or finance function, including whether they are actually available and switched on for South African users. 

• Analyse real-world examples of AI implementation in professional practice, including successes and failures, to draw lessons for your own environment. 

• Apply practical workflow and prompting techniques to day-to-day work such as bookkeeping, reconciliations, working papers, client correspondence, and reporting, with review controls in place. 

• Establish an ethical framework and a risk-mitigation policy for AI use that respects POPIA, client confidentiality, and your professional body's code of conduct. 

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Content 

The webinar will cover the following topics:  

• The current AI landscape for accountants 

  • Large language models and reasoning models 

  • Multimodal and voice models 

  • Agentic AI and computer-use agents 

  • Adoption benchmarks and surveys 

  • What the month's model releases mean for accounting work 

• New features and developments from the major AI providers 

  • OpenAI (ChatGPT, Projects, agent mode) 

  • Anthropic (Claude, Claude in Chrome, Claude Code, connectors) 

  • Google (Gemini and Workspace) and Microsoft (Copilot in Excel, Word, and Outlook, Copilot agents) 

  • Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors 

  • Integrations with accounting platforms such as Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, Draftworx, and CaseWare 

  • What is available in South Africa and on which subscription tier 

• Regulatory, government, and professional guidance 

  • The Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and the Information Regulator 

  • SAICA's guidance on the responsible and ethical use of generative AI 

  • IRBA guidance, including Staff Audit Practice Alert 11 (non-authoritative staff guidance) 

  • IESBA's technology-related revisions to the International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants 

  • IAASB developments on AI in audit evidence 

  • The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) and its transparency obligations 

  • SARS developments affecting practitioners 

• Industry news and real-world case studies 

  • How South African and international firms are deploying AI 

  • AI hallucination cases and court sanctions 

  • AI-generated content, watermarking, and disclosure to clients 

  • The effect of AI on audit evidence and independent review work 

  • Fraud, deepfakes, and cyber risk for finance teams 

• Practical AI implementation lab 

  • High-impact use cases (bookkeeping and reconciliations, working papers, financial statement drafting, tax queries, client correspondence, management reporting) 

  • Prompt engineering and task delegation 

  • Custom assistants and reusable prompt libraries 

  • Verification and review frameworks for AI output 

  • Data-handling and confidentiality controls 

  • An AI use policy for the practice 

  • The month's action list to implement the following week