Which characteristics do the best CFOs share? What should you look for when hiring a CFO or bringing fractional financial leadership on board? As a Director of Finance, which skills should you look to bolster if you want to keep progressing in your career?

Obviously, the exact skills that a CFO needs to succeed in a specific role will vary based on factors like industry, company size and growth stage, and makeup of the c-suite team, but one commonality is that they all think strategically and communicate well.

With ethical challenges on the rise employee accountability is more important than ever before! And while employers understand that holding employees accountable for their actions at work is a key component of risk mitigation, they often struggle with how to achieve accountability in a way that’s financially responsible, ethically sound, and operationally sustainable.  

If you’re feeling overwhelmed thinking about how to shore up your accountability efforts, we have some helpful tips to share with you to reduce risk and improve business outcomes. Remember, effective accountability is achievable for all organizations regardless of size, budget, workforce, or industry – so let’s dive into the year’s most important accountability initiatives!

Executive Summary: Changes happen. Sometimes they come quickly and abundantly. Business executives rely on their Finance Teams to be in front of changes, especially when the impact is big. By proactively preparing for GAAP changes, CFOs can position their business for success. Staying informed, collaborating with experts, assessing the impact, and effectively implementing changing standards are essential to maintaining a smooth-running business operation.

As a CFO or Controller, staying at the forefront of accounting best practices and standards is crucial for maintaining financial integrity, advancing innovation in accounting, and ensuring compliance. In fact, this is a primary requirement for your accounting and finance personnel. And yet, it often goes unspoken and is seldom included in job descriptions and KSA’s (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) for your accounting team. Additionally, there are a ton of professional restrictions that can get in the way of making this a priority, like ongoing time constraints, urgent needs, and special projects.

“How do you build a three-year financial model?” It’s a question we get (and answer) a lot.

A financial model is a type of financial projection that pulls together important data to allow organizations to analyze their current financial position and predict their future financial position. While effective financial modeling takes significant time and expertise to complete, the considerable benefits provided make it well worth the investment. Financial modeling is an essential tool used to manage risk, allocate resources, make smart investments, secure funding, and develop long-term growth strategies.

Some projections are over a longer time horizon while others only cover a short time horizon. However, whether your financial model covers two, three, five, or ten years, it’s important to understand what it should accomplish, why you should do one, and what it should include. Find out now why you need financial modeling and how to build a financial model for your organization that will offer the insights needed to make key strategic decisions.

It is not difficult to understand that a nonprofit organization needs money to accomplish its mission. And yet, in looking at nonprofits it is clear that they are so much more than the money they have to invest in programs and initiatives around a particular mission or cause. Nonprofits are made up of passionate people that care about making a difference and serving others with whatever resources they have available. But how much they need and how much donors are willing to give them hinges on understanding how they can use what they have to do what they do, which is called their Return on Investment (ROI).

Without knowing what kind of a return a nonprofit can achieve it cannot secure grants or attract donors effectively. So, how do you calculate nonprofit ROI?

The war for talent that emerged amid The Great Resignation is still going strong in the areas of accounting and finance. As Hannah Green explains,

“The accounting sector has a problem with numbers. Specifically, it’s becoming harder and harder for firms to attract top talent. Why? There just aren’t enough talented bodies to go around. In what’s come to be known as the ‘war for talent’, top firms are finding it increasingly difficult to secure and retain highly qualified finance and accounting professionals.”

Expense reduction services and cost reduction consultants have been extremely busy over the last year as organizations scrambled to overcome pandemic-related barriers and an overall downturn in the economy. Many companies that had been thriving before the pandemic saw their future success threatened and quickly froze their spending on everything from marketing to R&D. Others took a more measured approach, tightening spending across the board instead of cutting any areas altogether. And while their intentions were good, many businesses missed the mark when it came to executing cost containment strategies.

The reason too many cost reduction approaches fail is because they are predicated on the wrong assumptions. The assumption is that reducing costs will improve cash flow to allow struggling or compromised companies the breathing room needed to stay in business.

As more people begin to get vaccinated, we are eager to return to what life was like in the "before times" to plan vacations, in-person meetings, even concerts and ballgames. When it comes to the workplace, there is no turning back the clock to how we used to do things. Wise leaders will capitalize on the innovations developed during the transition to continue remote operations by retaining the process improvements to be sustainable, regardless of what comes next.