For so long, accountants and financial analysts have been working similarly to hard laborers: instead of cans, we move numbers from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. Once upon a time (it might still be the case for many today), we took pride in enduring long, late working nights for financial closings, audits, and tax preparation. Looking back, it was a fortunate time for accountants and finance professionals — we were irreplaceable. Now, AI is either going to reinvent or discard us.
For the next few years until AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is here, accountants and finance professionals will inevitably be coders with the help of AI. Instead of preparing workpapers, we will code them. We will be like software engineers using IDEs such as Cursor and VS Code, and ask AI to co-code programs with us to automate our work. This trend is inevitable because (1) automation of all is not feasible at scale until AGI due to the diversity of businesses and their configurations, and (2) AI lowers entry barriers so much to the point that anyone with a high school diploma and basic coding knowledge can build custom automation by co-coding with AI. Below is a 1-minute silent example of how coding cash flow workpapers works with AI (I recorded this earlier for a few PE firms who wanted to learn how AI will eventually unfold in finance and accounting):
The above are reasons why I decided to create CPACoders.Org. I want to teach accountants and finance professionals how to use Python to code, because AI requires us to be more than just technology generalists. I tried to incorporate as many accounting and finance practical use cases as possible into each CPACoders class, dividing each topic into the smallest increments possible (10 minutes per class), so that people don’t lose interest in learning. Until you learn how to code and start doing it, you are simply scratching the door of AI.
CPACoders is a public benefit project. I will direct a significant portion of CPACoders.Org's resources to support accounting and finance communities, particularly those underrepresented and minority groups. Later, I will add more courses on AI Vibe Coding, AI CLI (e.g., Codex), and web application building (e.g., Replit).
My advice for many (and I apologize for the scary tactic – I think it is a fact):
Challenge yourself while you still can.