As competition intensifies and clients demand faster, more accurate service, your accounting firm can’t afford to rely on inefficient manual processes. To stay ahead, forward-thinking firms are turning to automation tools — specifically, RPA bots and AI-powered solutions — to boost efficiency and improve business results.
In this post, we’ll break down the key differences between RPA and AI technologies, examine their strengths, and explore how these automation tools can address your accounting firm’s needs.
What is RPA?
RPA uses software robots (“bots”) to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks like data entry, data validation, report generation, and invoice processing. The bots follow explicit pre-programmed instructions and workflows, and seamlessly interact with existing systems and applications — much like a human would.
However, despite performing the same tasks over and over, RPA bots aren’t capable of learning from this repetition. They can’t recognize patterns, nor can they adapt to any scenarios that don’t meet their preset parameters. They also can’t effectively analyze data unless the information is structured in a fixed format, such as a database or spreadsheet.
Ultimately, RPA bots are best suited for repetitive and less complex administrative tasks.
What is agentic AI?
As useful as RPA bots are, many accounting firms discover that these traditional automation tools don’t quite meet all their needs. For this reason, many firms are turning to additional AI-powered solutions like agentic AI.
Like RPA bots, AI agents automate specific administrative tasks like data entry and report generation, and they interact with other applications in a human-like manner. But unlike RPA bots, AI agents can reason, make decisions, and take actions based on analysis of both structured and unstructured data. Plus, they can adjust to different, changing situations in real time, allowing the agents to complete tasks without constant human input or supervision.
With agentic automation systems, several agents can also work together at once to achieve broader firm goals. For example, to accelerate the employee onboarding process, a “team” of agents will automatically create an account for the new hire, assign permissions, and add the new hire to the right distribution lists.
Agentic AI uses large language models (LLM), natural language processing (NLP), and generative AI to autonomously execute multi-step workflows — from drafting content like summaries and emails to taking goal-oriented actions like scheduling meetings and analyzing data — saving professionals significant time while reducing the need for constant oversight.
Agentic AI can also reason through complex scenarios and autonomously plan multi-step workflows to achieve specific goals. For example, when tasked with client risk assessment, an agent might automatically extract key client and engagement details from an email, then validate and enhance that data across multiple systems to accelerate acceptance processes and open engagements faster.
Because AI-powered automation solutions can handle complex situations and adapt to a firm’s evolving needs, they’re extremely valuable to growing accounting firms.
| Capability | RPA | Agentic AI |
|---|---|---|
| Perform repetitive, administrative tasks |  | |
| Mimic human interactions | | |
| Analyze unstructured data |  | |
| Recognize data patterns | | |
| Adapt to new scenarios | | |
| Provide data-powered insights + recommendations | | |
| Autonomously make decisions | | |
| Execute multi-step tasks | | |
What is Intapp Applied AI?
Once your firm leaders decide to adopt AI, selecting the right tool becomes critical. The key is finding a solution that aligns with your firm’s accounting-specific needs and workflows.
Intapp Applied AI solutions use agentic automation technology and are designed for the way your accounting professionals work. Through advanced capabilities — including automatic data capture and entry, summarization, content generation, recommendations, and conversational query — your teams can enhance operations across core areas:
- Deal and relationship management
- Client onboarding and continuance
- Conflicts management
- Personal independence
- Timekeeping
As your trusted technology partner, Intapp protects your data by continually developing and updating security protocols. Plus, our seamless integration with Microsoft 365 and Copilot simplifies content management, minimizes information governance risk, and improves cross-team collaboration.
Want to see our AI-powered accounting solutions in action? Schedule a personalized demo and learn how your firm can drive efficiency and growth with Intapp.