Welcome to Beyond the 10-Key, a regular article discussing powerful and unique ways to utilize AI in the tax, accounting, and financial services industry. With the influx of new AI-based platforms and the ease at which these tools can be used, hardly a day goes by where a typical conversation doesn’t migrate to how AI can improve our processes, client interactions, and more.
Topic: Using AI to Provide Business Consultation Services
We work with a lot of diverse clients: businesses, farms, rentals, and more. One of the biggest questions we consistently hear is, “What could I be doing to make more? Is there something different we could be offering? How could I diversify my income?”
Years ago, we had small internal lists we would keep by industry of suggestions we could offer. However, AI has introduced new opportunities for business consultation and advisory. Now, we are able to add additional context and variables we either hadn’t thought about prior or didn’t have access to previously.
As with several of our previous examples, we leverage AI to encourage clients into engagement. AI requires just a few moments for research and application, but very commonly opens the door for a full advisory or consultation opportunity. This is the prompt that we would use to provide a high-level summary to our clients and then dive deeper into a paid consultation to help the client scope our potential expansion opportunities.
The Basic Process
You can perform the similar analysis using the standard interface in ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot, or any of the dozens of other tools. No matter the tool or platform, the process is pretty much the same and this week is much simpler than last:
There is nothing we upload, but you could easily upload a pre-written summary if you already had it in your client documents. Then, use a prompt similar to below. Note that the prompt will shift by platform and as new or different version are released. You should tweak and adjust to your needs.
Assuming the role of an experienced tax professional and accountant, you provide thorough analysis of financial review and specialize in [type of business client].
One of my clients owns a sheep farm with about 80 acres in southwest PA. They currently are utilizing about 30 acres for their sheep. A lot of the land is currently undeveloped. As wool is increasing in price, they are finding themselves with typically larger profit.
They would like to invest further in their offerings rather than just retain the profit. Provide me a list of similar or complementary services or products they offer to expand their business; provide a high-level startup-cost estimate and potential income estimate.
Provide citations where possible. Please humanize all of your responses to a 10th grade level of comprehensive and speech. Additionally, think about your responses a second time prior to creation. Finally, if anything is unclear, please ask questions.
Given that we use an API, we format the returned response into a clean PDF for each client. You could simply modify the prompt to request the response in a formatted version to your layout and liking. And, obviously, once we receive the response, we still review it for accuracy (but that is a conversation for another day).
Sample Output
While the output is comprehensive, it is also, quite long. Here are some sample outputs you may receive:
Reminder that the prompt is thinking a second time:
Snapshot of a List of Several Dozens Prospective Ideas
Assistance to Prioritize Opportunities
High-Level Qualitative Findings
This is just partial output, but you can see the analysis is detailed and can provide significant insight.
What Would You Do?
We hope you are enjoying Beyond the 10-Key. Now, we would love to hear your thoughts? How would you adjust the prompt for your needs?
Thanks so much!
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