Automation · Live online
Stop Doing It By Hand: The Automation Conference for Accounting & Finance
Automation
- When
- October 20, 2027
- Format
- Live online · 1 day · Central Time
- CPE
- Up to 8 credits
- Price
- $299 Early-bird pricing coming soon Payable with CPE Today credits · credit packages coming soon
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Proposed Agenda
All times Central Time. Sessions, times and credits may change before the conference.
Before You Automate: Picking the Right Integration Approach
What each is actually good at, pricing models that bite at scale, and how to pick without regretting it in eighteen months.
Learning Objectives
- Differentiate between the three primary categories of iPaaS providers currently serving the professional services market.
- Identify the specific pricing triggers in Zapier and Power Automate that lead to significant cost increases at scale.
- Compare the security and data residency implications of cloud-hosted versus self-hosted automation platforms.
- Apply a selection matrix to determine which platform best suits a firm's existing technical stack and internal skill sets.
- Evaluate the long-term maintenance requirements of low-code versus no-code integration environments.
- Field of study
- Information Technology
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of cloud-based software and the concept of API connections.
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Choose one of 2 sessions
Ten Automation or Integrations Every Business Team Should Build First
Most teams know they should automate more of their work but aren't sure where to start. They either stick to a few simple rules or jump into a project so complex it never gets finished. This session lays out a practical path: ten automations every business team should build, arranged from basic to advanced. It starts with simple wins built into tools you already use, moves into multi-step workflows built on integration platforms that connect your apps, and finishes with AI-powered workflows that read documents, sort incoming mail, and use connectors built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to work directly across your apps. Many of the ten are demonstrated live, and every one is documented in the course materials, so you'll see what each does, where it saves time, and how it's built: the trigger that starts it, the steps it runs, and the result it produces. Because they're arranged by difficulty, you can start where your team is today and know exactly what to build next. You'll leave with a tiered list of automations to work through, step-by-step documentation to build from, and a clear plan for the first one you'll build.
Learning Objectives
- Identify ten automations that eliminate repetitive work common to business teams
- Describe the trigger, steps, and result that make up a working automation
- Compare integration platforms with built-in desktop tools to select the right one for a given task
- Describe how AI connectors built on the Model Context Protocol link an AI assistant to business applications
- Select safeguards for AI-powered automations, including human review and error alerts
- Field of study
- Computer Software and Applications
- Level
- Basic
- Prerequisites
- None
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
From Inbox to Workflow: Rebuilding Your Approval Process
AP approvals, journal entry review, expense policy enforcement. Designing routing logic, handling exceptions, and keeping evidence for audit — using workflow tools rather than email chains. Accounting
Learning Objectives
- Identify the specific risks and inefficiencies associated with email-based approval chains.
- Design a logical routing structure for accounts payable and journal entry reviews.
- Determine how to handle exceptions and overrides without breaking the digital audit trail.
- Evaluate the documentation requirements needed to satisfy internal and external audit standards in an automated environment.
- Field of study
- Audit
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- Experience managing or auditing manual approval cycles within a corporate or public accounting environment.
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Choose one of 2 sessions
Why Your AI Output Is Mediocre (And How to Fix It)
Practical prompting for finance tasks — structure, context, iteration. Bite-sized, high satisfaction.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the three primary reasons why generic prompts lead to low-quality financial summaries and analysis.
- Apply a structured prompting framework to ensure AI outputs include the necessary context and constraints.
- Develop a multi-step iteration process to refine AI responses for complex accounting research or report drafting.
- Evaluate AI-generated content for common logic errors and hallucinations specific to financial data.
- Field of study
- Computer Science
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- Basic familiarity with using generative AI tools for simple text generation.
- Advance preparation
- Participants should have access to a large language model such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to test prompting techniques during the session.
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Who Audits the Robot?
When the process runs itself, what are you testing? Segregation of duties across service accounts, change management on automations, and documenting a control nobody performs. Auditing
Learning Objectives
- Identify the unique risks associated with service account permissions and segregation of duties in an automated environment.
- Analyze the requirements for documenting controls that are executed entirely by software agents.
- Evaluate change management protocols to ensure automations remain compliant after updates or logic shifts.
- Field of study
- Accounting
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- A working knowledge of basic internal control frameworks and familiarity with robotic process automation concepts.
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Choose one of 2 sessions
You Already Own a Workflow Platform: Microsoft 365 for CPAs
Using Power Automate, Lists, Forms, Loop, Planner, and SharePoint as a finance workflow platform.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the core components of the Microsoft 365 stack that function as a unified workflow platform.
- Determine which manual accounting tasks are best suited for automation using Power Automate and Lists.
- Construct a basic data flow that connects Microsoft Forms to a SharePoint list for automated record keeping.
- Evaluate how Microsoft Loop and Planner can replace traditional email chains for internal project coordination.
- Field of study
- Computer Software and Applications
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and experience managing manual accounting workflows.
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Your Accounting System Can Do That
Underused native capabilities like recurring entries, allocation rules, workflow, and custom reports.
Learning Objectives
- Identify three common accounting tasks that can be handled through native system automation rather than manual entry.
- Configure recurring journal entry templates to manage monthly accruals and prepaid amortizations.
- Establish automated allocation rules to distribute overhead costs across multiple dimensions or departments.
- Design basic internal workflow triggers to automate the routing of approvals within the accounting software.
- Field of study
- Accounting
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- Experience with mid-market or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and a basic understanding of general ledger structures.
- Advance preparation
- Review the current list of manual journal entries and recurring monthly adjustments within the organization's primary accounting software.
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
Stop Rebuilding the Same Report Every Month
Explores where the data prep ends and the model begins.
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish between one-time data cleaning tasks and repeatable data modeling steps.
- Identify the structural flaws in reporting files that require manual intervention every month.
- Apply principles of data normalization to ensure reports remain stable as new information is added.
- Recognize the signs of a fragile report and implement strategies to make the output more resilient.
- Establish a clear separation between the raw data layer and the presentation layer in financial models.
- Field of study
- Computer Science
- Level
- Intermediate
- Prerequisites
- Experience with manual reporting workflows and basic spreadsheet data manipulation.
- Advance preparation
- None
- Delivery method
- Group Internet Based
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