Outsourcing.
All high headcount companies outsource some of their accounting and finance work, and most companies report doing bookkeeping internally.
Small and midsize businesses tend to outsource some of their finance and accounting functions, so we asked respondents to indicate where they did so. The choices we gave ranged from bookkeeping to CFO support.
Accounting advisory topped the list, with roughly half of respondents indicating that they outsource for it, and only about a quarter of respondents reported using outsourced bookkeeping.

Time-to-close.
One in five finance and accounting teams spend most of the month closing the books.
Month-end and year-end closes are impacted by the high levels of manual work. We found that 61% of respondents spend more than a week on their month-end close, and 18% spend more than two weeks, with responses ranging from two days to more than 30 days.
It’s reasonable to surmise that further automation of manual tasks, especially when automation is integrated directly to the GL so that it doesn’t create extra work to close the books, can help to shorten these timeframes.
