Something interesting started happening between me and my clients. Lately, I receive emails from clients telling me what their AI assistant thinks I should do. Not just questions. Sometimes answers, explanations, even instructions. And I find this fascinating.
For years, clients came to accountants for information, guidance, and professional advice. Now, some arrive with their own AI advisor. I think that's a good thing: clients are becoming more informed, more involved, and more willing to explore possibilities.
What changes when both sides have AI
When both my client and I have access to AI, the fair questions become uncomfortable: what exactly changes in our relationship? What am I really bringing to the table? What new value could I offer that wasn't possible before?
Perhaps the opportunity isn't simply to use AI to do the same work faster. Perhaps it's to combine stronger technology with a better understanding of what clients actually need. To rethink not only how we work, but what we can make possible for them.
The bigger shift hiding in plain sight
Here is the part I find most interesting. If the books live where the client already is, inside the AI assistant they use every day, then the client's AI and their accountant can work on the same numbers at the same time, instead of emailing exports back and forth.
That changes the workflow at its root:
- No more exporting transactions and re-entering them in a second tool.
- No more reconciling against a stale snapshot of the bank feed.
- Exceptions surface early, while they are still cheap to fix.
- The accountant stops being a data-entry cleanup crew and starts being the judgment layer.
Where Portali fits
This is exactly the direction we are exploring with Portali. Portali is agentic accounting software that connects to ChatGPT via MCP, with Tali, the AI assistant, handling the repetitive layer: syncing bank feeds, matching transactions, and flagging exceptions for your review. The client asks questions in ChatGPT; the accountant sees clean, current books. Both sides of the table finally work on the same source of truth.
No neat conclusions yet
I don't have all the answers, and I'm not in a hurry to pretend that I do. But I see this as an opportunity to grow, both professionally and in the value I bring to my clients. We are only beginning to discover what this new kind of partnership could look like.
