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Why do we rely on monthly reports to give us real-time information?

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Reporting is one of the most actionable pieces of running a business. Owners simply have to understand how their business is performing to chart out next steps and see opportunities for growth. 

If you don’t report, you can’t measure what was successful, and — as equally important — what wasn’t. This information is no secret. But what might not be so obvious is how the most successful businesses utilize those reports. For accounting and finance, maximizing the reliable financial data in those reports unlocks critical information to help business owners make better business decisions.

What is monthly reporting and how did we get here?

Historically, financial reports are delivered each month. It’s a nice solid time measurement that enables regular check-ins without too much intention. Think: credit card statements, rent and utilities. Our most common bills are monthly, and businesses followed this timing. We’re here to tell you that one month is too long to not have a check-in on your financial standing. If you’re refreshing your email multiple times a day, you should not be waiting for the end of the month to take a look at your business’s cash flow. A report delivered on the 15th is no longer helpful when you need to pay rent on the 30th. In today’s fast-paced, data-driven environment, monthly isn’t cutting it.

Why monthly is no longer timely enough

Financial reports are primarily in 30-day increments and it is imperative small businesses know their financial position far more often than that. For example, businesses with a high velocity of transactions might not have a pulse if the reports are delivered monthly, which can easily lead to running out of money without knowing which bills are about to hit and the payments they need to make. 

Monthly reports usually don’t come out until the middle of the following month, which is too late for any real-time course corrections. It’s what happened. Business owners need a current pulse on cash and understand what levers to pull as they forward in the present and future.

What if we checked in on our finances weekly?

Financial transactions are happening daily. Some are expected costs, such as rent and salaries, and others are unexpected and fluctuating, like travel and office supplies. Emergencies, such as malfunctioning machinery, can have a dramatic effect on a business’s liquidity if not prepared for. 

Checking in weekly, rather than monthly — this notion was envisioned when a client CEO said that he wanted to have a relaxing weekend and drink a beer knowing that he had the cash for the next week. Why isn’t the norm a report that considers both the operating cash now and upcoming expenses for the next seven days. Allowing CEOs everywhere to enjoy the weekend knowing that they will be covered for the coming week.

By providing cash flow reports weekly, the accountant and business owner are able to make strategic decisions because they have a pulse on the cash flow, accounts receivable, accounts payable, revenue and expenses each and every week. This near real-time view is the difference between overdrafting or adding new revenue streams. There is an opportunity for significant growth in revenue and profitability for clients utilizing weekly reports, including improvement of week-over-week cash balances, week-over week AR balances, and monthly progress through revenue forecasting and expense budget. Your clients will know where and who to go to if they need to make adjustments on a weekly basis.

Weekly reports can provide a clear snapshot of percentage of the month completed versus percentage of revenue and expense incurred. By tracking both revenue and expense progress weekly, leaders are able to engage their team to accommodate targets. For example, a business might be 30% of the way through the month but already 55% through their expense budget. The report can encourage action to readjust. In this case, one solution would be to freeze non-essential spending to preserve cash flow.

You can leverage the use of weekly reports for your own business development as well, including increasing revenue through upselling. Accounting professionals can differentiate your services in the marketplace by offering weekly reports and then taking more of an advisory role when working with clients to define what these snapshots mean for your clients’ businesses. 

The companies that are currently putting this into practice have outperformed revenue targets and maintained their budgets with ease because they are gaming the results. When the leadership team is aware on a weekly basis of the cash position, percentage to revenue target, and aware of their spending compared to the expense budget, it keeps people motivated and able to make data driven decisions quickly.

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Leveraging technology to automate reports

Weekly reports used to be avoided because of the time it would take to pull together and consolidate reports from different softwares, bank feeds, etc. But that is no longer the case. Automation means this can now be done in seconds.

That means you, as an accounting professional, can instead focus on interpretation and strategy, rather than time-consuming manual tasks. Furthermore, as AI and automation are able to seamlessly and quickly pull together reports, the ability of the accounting advisor to strategically interpret these reports is more important than ever. 

It is critical that AI works with trusted human advisors who can advise clients using this information and guide them to make better decisions. The human advisor element turns numbers into action, reducing client anxiety over the math. Advisors can advise on exactly where the business is financially, on a weekly picture. No surprises.

Shifting the timing of monthly reports to weekly reports has the opportunity to change our industry. This strategic addition to typical accounting services elevates accounting professionals, bookkeepers, controllers and CFOs to further take a strategic and collaborative approach with their clients. The key component is utilizing the reported data and creating actionable insights for better business decisions. Clients may not always care to understand weekly cash flow, revenue and expense, but providing a snapshot, along with an advisor analysis, will provide insights that showcase a clear accounting picture for your clients.

Business owners aren’t able to make the best decisions if they are utilizing old, outdated information. Real-time accurate accounting is needed so companies can monitor cash flow, be timely with expected expenses and ensure they are reaching financial milestones.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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