What's the likelihood of finding a part time job in finance?

[DefiantRabbit9]

Be for real with me in this post.

I'm on maternity leave 9 weeks postpartum and am dreading going back to work (I'm a chartered accountant). My husbands salary is not enough to support our family so regardless I WILL have to work.

What's the likelihood that I will be able to get a part time job in my field with AI on the horizon?

I work in finance and not seeing chartered accountants at top of the list of finance roles being replaced by AI - ops roles, developers, testers, yes. Accountants, much less so

Consider the charity sector. Lots of finance roles will be part time, although don't expect a huge salary!

On paper I'm a financial accountant. I do year end accounts and tax calculation. I have a specialisation in creative industries.

Reality is I do everything: YE accounts, self assessment, audit, bookkeeping, VAT and tax planning.

Yes I am a qualified accountant and gone back to finance after a long time away. Whilst I have found part-time roles (and just got a new job at 58) they are more bookkeeper than accountant and obviously not as well paid. I use AI to make processing quicker and for tasks that would have been more time consuming previously using formulae, pivot tables etc in Excel.

AI will replace certain accounting tasks and be useful in terms of supporting accountant/making some things easier. It will not replace accountants.
Lots of accountants work part time so definitely able to do.

you need to think about what roles you are interested in/what sort of companies and see what is out there. But definitely no reason why you can’t find something.

I am an accountant, I struggled to find PT roles 20 odd years ago (so long before AI) when DD was young, and as I start to wind down towards retirement I am back searching for PT roles again but as mentioned above its mostly book keeping roles for small businesses. After dd was born I ended up ditching chartered accountancy and became an assistant accountant for local companies as I could leave my work at the door at 5pm, - there was less overtime, less stress, more flexibility etc.

Would the firm you work for now agree a part time contract?
This is what I did and it worked well. You could push the client continuity aspect and, of course you know how they want you to work.

Do you have any interest in going freelance and picking up your own clients? The creative industries are a very freelance sector, filled with people and small companies who very much need an accountant. You get to decide when your client list is full.

You could always go freelance; that's what I did after having dc. You can pick and choose your clients and the hours you work, and there will always be loads of small businesses in need of an accountant as a one-off for quarterly VAT returns, Year End or doing their tax returns. There's also the option for doing some consultancy work.

AI is likely to replace the basic donkey-work of invoice input, producing reports etc., but someone still needs to check that the accounting software system parameters have been configured correctly and that the thing hasn't gone GIGO.