Humans are becoming rarer in corporate finance department as the routine tasks that were once attended to by staffs of dozens are increasingly taken up by machines, according to the Wall Street Journal. While robots have yet to take over the high-level business strategy that CPAs often provide, they are becoming far more common in areas such as accounts-payable, accounts-receivable, and inventory control. Since 2004, said the Journal, the median number of full time employees in corporate finance departments of large companies has shrunk by 40 percent, going from 119 staff for ever $1 billion in revenue to 71. And the trend seems likely to accelerate: Verizon, for example, has already cut one quarter of its finance staff in favor of automated software, and is aiming to increase that total to 35 percent by the end of this year, said the Journal. Finance isn't the only target for machines, though: large companies have also cut roughly 20 percent of their HR staff and 44 percent of their IT staff over the past 10 years, also due to automation, said the Journal.