With the advent of the era of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely used in many technologies and industries. Large international companies as well as small and medium sized companies are required to provide high quality services for their customers to be successful in the market. Many companies have integrated AI to enhance products and services along with the automation of tasks and gain thus improved operational excellence. This makes data science an asset for companies. Accounting plays an important role in many aspects of business, from recording the transactions to summarizing and presenting financial reports for regulatory compliance and decision-making. Accountants need to handle large amount of financial data to ensure financial reporting is timely, non-redundant and consistent. Organisations have been trying to simplify the processes by using machine learning to automate some tasks in accounting. This allows companies to redirect routine tasks to machines and allocate resources to higher impact tasks.