In this blog post, I'm going to share with you how you can harness the power of ChatGPT to create a specific chart of accounts for a client ready to put into your cloud accounting system, whether that's QBO or Xero.

Crafting your Prompt

One of the amazing things that you can do with ChatGPT is get it to help you with creating a chart of accounts. 

I'm going to show you how you do just that. Let's take a look at the prompt that you would use in ChatGPT to generate a custom chart of accounts for a specific client. 

But first, I want to illustrate some important factors that you need to know when you are crafting prompts in ChatGPT. 

For example, if I put the following prompt into ChatGPT-4, let's look at the kind of answer I can expect to get:

"Could you generate a table representing a chart of accounts specific to a [Business Type], trading as a [Entity Type], based in [Country]? The chart should be compatible with QuickBooks Online (QBO) and should utilize QBO's Account Type and Detail Type categories. The table should have columns for Account Name, Account Type, and Detail Type.

"Business Type: An online training business that uses external trainers

Entity Type: Sole Proprietor

Country: UK"

Let's look at what's going on in this prompt, because one of the key skills to getting the best out of ChatGPT (and in fact, and large language model), is the way that you craft your prompts.

Firstly, the prompt asks ChatGPT to generate a Table. This is very important, you can ask ChatGPT to create the output in a table format, which can be useful for so many reasons. In particular, if you want a chart of accounts that you can upload into your cloud accounting system such as QBO.

Secondly, we want the chart of accounts to be specific to a business type, entity type, and country. I've put these in square brackets in the prompt because this could be a standard prompt that you use for any different type of business where you want to create a chart of accounts. What we can then do at the end of the prompt is fill in those square brackets.

The prompt goes on to say the chart should be compatible with QuickBooks Online - if you use Xero, for example, you just change the wording there. And we specify the columns we want so that we have some control over the response.

The Response

The response that I got for this prompt was as follows:

Now, you'll need to check carefully through that response, because as you're probably aware, ChatGPT is not perfect. This is one of the reasons that it's not going to replace you - which is good news! But it does mean you have to proofread and edit any response you get from the tool.

You need to use your particular expertise, your knowledge of the particular client, and your experience, to apply judgment to what comes out of ChatGPT. 

And if we look through the response, it's done a pretty good job, but there are a couple of mistakes that you would have to pick out and change.

Next Steps...

If you want to upload this into QBO as a chart of accounts, then you need to have it in a CSV format, in, for example, an Excel spreadsheet. 

That's really easy to do because we asked for the response in a table format. What we do is select the table with our mouse, hit Ctrl+C to copy it, then switch to an Excel spreadsheet and Ctrl+V to paste it.

There is your table in Excel:

Then you would just import that straight into QBO. And that's it! That's the whole process simplified using ChatGPT.

If you're interested in learning more about AI and ChatGPT, you can join a community of Accountants and Bookkeepers learning together in our Facebook Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aiforaccountantsandbookkeepers

Plus, my team and I have written an eBook containing tons of practical uses for ChatGPT, specifically for Accountants and Bookkeepers. You can download that here: bit.ly/3o84F8o

And finally, you can watch the full video on this topic here: https://youtu.be/jqq6LzPS984

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”