AI for Finance

What Is AI for Finance?

AI for finance is the use of artificial intelligence to handle the time-consuming, repetitive, and data-heavy work that slows finance teams down. Invoice processing, month-end reconciliation, financial reporting, expense management, AI takes the manual labour out of financial operations so your team can focus on what actually matters: knowing if the business is making money.

That's what Brim was built to fix.

Why Finance Teams Are Turning to AI

Finance has always been a data-intensive function. But the volume of that data — invoices, transactions, forecasts, compliance documents, approval chains — has grown far beyond what spreadsheets and legacy systems were built to handle.

The result? Finance teams are busy. But not always in the right ways.

According to PwC's 2024 Finance Effectiveness Benchmarking Report, many finance teams still spend more than 50% of their time on manual tasks. Conciliac EDM: That's time not spent on analysis, forecasting, or the strategic decisions that actually move a business forward.

The highest cost isn't the software your team uses. It's the hours spent moving data between systems, chasing approvals, and rebuilding reports that should already exist. AI changes that equation by handling the execution — so your team handles the insight.

Leading finance teams that have embraced this shift are spending more time generating insights and less time on automatable tasks, while reducing their costs as a percentage of revenue by nearly 25%. PwC

The best AI for finance isn't the flashiest tool. It's the one that connects to every system your team already runs on, learns how your finance function operates, and gets more accurate every week.

How AI Is Being Used in Finance Today

Invoice Processing

Manual invoice processing is one of the biggest drains on finance team time. Collecting documents, matching them to purchase orders, chasing approvals, filing confirmations — it's a sequence of small tasks that adds up to significant hours every week.

AI handles the full sequence. Brim collects invoices, matches them to purchase orders, routes approvals, and confirms payment — without your team touching each one manually. Invoices that used to take days to clear now process in seconds.

Finance teams using Brim for invoice processing report spending 80% less time on invoicing. That's not a productivity gain at the margins — it's a fundamental shift in how the function operates.

→ Read more: How AI Reduces Time Spent Processing Invoices for Finance Teams

Month-End Reconciliation

Month-end reconciliation is the task finance teams dread most. Pulling data from multiple systems, matching transactions, identifying discrepancies, chasing exceptions — all under pressure to close on time.

AI reduces manual reconciliation work by automating the matching process across every data source your team uses. Rather than an analyst manually comparing records line by line, AI does the matching continuously, flags genuine exceptions, and routes only those to a human for review.

Brim pulls data from every system your finance team runs on — Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Excel, Salesforce, Stripe — reconciles to your standard, and returns a clean close ready for your team to review and approve. Month-end closes on time. Without the scramble.

The longer Brim runs, the better it gets. It learns your transaction patterns, gets sharper at identifying real exceptions versus noise, and compounds that knowledge inside your business every week.

→ Read more: How AI Reduces Manual Reconciliation Work for Finance Teams

AI for Financial Forecasting

AI for financial forecasting moves your team from quarterly exercises to live capability. Rather than building models manually from historical exports, AI analyses patterns across your full transaction history, factors in real-time data, and produces rolling forecasts that update continuously.

For finance directors and CFOs, this means scenario planning becomes an ongoing tool rather than a set-piece event. The impact of a pricing change, a headcount decision, or a market shift can be modelled in minutes — not days.

→ Read more: How AI Reduces Financial Forecasting Work for Finance Teams

How to Choose the Best AI for Finance

The market for AI in finance is crowded. There are point solutions for specific tasks, general-purpose AI tools being repurposed for finance, and end-to-end platforms built to handle multiple finance workflows.

Choosing well comes down to five questions:

Does it connect to your existing stack? AI that requires manual data exports creates new work rather than eliminating it. Look for tools that integrate natively with the systems your team already uses — Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Salesforce, Stripe, Excel, and Microsoft 365.

Can you see exactly what it did? In finance, every action needs a paper trail. The best AI tools log what happened, what data was used, who approved it, and when. A black box is not acceptable.

Does it learn your standards? Generic AI gives your team a draft. Purpose-built AI for finance learns your reconciliation rules, your approval thresholds, your reporting formats — and applies them consistently without being retrained every time.

Where does your data go? Financial data is sensitive. Your AI should keep your data inside your environment. It should not train a shared model that other businesses — including your competitors — could benefit from.

How quickly does it show results? The best AI platforms for finance are live within minutes and show measurable impact within the first weeks. If a vendor is promising results after a six-month implementation, keep looking.

What Makes Brim Different: Specific Intelligence for Finance

There's a meaningful difference between AI tools that assist and AI that delivers.

A general AI tool gives your finance team a draft. Someone still has to finish it, send it, chase it, file it. The work isn't done — it's just been started somewhere else.

Brim is built differently. The same request that returns a draft from a general AI triggers a connected workflow in Brim. The invoice gets matched. The approval gets routed. The report gets compiled and returned, ready to present. The work is completed across the tools your team already uses. Nothing waits.

This is what Brim calls Specific Intelligence, AI that learns how your finance function operates, applies your standards consistently, and compounds that knowledge inside your business over time. The moment Brim connects, it surfaces exactly where profitability is being hidden and what to act on first. Not after a setup call. In seconds.

And everything it learns stays inside your environment. Your data doesn't train a shared model. Your competitive advantage doesn't leak.

For finance teams, this means three things:

1. Profitability is always visible. 
2. The numbers are always right.
3. Your team owns the insight. 

Go Deeper: AI for Finance Resources

• 🔗 AI Solutions for Finance — What's Available and What Actually Works
• 🔗 How AI Reduces Manual Reconciliation Work for Finance Teams
• 🔗 How AI Reduces Financial Forecasting  Work for Finance Teams‍
• 🔗 How AI Reduces Time Spent Processing Invoices for Finance Teams

Ready to Put AI to Work in Your Finance Team?

Profitability unclear. An error reached the board. Month-end running three days over. These aren't inevitable — they're what happens when finance teams are still doing manually what AI should be doing for them.

Brim connects to every system your finance team runs on, handles the execution, and keeps profitability visible — in real time, every time.

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