Chartered and certified accountants

SOC 2020 code 2421

Chartered and certified accountants provide accounting and auditing services, advise clients on financial matters, collect and analyse financial information and perform other accounting duties required by management for the planning and control of an establishment’s income and expenditure.

Employees (UK)
75k
Median annual pay
£45,538
Exposure score ?
1.5/10 Minimal direct 1.5 · with tools 9.8
Wage exposure
£512m

Higher exposure than 68% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.

What this score means

Most of this role's work is still genuinely hard for AI to do. Physical presence, bodily skill, high-context judgment, direct human care - the things that don't translate to text.

If you're in this role, here's what to do now

You're not in the firing line today. But the frontier moves. Build enough AI fluency now that you can direct it for the parts of your work that could benefit. People in unexposed roles who understand AI become unusually valuable inside their organisations.

The tasks in this role, ranked by AI exposure

Below are the real tasks O*NET records for this occupation, sorted highest exposure first. "AI can do this" means a language model can already handle the task directly. "AI can help" means an LLM can assist but not replace. "Human work" means today's AI doesn't touch it. Importance is O*NET's 1–5 rating of how central each task is to the role.

3 of 29 tasks in this role are things an AI can already do today. Task list mapped via O*NET "Accountants and Auditors" (13-2011.00).

  1. Prepare detailed reports on audit findings.

    AI can do thisimportance 4.6/5
  2. Prepare adjusting journal entries.

    AI can do thisimportance 4.2/5
  3. Establish tables of accounts and assign entries to proper accounts.

    AI can do thisimportance 4.1/5
  4. Report to management about asset utilization and audit results, and recommend changes in operations and financial activities.

    Human workimportance 4.5/5
  5. Collect and analyze data to detect deficient controls, duplicated effort, extravagance, fraud, or non-compliance with laws, regulations, and management policies.

    Human workimportance 4.5/5
  6. Inspect account books and accounting systems for efficiency, effectiveness, and use of accepted accounting procedures to record transactions.

    Human workimportance 4.5/5
  7. Supervise auditing of establishments, and determine scope of investigation required.

    Human workimportance 4.5/5
  8. Confer with company officials about financial and regulatory matters.

    Human workimportance 4.3/5
  9. Examine and evaluate financial and information systems, recommending controls to ensure system reliability and data integrity.

    Human workimportance 4.3/5
  10. Inspect cash on hand, notes receivable and payable, negotiable securities, and canceled checks to confirm records are accurate.

    Human workimportance 4.3/5
  11. Examine records and interview workers to ensure recording of transactions and compliance with laws and regulations.

    Human workimportance 4.2/5
  12. Prepare, examine, or analyze accounting records, financial statements, or other financial reports to assess accuracy, completeness, and conformance to reporting and procedural standards.

    Human workimportance 4.2/5
  13. Review accounts for discrepancies and reconcile differences.

    Human workimportance 4.2/5
  14. Review taxpayer accounts, and conduct audits on-site, by correspondence, or by summoning taxpayer to office.

    Human workimportance 4.2/5
  15. Examine inventory to verify journal and ledger entries.

    Human workimportance 4.1/5
  16. Compute taxes owed and prepare tax returns, ensuring compliance with payment, reporting, or other tax requirements.

    Human workimportance 4.1/5
  17. Advise clients in areas such as compensation, employee health care benefits, the design of accounting or data processing systems, or long-range tax or estate plans.

    Human workimportance 4.1/5
  18. Analyze business operations, trends, costs, revenues, financial commitments, and obligations to project future revenues and expenses or to provide advice.

    Human workimportance 4.0/5
  19. Report to management regarding the finances of establishment.

    Human workimportance 4.0/5
  20. Develop, implement, modify, and document recordkeeping and accounting systems, making use of current computer technology.

    Human workimportance 4.0/5
  21. Evaluate taxpayer finances to determine tax liability, using knowledge of interest and discount rates, annuities, valuation of stocks and bonds, and amortization valuation of depletable assets.

    Human workimportance 3.8/5
  22. Direct activities of personnel engaged in filing, recording, compiling, and transmitting financial records.

    Human workimportance 3.8/5
  23. Examine whether the organization's objectives are reflected in its management activities, and whether employees understand the objectives.

    Human workimportance 3.7/5
  24. Conduct pre-implementation audits to determine if systems and programs under development will work as planned.

    Human workimportance 3.7/5
  25. Audit payroll and personnel records to determine unemployment insurance premiums, workers' compensation coverage, liabilities, and compliance with tax laws.

    Human workimportance 3.5/5
  26. Develop, maintain, or analyze budgets, preparing periodic reports that compare budgeted costs to actual costs.

    Human work
  27. Prepare, analyze, or verify annual reports, financial statements, and other records, using accepted accounting and statistical procedures to assess financial condition and facilitate financial planning.

    Human work
  28. Process invoices for payment.

    Human work
  29. Review data about material assets, net worth, liabilities, capital stock, surplus, income, or expenditures.

    Human work

Where a project with Alex usually starts for this role

These are the highest-importance tasks in this role that a language model can already handle directly. In a typical engagement the first wins come from building workflows around these, so they stop eating your team's time.

  1. Prepare detailed reports on audit findings.

    O*NET importance 4.6/5 · labelled directly AI-automatable

  2. Prepare adjusting journal entries.

    O*NET importance 4.2/5 · labelled directly AI-automatable

  3. Establish tables of accounts and assign entries to proper accounts.

    O*NET importance 4.1/5 · labelled directly AI-automatable

Every role has three or four wedges like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days. Talk to Alex about a project →

Stay on top of this

One email a week, written for people who aren't AI nerds. What's actually real, what's hype, and what smart operators are doing about it.

Get the weekly note

One email a week from Alex on how AI is changing UK work, how to get ahead of it, and what smart operators are actually doing. Written for people who aren't AI nerds.

Free. Unsubscribe any time.

Or go deeper:

Methodology

This role's exposure score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 GPT task labels, aggregated by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 via ISCO-08 (ONS Vol 2 coding index) and US SOC 2010 (BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional. ASHE covers employees only, so self-employed workers are not counted.

Methodology · Sources (PDF) · About · Built 23 April 2026

Get the weekly note. One email on how AI is changing UK work.