Digits Unveils AI-Powered Accounting Platform, Challenging Industry Giants

Digits announces AI-powered accounting platform to take on QuickBooks and Xero

Digits announced the service -- which went live Monday -- at HumanX in Las Vegas, after working on it for the past five years in stealth mode and putting it in the hands of hundreds of companies to test out over the past year. The platform serves as an alternative to other accounting software or platforms, such as QuickBooks or Xero, but stands out as it uses its own proprietary AI technology. Jeff Seibert, the cofounder and CEO of Digits, says that puts the platform ahead of other competing accounting programs, even those that purport to also utilize AI technology. In many cases, he says, those platforms are simply throwing numbers into broad-based LLMs like ChatGPT, and not purpose-built AI tools, like what Digits has built in-house. "We went all the way," Seibert says. "We went heads-down, and spent the past five years creating the first end-to-end accounting platform for the AI era." And when comparing Digits to key competitors, Seibert says that "we're feature-competitive, we can do everything that they can do," but again, "the difference is that we've spent five years training our own models," allowing for automation for "a vast majority of the work."

Digits Debuts AI Accounting Tool and Welcomes Xero Co-Founder | PYMNTS.com

Accounting technology company Digits has debuted its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven autonomous general ledger (AGL). The new offering, unveiled Monday (March 10) after five years of development, is designed to automatically categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and deliver real-time financial insights, the SoftBank-backed company said in a news release. In addition to the new product launch, Digits said it has named Craig Walker, co-founder and former CTO of Xero, to its leadership team. "Digits has fully harnessed the power of AI," Walker said in a news release. "The categorization is magical. What took me a week to set up in Xero or QuickBooks, took me just minutes in Digits -- you truly feel the AI at work. Intelligent accounting software is now possible, and Digits is the first to get it right. If Xero was the pioneer of cloud accounting, Digits is the pioneer of AI accounting." The company says its proprietary AI models outperform OpenAI's GPT-4o large language model (LLM) by 54%, and that it has trained its AI on a dataset of more than $825 billion in small-business transactions. "LLMs are an amazing technology, but they're also famously prone to hallucination," said Jeff Seibert, Digits' co-founder and CEO. "In accounting, that's unacceptable. At Digits, we've pioneered application-specific AI Accounting models to automate over 90% of SMB [small and mid-sized businesses] bookkeeping workflows, saving business owners and accountants countless hours every month." The launch of Digits new tool comes at a time when -- as PYMNTS wrote earlier this year -- companies are turning to AI to automate not just repetitive tasks but also more complicated processes like compliance monitoring, fraud detection and supply chain optimization, employing tactics like combining robotic process automation (RPA) with AI to streamline workflows. "The timing couldn't be better. The back office has long been overlooked in conversations about innovation, but its transformation is no longer optional," that report said. "With rising uncertainty, regulatory complexities and competitive pressures, companies are seeking ways to streamline operations, improve decision-making and unlock efficiencies. The back office is ready for its glow-up -- and the appropriate, effective and responsible use of AI could be the key." Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that 55% of CFOs representing middle-market businesses would be willing to pay 3% of the invoice amount to accept payments via a solution that automates invoice approval and payment. "Compared to the risks of paper checks, adding AI to payments systems can result in a fraud defense that excels at anomaly detection, identifying potential fraud in real time by recognizing unusual patterns in transactional data," PYMNTS wrote. "Moreover, these systems can simplify compliance by continuously monitoring regulatory changes and updating processes to reflect new requirements."