Using ChatGPT to Get AI Answers About Accounting
If you’ve ever typed an accounting or tax question into ChatGPT, you know how quickly it gives you an answer. It sounds confident and clear. And it feels like you just saved yourself an email or a phone call.
But here’s the catch.
AI tools are fantastic for getting general explanations, brainstorming ideas, or understanding concepts. They are not built to give fully accurate or compliant answers for your business. They don’t know your state rules, your books, your payroll structure, or the hundreds of tiny variables that affect tax decisions in restaurants, breweries, or bars.
That’s why many owners get into trouble when using ChatGPT to get answers about accounting and treat it as complete or final. ChatGPT isn’t trying to mislead anyone. It gives half of the picture because, most of the time, it’s only given a quarter of the context.
Most business owners don’t always know which details actually affect a tax or accounting decision. Details like state rules, entity type, payroll structure, tip policies, inventory systems, and dozens of other variables all factor into a decision. That means they often leave out information without realizing it, and ChatGPT fills in the gaps with general assumptions.
The answer sounds polished and confident, so it’s easy to assume it’s correct. But when important details are missing, those assumptions can lead to wrong conclusions, missed filings, or expensive fixes later on.
Here are the areas where AI struggles the most, and why it matters for your business.
State-Specific Tax Rules
ChatGPT can explain what sales tax or excise tax is in general. But once you need specifics, things fall apart quickly. The rules for alcoholic beverage tax, local sales tax, payroll thresholds, franchise tax and business licensing can vary not just by state, but by county and city. Those differences affect how breweries price their beer, how restaurants handle sales tax on alcohol versus food, and whether bars owe additional local fees.
AI doesn’t have real-time access to state databases or the ability to apply the exact rules that apply to your location. It may give you an answer based on another state’s laws or outdated information. For a restaurant business operating in multiple states, or one expanding into distribution, this can easily lead to incorrect filings or missed payments.
This is one of the biggest reasons why ChatGPT should be a starting point, not a final source.
Restaurant And Brewery-Specific Cost Accounting
Hospitality accounting is its own world. You’re dealing with prime cost, pour cost, production yield, spoilage, waste, inventory turns, shrinkage, seasonal swings and, in a brewery’s case, ingredient usage down to grams and ounces. ChatGPT can explain what cost of goods sold is, but it can’t translate that into the real systems you need to track food, beverage and production accurately.
For example, a brewery’s grain, hops and packaging should be tracked very differently from a restaurant’s food inventory, yet AI often lumps everything into broad categories that don’t reflect real operations.
It won’t tell you how to allocate utilities to brewing, or how to handle yield loss on a double-dry-hopped IPA, or how much variance is normal for draft beer.
These are areas where industry experience matters. AI can’t interpret your numbers, understand your processes or identify patterns in your cost structure that explain why margins are tightening.
Payroll, Tips, And Employee-Specific Tax Questions
Labor is the biggest expense for restaurants and bars, and the rules around tips are some of the most complicated in the entire industry. This is also an area where ChatGPT tends to oversimplify or miss important details.
It may tell you what the federal tip credit is, but not whether your state allows it. It might explain overtime rules, but not how they change for tipped staff or for employees who perform both tipped and non-tipped duties. It will likely miss the 80/20 rule entirely, or the difference between tips and service charges, or how allocated tips show up on year-end forms.
Small mistakes in this area can lead to wage claims, payroll audits or penalties from the IRS. And since these rules shift frequently, AI can’t keep up with the real-time changes that hospitality owners need to know.
Audit-Sensitive Issues
AI is helpful for learning concepts, but when it comes to anything the IRS cares deeply about, you want to be careful. ChatGPT cannot reliably tell you whether a deduction is likely to hold up under audit, how to document employee meals, what records you need for comps and voids, or how to categorize large brewery equipment purchases correctly.
It can also misinterpret IRS notices or provide advice that sounds logical but isn’t technically correct. Audit-sensitive questions require details, documentation, and judgment calls that AI simply isn’t able to make.
When something affects your tax liability, your compliance, or a potential audit trail, professional guidance becomes essential.
How To Use ChatGPT Safely For Your Business
None of this means you shouldn’t use AI. It can absolutely make your life easier. The key is understanding when it’s useful and when it’s not.
ChatGPT is great for things like:
- Understanding basic accounting concepts
- Drafting checklists, SOPs, or training guides
- Brainstorming questions to bring to your CPA
- Organizing information you already know
But when it comes to anything state-specific, industry-specific, employee-specific, or audit-sensitive, it’s always best to double-check ChatGPT’s answers with a professional who understands your brewery, bar, or restaurant.
Final Thoughts
AI is an incredible tool, but it doesn’t replace specialized accounting. Restaurants, bars, and breweries operate under a level of complexity that generic answers simply can’t capture.
ChatGPT gives you a helpful starting point, but the final decisions that affect your taxes, compliance, and profitability should be made with someone who works in your industry every day.
If you want guidance tailored to your location, your numbers, and your real operations, the team at U-Nique Accounting is here to help you interpret the details and apply them correctly to your business.
By MATT CIANCIARULO
