Building Automations Live - Iowa Society of CPAs

Overview

This is a rebroadcast from AICPA ENGAGE 2026.

One hour. One real accounting problem. One working automation, built live in front of the room.

This session is a live-coded build session with no canned demonstration, no pre-written code, and no safety net. Using Claude Code and the most relevant AI tooling available at the time of the conference, presenters will go from a blank screen to a functioning tool, with the audience along for every step: the prompts that work, the ones that don’t, the course corrections in real time, and the moments where the tech does something genuinely surprising. Expect the energy of a cooking show and the stakes of a live performance.

Along the way, you’ll see the decisions that matter most:

How to scope a problem small enough to ship

When to trust AI and when to intervene

How to connect to the systems accountants actually use

What "good enough to use on Monday" really looks like

The specific build will reflect the tooling and capabilities most relevant at the time of the conference session because in this space, six months is a lifetime.

The real takeaway won't be the tool itself. It will be an unfiltered, end-to-end look at what a single practitioner with the right AI tools can build in the time it takes to run a morning stand-up, and a concrete sense of what that shift means for how firms should be thinking about software, staffing, and service delivery in the year ahead.

Highlights

AI automation

AI tools

Claude Code

Accounting AI automation

AI prompts

Designed For

Accounting professionals curious about AI-built tools

Firm technologists evaluating workflow automation ideas

Practitioners who want to prototype without starting from code

Leaders weighing custom builds against commercial software

Objectives

Identify the current capabilities and limitations of AI coding tools, such as Claude Code, including where human judgment and domain expertise remain essential to producing reliable output.
Recognize a repeatable approach to scoping, prompting, and iterating on an AI-built tool, so you can take a workflow problem from idea to working prototype without writing code from scratch.
Distinguish between build-versus-buy decisions in a world where AI-native development has dramatically lowered the cost and time required to build custom tools, and when building in-house now makes more sense than purchasing commercial software.

Notice

This course is offered by a 3rd party vendor and will not be accessible in the My CPE Tracker section of the ISCPA website. Course access information will be emailed directly to you by AICPA.