Alastair Barlow FCCA’s Post

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CEO & co-founder @ Stealth | M&A at Ascendant | flinder co-founder | Mentor | The Naked Accountant

The 6 levels of AI prompting. Most firms are still stuck at level 1. That’s why they only see AI as a shiny toy. But there’s an entire curve of value waiting to be unlocked. 1️⃣ Zero-shot - quick answers to technical questions 2️⃣ Few-shot - categorisation & payroll adjustments with context 3️⃣ Chain of thought - step-by-step breakdowns of complex calculations 4️⃣ RAG - pulling live data from Xero or HMRC 5️⃣ Fine-tuned - models trained on your own client history 6️⃣ Agents - autonomous systems monitoring cash flow and flagging risks The higher up the curve you go, the more transformative the impact. And here’s the best part: you don’t need a lab or millions in budget. You just need the awareness (and the will) to start climbing. Where does your firm sit today? If you’re curious about how firms are really using AI today, that’s exactly the kind of story I share in The Naked Accountant. // 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 Real lessons on building, growing, and exiting a modern firm. It’s authentic, unfiltered, and real. And it’s 100% written by humans ❤️ Go to my profile and click 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 to subscribe. Or visit https://naked.ac/subscribe

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Arun Mehra FCA

I Build Global Capability Centres for Global Healthcare Businesses + Accounting Firms | UK-India Business Expert | UK Chartered Accountants Firm Owner | Funding Expert | AI Dental CFO as a service | Adventure Traveller

1w

4,5,6 are where the opportunities are in my view. One you have number 4 working correctly things start to get exciting.....all work in progress but its a merger of accounting, data science and software engineering that will probably be the skillset of a future accounting firm! Great post and point and often misunderstood by many!

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Julian Moore

Startup Growth | B2B & Fintech | Fixed-price & Fractional | 6x CMO

1w

Plenty of people are missing out, I agree. Although, the latest reasoning and agentic models do a fair amount of 1-3 for you, and now even some of 4-5.

Seb Ellson

Managing Director at SME Advantage | UK Zoho Premium Partner

1w

This is a great way of visualising how most people use AI vs how it can be used.

Alex Axentiev

Making global finances simpler through automation and analytics

1w

Imho, there is a similar exponential cost curve :) As you go from structured context (few-shot / chain-of-thought) to RAG to fine-tuning, setting up costs can add up. Fine-tuning is retraining a model - it's not cheap...

Richard Sergeant

Managing Director at Principle Point Ltd

1w

What kind of tools does this relate to?

John Massey

Connect for small business tax tips 🤝 | Stockport's highest rated Chartered Certified Accountant

1w

Good read this weekend. As for 2. i.e. Xero>ChatGPT>output (using Zapier), don't you think apps will be doing just this and soon (saving me the Zapier learning curve)?

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Parth Prajapati

🧑🏻💻Helping Accounting firms in the UK | AUS with excellent accounting & delivering great Customer Experience | Outsourcing | Sales Geek | Business Development | Growth Marketing | Branding | Content Guy 🙋🏻

1w

Great post!

Graham Shapiro

XERO MVP of the Year 2023| Founder of Myccountant| XERO and Cloud Enthusiast

1w

Love your work man What AI Agents are you using with XERO?

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