Business leaders of many privately owned companies often face an overwhelming volume of accounting and financial data. This flood of information can obscure a clear understanding of their organization’s full financial profile, leaving them flying financially blind.

Common challenges include:

• Information overload: Leaders struggle to interpret big-picture financial results from excessive data.
• Too much detail: Financial and accounting reports often dive into considerable details, bogging leaders down in “financial weeds.”
• Decision-making effect: Without a clear financial profile, leaders lack the foundation to best evaluate results and to make the most informed decisions possible.

This gap presents a significant opportunity for CPAs to step in and deliver clarity through what I call “Financial Fundamentals” — concise, relevant insights that enhance decision-making.
The difficulty, time and cost of procuring third-party capital leaves many privately owned companies thinly capitalized, making the need to understand and monitor their full financial profile essential.

They are susceptible to both the positive and negative effects of fluctuations in operating earnings and cash flow, as well as their related impact on capital components, including liquidity.

The opportunity for CPAs

CPAs are uniquely positioned to address this critical need. By leveraging their expertise, CPAs can condense complex financial data into meaningful FF that:

• Simplify critical insights.
• Strengthens client relationships.
• Differentiates their services in an evolving and competitive market.
• Adds value to their firms.

CPAs who want to deliver Financial Fundamentals should consider the following framework: 

1. Define FF: Identify the most critical financial insights, such as cash flow, operating earnings, and capital components.
2. Calculate FF: Extract these insights from existing, readily available data.
3. Summarize FF: Present insights clearly and concisely, using formats that are easy for clients to understand.
4. Report FF: Communicate findings effectively, ensuring clients can act on the information provided.

In complex situations, keeping things simple often leads to the best outcomes. A timeless principle to remember: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

By mastering Financial Fundamentals, CPAs can position themselves as indispensable advisors.

The value of FF

For business leaders, here are the values of FF:

• Clarity and confidence: Business leaders gain a simplified yet comprehensive view of key financial elements, including their trends and drivers, fostering informed decision-making and peace of mind.
• Enhanced Tools: FF strengthens existing KPIs, dashboards, and operational reports for a well-rounded financial framework.

For CPAs, the value of FF includes:

• Market differentiation: They position CPAs as innovative, client-focused advisors.
• Consultative services: They increase opportunities for consulting engagements.
• Professional growth: They expand expertise and deepen client engagement.
• Business success: They help CPAs strengthen relationships by providing insights that are often overlooked or underreported.

In short, Financial Fundamentals play a pivotal role in monitoring performance, evaluating business health, and facilitating communication with stakeholders.
A winning analogy: Football fundamentals

Success in football hinges on mastering fundamentals like blocking and tackling. Similarly, business success depends on strong Financial Fundamentals. 

Football coaches who emphasize these basics enhance their teams’ performance and their own careers. Similarly, CPAs can further empower business leaders by providing and teaching FF.

Like a football team, a business might succeed without strong fundamentals, but their ability to thrive is significantly reduced. Without fundamentals, the likelihood of undesirable outcomes increases.

CPAs have the expertise and cross-professional relationships to deliver this critical guidance. If you don’t provide Financial Fundamentals, who will? Your competitors?

Call to action: Delivering Financial Fundamentals

Every aspect of life and business improves when fundamentals are prioritized.

Business Financial Fundamentals are essential across all stages of a company’s lifecycle, whether it is a startup, in survival mode, experiencing growth, or planning an exit.  

As the name suggests, Financial Fundamentals are just that: fundamental. They form the bedrock of succinct and understandable financial comprehension.

Despite significant investments in accounting and financial reporting, many organizations lack succinct and understandable FF. This gap creates a prime opportunity for CPAs.

Key actions for CPAs to take include:

1. Simplify reports: Use plain language, reduce jargon, and focus on what truly matters.
2. Collaborate with stakeholders: Engage with bankers, clients, and other business leaders to gather diverse insights and build advocacy.
3. Focus on core financial concepts: Highlight critical areas such as cash flow, operating earnings, and capital components like financial health, value, and borrowing capacity.
4. Condense insights: Summarize FF into a single, digestible report.
5. Host workshops: Share expertise through case studies and training sessions, reinforcing the value of Financial Fundamentals.

Why now?

Financial Fundamentals is a relatively new concept, meaning there is currently minimal competition in this space. CPAs who embrace it now can:

• Dominate their market.
• Build a reputation as innovative, indispensable advisors.

By prioritizing Financial Fundamentals, CPAs further empower clients while elevating their professional standing. 
With FF, CPAs can drive client success while cementing their role as indispensable advisors. Mastering Financial Fundamentals is not just an opportunity for CPAs — it’s a necessity for staying ahead in an ever-evolving and competitive landscape. 

The question isn’t whether to embrace Financial Fundamentals, but rather: When will you start?

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

As the 2025 tax season continues and the April 15 deadline gets closer, many are still waiting to file their taxes. 

A study from IPX1031, a firm that focuses on like-kind exchanges, found that one in four taxpayers do not feel prepared to file their taxes in 2025, and determined which U.S. states have the most procrastinators by analyzing Google search data related to the tax filing deadline. 

For the third consecutive year, Wyoming has the most tax procrastinators, while Wisconsin has the fewest tax procrastinators, after coming in at No. 47 in 2024. 

Read more about the states that procrastinate the most and least on taxes (the lower the ranking, the more likely they are to wait to file their taxes).

States that procrastinate the most on taxes

States that procrastinate the least on taxes

Tens of millions of lower-income retirement savers could soon get up to $1,000 in matching contributions toward their nest eggs each year — but they’ll need financial advisors’ help.

That’s the key takeaway from a report last month by The Morningstar Center for Retirement & Policy Studies and interviews with four experts about the “saver’s match” program, which is a provision of the sweeping 2022 Secure 2.0 retirement law that’s slated to take effect in 2027. As the replacement for the current “saver’s credit,” the match provides up to 50% in annual matching contributions from the federal government on the first $2,000 flowing into a saver’s retirement account for those with modified adjusted gross income of $35,500 or less for individuals or a maximum of $71,000 for couples.

READ MORE: The retirement savings race gap is wide and growing

Financial advisors often focus on high net worth clients whose wealth stretches far beyond that eligibility. However, they also frequently work with clients whose businesses sponsor employer retirement plans that must adjust their systems and raise workers’ awareness to enable them to fully tap into their benefits. Many firms and advisors also regularly participate in pro bono planning that aids people of any means with volunteer services. Amid persistent racial disparities in retirement savings and the continuing flow of Secure 2.0 provisions taking effect across the retail wealth management industry, professionals will play a pivotal role in ensuring that the saver’s match reaches its potential to boost millennial and Generation Z nest eggs by a mean of 12%, the report said.

“The impact is intuitively the biggest when people are changing their behavior, taking full advantage,” said Spencer Look, an associate director of retirement studies with Morningstar’s retirement center and co-author of the report. “There could be a big impact if we do that well as an industry and we implement this well.”

Advisors, employers and other parts of the 401(k) and retirement-savings ecosystem require some time to “not only to get the infrastructure, the plumbing in place,” but try to “target the potentially eligible participants in their plans and make sure they understand this is free money to them,” said Jack VanDerhei, the director of retirement studies with Morningstar’s retirement center and the other co-author of the study. For example, some of the eligible workers who aren’t currently 401(k) plan participants may need to set up their first individual retirement account in order to receive the government matching contributions. At the very least, advisors should know that the saver’s match and other parts of Secure 2.0 are “certainly going to influence the entire landscape going forward,” VanDerhei said.  

“It’s a given that, if the 2017 tax modifications are going to be salvaged in 2025, a number of retirement situations will come into play as far as taking looks at things like mandatory Rothification,” he said. “This is something that’s already been put in place and is going to be perceived by many as being a big help in terms of some of the retirement gaps going forward.”

What the study found

The current saver’s credit has reached fewer than 6% of filers due to design shortcomings like the requirement that they have an income-tax liability and a lack of knowledge among eligible savers, Morningstar’s report said. The researchers found “reasons to believe that the saver’s match will be more effective than the saver’s credit,” including the facts that savers will no longer be obligated to have federal income tax liability, that the money “will be directly deposited into their retirement accounts — a more tangible benefit that could encourage greater participation,” and that the law instructs agencies such as the Treasury Department to promote it, they wrote. 

“That said, the success of the saver’s match will largely depend on how effectively it is implemented,” Look and VanDerhei wrote. “To maximize impact, the government and retirement industry should reduce barriers and minimize savings friction wherever possible, within limits. Clear and accessible communication and education — including an awareness campaign — are also critical to ensure qualified individuals understand and use the program effectively.”

READ MORE: Secure 2.0 created emergency accounts. Will 401(k) plans use them?

The maximum match of $1,000 on top of the first $2,000 in retirement savings each year will go to taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of $20,500 or less as individuals, $30,750 or lower for heads of households and as much as $41,000 among couples. For those with higher modified adjusted gross income, the matching contributions phase out at respective levels of $35,500, $53,250 and $71,000. Among millennials and Gen Z savers, roughly 49% of Hispanic households, 44% of Black Americans, 29% of white taxpayers and 26% of other racial and ethnic groups will qualify for some level of matching contributions. 

Using census data on those generations in terms of gender, marriage status and race and a simulation model called the “Morningstar Model of U.S. Retirement Outcomes,” Look and VanDerhei predicted that single women’s wealth at retirement could jump 13%, that of Black savers could grow 15% and Hispanic households could surge by 12%. Those figures assume that they get the highest matching contribution in 2027 and retire when they’re 65 years old, and that the program spurs more people to open retirement accounts and save more in order to take advantage. But even without behavioral changes, the saver’s match could boost the generations’ retirement nest eggs by 8%.

“When looking at the results from different demographic perspectives, we found that single women, non-Hispanic Black Americans and Hispanic Americans see greater benefits compared with other groups,” Look and VanDerhei wrote. “Moreover, our results show that workers in industries with a higher risk of running short of money in retirement are projected to experience a more significant increase in their retirement wealth under the new program.”

Help needed

The match necessitates “buy-in from everyone” across employees, employers, advisors, recordkeepers and governments, plus ample financial wellness education, according to Pam Hess, the executive director of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association’s Retirement Research Center, which has worked on prior research about the potential impact of the saver’s match as part of a joint effort with the Morningstar center and the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program called the Collaborative for Equitable Retirement Savings. In addition, the findings of the latest study explain why more employers are considering how they could provide emergency savings, paycheck advances or low-interest loans, she said.

“Peoiple need help meeting their short-term financial struggles,” Hess said. “Employers are coming up with other solutions to help their workforce. You put those together with the saver’s match, and it could be really meaningful.”

READ MORE: 401(k) fees are lower but still hard to understand. Planners can help

Until the policy starts in 2027, advisors could get a head start by trying to increase the number of households using the existing credit, according to Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the nonprofit Transamerica Institute and its division Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, which found in a survey earlier this month that only 51% of workers are aware of the saver’s credit. The match “essentially reimagines and replaces and takes the saver’s credit to the next level, and the saver’s credit is available right now,” she said.

“Most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking about taxes everyday, unless it’s April 14 — the day before everything is due,” Collinson said, noting that many people also push back on the idea that they are among the “low-to-moderate income retirement savers” eligible for the credit. “The general public does not relate to that messaging, so this is where it’s so critical for financial advisors who can help to get the word out.”

More ways to get involved

On the other side of the equation, the sponsors and recordkeepers could use a nudge from the advisors to ensure they’re giving the employees the means to get the biggest match “systematically, in a way that is doable and viable,” Hess said. Right now, many employers simply don’t “have all the information they need to know who’s eligible and who’s not,” based on their modified adjusted gross income, she noted. 

“We know that engaging employees is really hard — getting that connection is increasingly hard in a noisy world,” Hess said. “First you have to figure out who qualifies, and then you have to get the dollars from the government into that account, which is not a connection that’s in place today.”

Advisors’ expertise could overcome some further barriers to participation based on the continuing problems that “there’s still a major trust issue going on any time the government gets involved” and some people may not understand how to open an IRA, VanDerhei said. They’ll also be able to point out that the match would benefit “a lot of people” to a certain extent, so it’s not just for those of the lowest means, Look said.

“Pro bono work, volunteering to help educate and talk through with people in the community who may be eligible is very, very important,” he said.