AI for accountants, without breaching client confidentiality

Your duty of secrecy

Accountants owe confidentiality over what they learn about clients, whatever the country. In the United States, tax return preparers also face IRC §7216, which restricts disclosing or using tax return information without the client's consent. In the UK and Ireland, confidentiality is a fundamental principle of the professional bodies' codes of ethics, alongside the UK GDPR and the GDPR. In Portugal it's article 72(1)(d) of the Order of Certified Accountants statute, and the Order's president has called secrecy the profession's main concern with AI (OCC, October 2025).

Documents you handle

• Trial balances and ledgers in Excel
• SAF-T files
• Tax returns in PDF
• Bank statements and reconciliations
• Payroll and social security reports
• Replies to tax authority notices

What you can ask the AI

• Analyse trial balance changes and prepare client questions
• Scan a SAF-T file for unusual invoices
• Draft a reply to a tax notice from the documents
• Summarise a lease or loan agreement

What Velado covers

UK National Insurance numbers, UTR, VAT and company numbers, sort codes and account numbers; Irish PPS numbers and Eircodes; US SSN, ITIN and EIN, ZIP codes and routing numbers; Canadian SIN and Business Numbers; Maltese ID card and VAT numbers; Portuguese, Spanish and Brazilian tax IDs; IBANs, bank cards, names, companies, addresses, postcodes, phones and emails.