AI use cases in finance that hold up all have a checkable answer.

AI use cases in finance are the tasks in a group's close and forecast that a model can do and a named person can mark. Finance teams asking about AI today have a board mandate for it, with a date attached. At Constancia, an EPM consultancy, we count 6 use cases that pass.

A group of 12 entities on 3 ERPs matches intercompany balances across 66 entity pairs each month, by arithmetic. Each pair either agrees or shows a difference with 2 invoices behind it. Intercompany matching has a checkable answer, and every use case on our list shares that shape.

3 subsidiaries in a group can book the same customer under 3 different names. A model asked for revenue by customer then returns 3 customers and a confident total.

The finance team has no way to check that total, and the use case fails at its first board meeting.

A model can summarise a 40 page board pack into 1 page in 20 seconds. The summary keeps every inconsistency in the original 40 pages. The reader cannot tell which figures the model weighed and which it skipped.

Asked for the CFO's commentary on gross margin, the same model writes 3 fluent paragraphs from the first margin definition it finds. A group's consolidation and sales report can define margin in 2 different ways, and the draft picks 1 without saying so.

We put drafting last on the list, after the numbers underneath are settled. Done first, drafting puts a well-written paragraph on top of a figure no one has traced.

A vendor demo of a summarising feature takes 4 minutes and needs none of the group's data, so CFOs have usually seen 5 of them. A demo of the mapping use case needs the group's own ledgers and takes a week to arrange. Most CFOs have seen none.

Mapping goes first because the matching, the reconciliations and the commentary all read the group chart the mapping produces. Commentary written before the mapping describes a chart with 2 names for the same account.

Matching and reconciliations go second, because they produce the settled balances the forecast and the commentary read. The calendar use case runs alongside from the first month, since it reads task status alone.

Each use case gets a named person who marks its answers for the first 3 periods. The CFO reads the mark rate each period.

A controller correcting 40% of mapped lines in month 1 and 4% in month 3 shows the model learning the group's chart. A model stuck at 40% is reading a chart with no record behind it.

The forecast refresh goes last because it reads everything above it: the mapped chart, the matched balances and the signed reconciliations. Refreshed first, the forecast would rest on last quarter's unmatched intercompany balances.

We survey the group's consolidation, ERPs and spreadsheets before we name the use case that goes first, and we fix the price after that survey. The survey shows which of the 6 use cases the data can carry this year, and which need the record built first.