Designing AI For Finance and Accounting With User Experience (UX) in Mind

Finance leaders know that user experience (UX) can make or break adoption. It doesn’t matter how powerful the technology is. If people find it clunky or confusing, they won’t use it.

Major shifts in finance, from the inception of spreadsheet software to the migration to the cloud, have always focused on making work simpler, streamlined, and more reliable. AI is the next shift, but here’s the catch: AI only delivers value if the experience around it is designed with the end user in mind.

You don’t need flashy features or generic chatbots layered on top of your critical systems. You need AI that’s seamless, trustworthy, and built for how your team actually works.

Let’s explore five best practices for AI-powered solutions for Finance and Accounting to support teams like yours—and examine how Planful is extending our world-class UX to new AI-powered solutions.

The best AI empowers people, it doesn’t replace them. AI in finance should act as an assistant, not an autonomous agent, giving users control, transparency, and the ability to verify every output.

At Planful, our approach to AI keeps finance professionals in control while automating the busywork that slows them down. Planful AI is built around a suite of intelligent agentic AI assistants, each purpose-built to act as a true partner for finance and accounting teams.

When AI powers your financial performance management software to tackle routine tasks like variance analysis, anomaly detection, and data validation, your team can focus on higher-value work: running scenarios, collaborating across departments, and advising leadership on where to invest next.

This shift from transactional to strategic is what modern finance leaders are aiming for. According to our Global Finance Survey, 30% of them are prioritizing automation not just to reduce workload, but to elevate the work itself.

Legacy finance tools force users through rigid, step-by-step workflows. Want to analyze a variance? You’re clicking through filters, parameters, and dropdowns. And if your question changes mid-analysis? You’re starting over.

AI embedded in your financial performance management software eliminates these bottlenecks with a natural language interface that allows you to simply type questions like:

• “Why did workforce expenses increase in Q2?”
• “Show me the variance in operating expenses by region.”
• “What changed in sales vs. forecast last month?”

The AI then instantly surfaces data points, narrative explanations, reports, visualizations, and other insights to give you a comprehensive answer. When AI is trained on structured financial data and workflows—like Planful AI—it makes natural language conversations even more powerful. The system is built to understand your specific needs and respond accordingly, creating a more seamless, intuitive UX.

AI is only as good as its ability to understand your questions and respond with insights that you can immediately use. The best finance-specific AI pairs intelligence with usability, interpreting natural language accurately and delivering answers in ways that make action effortless.

Build understanding through intent recognition

Finance professionals don’t all ask questions the same way. One might say “sales,” another might refer to “revenue,” and another might simply say, “How did we do last quarter?” That’s why the best finance-specific AI goes beyond basic keyword matching to understand the nuances of financial language, roles, and context. It interprets intent based on how Finance teams actually speak and work, ensuring the right insights surface no matter how the question is phrased.

Planful AI uses a technique called named entity recognition to identify the key elements of a question and interpret what the user truly means based on financial context. For example, if you ask:

“How did our top line do compared to budget in Q3 last year?”

Planful AI automatically interprets:

• “Top line” → revenue
• “Budget” → specific financial plan
• “Q3 last year” → defined time period

From there, it knows exactly what you want—revenue versus budget for Q3 2024—and instantly generates the right response in seconds.

By interpreting what users mean, not just what they type, Planful AI delivers a frictionless experience that feels intuitive and human, even for complex financial questions.

Deliver insights you can act on instantly

Numbers alone aren’t enough. Finance teams need responses that are not just accurate but immediately actionable. That’s why Planful AI goes beyond text-based responses to deliver insights in interactive formats, like charts, tables, and variance views, embedded directly in the chat experience.

Instead of breaking your flow to open new dashboards, you can drill into the data, pivot dimensions, or explore alternate views—all within the same conversation.

This seamless integration keeps users focused, minimizes tool-hopping, and turns every AI interaction into an opportunity for faster, more confident decision-making.

Planful AI Assistants were designed to address real pain points felt by Finance and Accounting teams, accelerating work, sharpening insights, and maintaining control.

In finance, accuracy is non-negotiable, and every AI-generated answer must be verifiable. Yet many AI tools struggle with hallucinations, or outputs that seem plausible but are incorrect and erode trust.

Planful AI has built-in explainability at its core. Users can see where outputs came from, understand how conclusions were reached, and regenerate insights with different parameters if needed.

This allows you to trace insights back to specific transactions, balances, or accounts, and even control how much context the AI includes in its response. This level of transparency is critical so your team always knows exactly where every number came from.

Finance teams aren’t one-size-fits-all. Analysts dig into variances. Planners model scenarios. Executives want high-level summaries. Business users need quick answers. Each role engages with data differently and brings unique expectations to the table.

Many AI finance tools overlook these role-based nuances, instead offering flat, one-dimensional experiences. A generalized chatbot layered onto your financial performance management software doesn’t provide the context, controls, or clarity your Finance team requires.

Planful AI takes a sharper approach, offering role-based assistants tailored to how each specific user works. These role-specific experiences improve UX, drive adoption, and ensure users get the insights they need without extra clicks, dashboards, or complexity.

Planful AI gave Orion a faster, more intuitive way to uncover insights across complex financial data. By embedding AI directly into their planning workflows, Orion automated trend identification, freeing analysts to focus on strategic work rather than manual data preparation.

“Planful AI analyzes the trends and identifies the areas where you need those human brains to focus,” said Barrett Gilley, VP of Finance at Orion.

With Planful, Orion cut 60 days annually from its planning cycles and reduced analyst onboarding time by more than four months. The intuitive, finance-owned platform also empowers teams to configure, analyze, and act on insights quickly and independently without relying on IT or external resources.

Read the full story: Orion Uses Planful To Cut Days from Monthly Planning

• Great AI needs great UX. When AI and UX work together, manual bottlenecks disappear and Finance teams gain the clarity and speed they need to make smarter decisions.
• The best AI experience in finance understands, acts, and adapts. AI built for Finance should interpret user intent, surface answers instantly, and deliver insights tailored to every role from analyst to executive.
• Natural language makes insights accessible to everyone. Conversational AI transforms how teams interact with data, giving every user the power to ask, explore, and act without technical barriers.

 

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See How AI and UX Come Together

Want to see how Planful is rethinking finance UX with AI? Watch our AI Labs video series to see how we’re building the future of finance performance management software.

 

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What makes a good AI user experience in financial performance management software?

A good user experience with an AI-powered solution for finance combines intuitive design, trustworthy data, domain-specific intelligence, and role-based context. It adapts to how different users ask questions, delivers transparent and verifiable results, and removes friction from analysis. When AI speaks your language and earns your trust, adoption follows naturally.

How can AI help Finance teams move faster without sacrificing accuracy?

AI can automate routine tasks like variance analysis and data validation, freeing finance teams to focus on strategic work. The key is embedding AI directly into workflows—not using it as a separate tool—and ensuring that outputs are fully traceable back to their source data. That way, it keeps speed and accuracy aligned.

How is Planful AI different from generic chatbots built on top of financial performance management software?

Unlike generic AI tools, Planful AI is purpose-built for Finance and designed around how real teams work. It understands the nuances of roles like analysts, controllers, and CFOs, using intent recognition and explainability to deliver trustworthy, actionable insights.

Every interaction with Planful AI is designed to reduce friction, streamline workflows, and help your team move from manual tasks to meaningful impact that guides the entire business forward.