Accountants in Monaco: where AI gives time back, engagement by engagement

The Principality caps the number of chartered accountants (experts-comptables) authorised to practise at forty. On 31 December 2025, the Trade and Industry Register listed 7,414 active businesses. And since 17 October 2026, law n°1.596 adds notes to the annual accounts and paves the way for consolidated accounts. In a Monaco accounting firm, qualified time is scarce by design. The useful question is therefore not whether AI belongs in the firm, but which tasks it actually frees up hours on, and which must stay entirely in the accountant’s hands.

Chartered accountants

40at most, authorised to practise in the Principality

Businesses

7,414active on the Trade and Industry Register, end of 2025

Private employers

6,444at 30 June 2026: as many payrolls every month

New establishments

434created in the first half of 2026

Sources: sovereign ordinance n°11.774 of 13 February 2026; IMSEE.

Engagement by engagement: what takes the time, what AI can prepare, what the accountant keeps. Then the three areas to tackle first, the questions professional secrecy requires you to ask of any tool, and a way to measure before choosing.

Law n°1.596 of 9 October 2026, published in the Journal de Monaco on 16 October, amends in particular law n°1.231 on the profession, law n°408 on public limited companies and the Commercial Code. Besides abolishing the title of comptable agréé (licensed bookkeeper), whose holders on the roll become chartered accountants, three changes bear directly on firms’ workload:

1. Notes become part of the annual accounts. For public limited companies (SAM) as well as SARL, SNC and SCS, the accounts submitted to the general meeting now comprise the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and the notes. For public limited companies, law n°408 refers to formats set by sovereign ordinance.
2. Consolidated accounts are coming. Companies that control one or more legal entities and exceed thresholds set by ministerial order will have to prepare consolidated accounts and a group management report. These provisions take effect on a date set by regulation, no later than 31 December 2026; to our knowledge, the thresholds had not yet been published at the time of writing.
3. A new test for two statutory auditors. A public limited company appoints one or two statutory auditors (commissaires aux comptes). Two are required in particular when two of three thresholds (balance sheet total, turnover, headcount), set by a ministerial order we have not found published to date, are exceeded for two consecutive financial years, or when the company prepares consolidated accounts.

AI does not deliver the same value whatever the rhythm of the work.

Every month

The monthly cycle: documents, VAT, payroll variables. Short, highly repetitive tasks, multiplied by the number of files. At the end of the first half of 2026, IMSEE counted 6,444 private employers in the Principality: as many payrolls and social declarations every month.

Every year

The accounts season: review, notes, management report, general meetings, statutory endorsement, statutory audit, certificates. Long, qualified tasks, concentrated over a few months and all fed by the same data.

With each client

Client onboarding: engagement letter, identification of the client and its beneficial owners, collection of articles of association and documents. In the first half of 2026, 434 establishments were created in Monaco according to IMSEE: each new client opens a due diligence file, often with documents in several languages.

Across these three rhythms, AI can help with three actions. The fourth action of the profession remains the accountant’s.

1. AIReadheterogeneous documents: invoices, statements, articles of association, in French, Italian or English
2. AIMatcha receipt and an entry, a certificate and the accounts, a register and a file
3. AIDrafta reminder, minutes, a note to the accounts, a summary
4. The accountantJudgeconclude and sign

The grid follows the firm’s main engagements, from bookkeeping to contributions in kind, and adds AML/CFT due diligence. The potential combines three criteria, the same as in the sample week described below: the volume of time, repetition, and how easily what AI has prepared can be checked.

In summary, the engagements ranked by potential, with the actions AI can take on:

1. The month’s collection and reminders

   The highest volume, the most repetition, and immediate checking: a reminder can be reread at a glance. This is natural ground for an agent, which chains detecting missing documents, sending reminders and tracking replies, under the team member’s control.

2. The accounts season, in a single file per company

   Review, notes, minutes, endorsement or audit rest on the same data: preparing them together, from a single source, avoids re-keying from one document to the next. The notes, a new item at every year end, make this area clearer.

3. Onboarding and due diligence

   Engagement letter, identification, beneficial owners, updates: standardised, documented work, where the traceability of each check is precisely what is expected.

Professional secrecy for members of the Order (law n°1.231, article 29, subject to the penalties of article 308 of the Criminal Code) does not bend because AI comes into the firm: whichever tool is chosen must comply with it. Four questions, and for each the document to ask for:

1. Where is the data?

   Hosting of documents and entries, backups included, and the countries from which they can be accessed. Our article on data transfers out of Monaco covers the list of adequate countries published on 16 October.

   Document to ask forThe list of hosting locations and subcontractors, support included.

2. Is it used for anything else?

   Client data must not be used to train a third-party model.

   Document to ask forThe contract clause that rules it out.

3. Where does each proposal come from?

   A reminder, a posting or a note to the accounts must link to its source: the document, the entry, the rule applied.

   Document to ask forA demonstration in which every proposal shows that link.

4. Who signs off?

   Nothing goes to a client and nothing is filed without validation by an authorised team member.

   Document to ask forThe validation log, as it will be kept.

One week of logging is enough to identify the right first task, ideally in a busy period and with team members as much as partners: they are the ones who live the repetition day to day. For each task, six columns, as in this example with fictitious figures:

Time is logged over the week, to the nearest quarter of an hour. The dominant action is one of the four: read, match, draft or judge. “Checkable” means once the task has been prepared.

At the end of the week, add up the time per task, all staff combined, and ask three questions:

1. Which one recurs across the most files?
2. Which one exceeds half a day a week?
3. Which one can be checked in under a minute?

The task that ticks all three is the right starting point: in the example, chasing documents. If none does, choose the one that weighs most in time among the tasks checkable in under a minute; a task whose dominant action is “judge” never qualifies.

In a profession whose numbers are capped, every hour freed from collection, formatting and re-keying becomes an hour available for what only the accountant can do: an accounts season that now includes notes and soon consolidation, and advice, to help business owners understand their figures, not just file them.

One question remains, which each firm will answer in its own way. Article 2 of law n°1.231 allows chartered accountants to advise their clients, on an ancillary basis, in several fields, digital among them.

Will what a firm learns by equipping its own engagements become advice for clients who ask themselves the same questions about their invoices, their reminders and their data?