Hi Reader,

5 years ago, I remember being really frustrated by how long it took my accountant to generate an overview of our overdues by age bucket.

It took her more than half a day to generate something that I thought will take her 30 minutes to do in Excel...

But I couldn't really blame her... nobody had told her how to do it in Excel, and she had never taken aby Excel courses.

Fast forward to today: you know what I would do if I were in the same situation? I would show her how to do it in 20 minutes, just by using AI as the Excel expert and having her guide the machine and review the work.

Now I have the chance... but also the duty to coach all of you (more than 3 million followers across channels) and I’ll show you exactly how you can use AI to help you with this kind of work.

But if you prefer learning live, check my invitation below...

Live masterclass (CPE included)

On Tuesday, September 30, I am going to teach you how to implement ChatGPT 5 and AI in your accounting processes in a live masterclass.

​The link to register your seat​

You will learn:

• How to start immediately saving time in your day-to-day accounting
• How to implement AI in your finance team
• Witness live how accounting tasks that used to take me hours now take me only a few minutes to finish

And on top you will earn CPE credits plus get to participate to a week full of finance events, joined by different top-notch experts like my friend Christian Wattig:

How to use AI as an accountant:

Intro: What is ChatGPT 5 Thinking mode and why I use it for these tasks:

For this task, I used the new ChatGPT 5 in Thinking mode because it doesn’t give an answer immediately, instead it thinks through the problem and does a serie of steps before giving you the output (replacing a lot of iterations you had to solve a problem with AI before).

It’s really good at creating Excel files with real Excel formulas, pivots, and charts.

1. Why using AI for aging reports?

There are a lot of reporting or ad-hoc tasks like Overdue aging which are necessary but should not require to buy another tool or to mobilize a whole business intelligence or reporting team to build it. You should be able to build them in 20 minutes with the tools you already have.

This is why we use AI + Excel.

Let's start with our original file, here's what the file looks like:

2. How to use AI to create your aging report in Excel thanks to AI?

Tell precisely your AI chatbot (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini) what you need.

For this we give enough context and the instructions of what we want. Think of it like this is an intern that you are coaching.

I also decided to attach my Excel file because I use a Business license, but if you don't have a Business or an Enterprise license for the AI tool you use, I will explain you later how to have the same result, without uploading your file (see in paragraph 4 below).

See how I prompted:

3. What happens next ​
ChatGPT translates your goal into clean Excel moves: one column to calculate days, one to label a bucket, one PivotTable, one chart... all of this with formulas as you can see below.

​

4. Quick sanity checks

Like all work that you delegate, you need to review.

As an ex-auditor, let me share you what I suggest you to do when you received the AI output:

• Totals tie-out: create a pivot table to verify the sum
• Invoice with future-due date should be flagged as “Not overdue.”
• Edge buckets: Do some spot check to verify that the 30/31 and 90/91 are well classified
• Verify that the formula is the same everywhere
• Change dates to see if the column with the formula is also updated accordingly

If it works, then you have your file ready and next month you don't even need AI, just paste your new data and reuse the same formulas!

​

5. Your privacy options

If you cannot upload your file, here are 4 strategies you can use:

• No data sharing: Copy and paste the headers of your file... not the data (this will help AI understand your data source)
• Dummy data: create 3 dummy data lines and use this as your example
• De-identify: Strip names/IDs and keep dates/amounts for structure feedback
• Template-first: ask AI to build a template for you with formulas prebuilt, then save it and use the file with your raw data (see below how:

Bonus: create a template

You can do it without having to upload your Excel file, instead you can only ChatGPT for the instructions on how to perform it in Excel.

After that, ChatGPT will ask you if you want a template

And in seconds, you have your template ready! 👇

​

One action to take now

​👉 Register for the free masterclass on the 30th of September and learn how to apply AI in your finance team (CPE credits included)​

See you on the 30th,

Nicolas, Your AI Finance Expert
​

P.S. If you are a CFO: 2,000 CFOs have already registered for the "How to Become an AI CFO" masterclass this Friday. Don't miss it!​
​Secure your seat for Friday before it's full​