Accounting teams do more than just close the books. But too often, they’re stuck firefighting — buried in manual reconciliations, journal entries, and audit requests.

Modern businesses need more. Leaders want insights that help drive decisions, not just a recount of what’s happened. So how do finance teams step up and become proactive, strategic partners?

Accountants are stuck in reactive mode

Accounting has always been about accuracy and compliance. But as businesses scale, transaction volumes grow, and reporting gets more complex, accounting teams are struggling to keep up. Instead of focusing on the bigger picture, they’re caught in a cycle of manual work.

Felicia Su, Controller at Miro, puts it simply: “When accounting teams spend their days fighting fires with broken processes or bad data, they simply don’t have the bandwidth to think long-term. Moving out of ‘band-aid mode’ is the first step to becoming a proactive partner to the business.”

And with fewer people entering the profession, the pressure is even greater. Talented accountants are drawn to fields like FP&A and data analytics — leaving accounting behind.

Vladi Vinogradsky, Accounting Lead at Robinhood, agrees. “I’ve worked at various technology companies and witnessed a lot of accountants who want to be strategic, but many feel the only way to do that is by leaving accounting for other business functions. It shouldn’t be that way.”

It’s time to think beyond the close

To move from reactive to strategic, accounting teams need to go beyond the numbers. Tom Stenhouse, CFO at Nextgen Clearing, sees accounting as a lighthouse: “The foundation layer is having a set of books ready for reporting and audit. But finance and accounting teams should challenge themselves to push beyond that and to act like a lighthouse — shining visibility across the organization, rather than just compiling data.”

He emphasized the importance of moving beyond compliance and encouraged teams to ask the tougher questions: “How’s the business performing? How do these transactions drive value? What am I personally concerned about? What is the board concerned about? What are our commercial stakeholders concerned about?”

Josh Waldron, VP of Finance and Accounting at Scale AI agrees: “One thing I always challenge my team to do is to understand the why. As accountants, we tend to focus on counting beans instead of understanding where the beans come from and why we have a particular amount on the books. People with the mindset to get out of their comfort zone and think strategically about why things work the way they do are indispensable.” 

The best finance teams don’t just present numbers — they bring insights that help shape decisions. Here’s how they do it.

1. Shift the culture

Accounting should be a key driver of business success. Leaders need to redefine its role, hire and reward people with a strategic mindset, and align cultural change with how the team actually works. Simone Rüschenberg, CFO at Taktile, explains that:

“The CFO or finance leader needs to set the mission and inspire the team to embrace change. Without openness to adapt and evolve, accounting professionals risk falling behind and missing opportunities to grow with the business.”

2. Invest in new skills

Accounting teams need to go beyond traditional reporting and develop a deeper understanding of what actually drives the business. That means learning non-GAAP metrics, KPIs, and the insights leadership cares about. Ruben Arnbert, CFO at Juni, explains that:

“The line between accounting and FP&A is blurring. More teams are shifting to a domain-led structure rather than keeping finance and accounting in silos — giving accountants a chance to step up and play a more strategic role.”

3. Work cross-functionally

The best accounting teams don’t work in isolation. They collaborate with HR, legal, marketing, and other departments to improve processes and reduce inefficiencies. Felicia Su highlights this in her own experience:

“The most successful accounting teams I’ve managed are the ones who are not working in silos.”

A great example? When accounting teams partner with people ops to ensure clean data flows into payroll, they reduce downstream issues and free up time for higher-value work.

4. Use the right tech

Repetitive manual tasks shouldn’t be eating up your team’s time. Automate core processes like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll to work smarter, not harder. As Ruben Arnbert points out:

“At a startup with finite engineering resources, it’s not feasible to build a custom workflow for every accounting process so it’s okay to accept some manual tasks. However, with core processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll, etc: these should be largely automated.”

The tools exist — teams just need to take the leap.

The path ahead

Shifting your finance team into strategic partners won’t happen overnight. But by fostering curiosity, investing in skills, and embracing automation, accounting teams can step into a bigger role—one that directly impacts business success.

Vladi Vinogradsky, Accounting Lead at Robinhood explains it well:

“The real value of accounting isn’t in the numbers — it’s in how those numbers shape business decisions.”

Ready to level up your finance team? Stay tuned for part two, where we break down the monthly close process and how to make it more efficient.

Trends identified in the US accounting profession:

Source: AICPA, Infinity Globus