Accounting
How can CFOs build resilience while facing down challenges?
As businesses navigate turbulent economic waters, CFOs face mounting challenges in their mission to manage costs, optimize resources and maintain financial resilience. These challenges are made even more urgent by a well-documented
How much of a problem is talent scarcity?
Hiring and retention were the
A shortage of qualified hires creates work backlogs that fall on existing employees, which can stress them to the point where they decide to change employers, further exacerbating the problem. What’s more is unfilled seats and overworked team members contribute to operational challenges: when the work doesn’t get done, or contains human errors, the results can be dissatisfied customers and clients, financial reporting errors, and costly noncompliance, especially in
How can CFOs maintain or build flexibility in their organizations?
When talent scarcity problems accumulate, it’s virtually impossible for a company to scale efficiently or to stay flexible and resilient in a changing economic environment. To avoid reaching this point — or to start resolving existing inflexibility — CFOs can invest more in hiring, training and retention, and explore their options for automation to reduce the number of tasks that employees need to perform. CFOs can also consider outsourcing as a way to introduce a scalable team solution.
Double down on hiring?
Committing more resources to hiring and retention is the traditional option, but in today’s market it may not be the most effective or cost-efficient strategy. According to Deloitte’s Q4 2023
Add automation
In 2023, more than half of CFOs (51%) began automating tasks that had been done by employees, according to a
Expect to see more organizations adopting automation.
However, automation is not a quick fix. It requires resources that organizations may not have yet, which is one reason that the Fed survey found that
Explore AI now for greater leverage later
AI holds a great deal of promise for automation and operational assistance. However, because the technology is new, there’s a lot that has to happen before AI can take over any tasks, especially within the finance and accounting function.
Not quite a quarter of CFOs told Deloitte they expect their organizations to
Outsource some roles or responsibilities
Outsourcing is another option for maintaining flexibility and resilience, and 35% of CFOs surveyed by Deloitte said their organizations will
Outsourcing also opens up new markets of talent for organizations, and in the age of remote work, many business leaders are starting to see outsourcing as a natural extension of remote work. If an accounting team is working from home, the logic goes, it doesn’t necessarily matter where in the world that home is. One Stanford economist forecasts that “about 10% to 20% of U.S. service support jobs like software developers and human-resources professionals
Balancing the options for a stronger organization
Solutions for companies will vary, depending on their resources and stage of growth, and not every solution may fit or be attainable. At the same time, each of the solutions on its own is unlikely to achieve the CFO’s long-term growth and resilience strategies. By understanding how hiring, automation, AI and outsourcing contribute to operational efficiency, cost and quality, CFOs can identify the optimal combination of solutions to build resilience into their teams and meet the financial needs of their business now and over the long term.
Thirteen accounting firms have united to form
Operating in an alternative practice structure as Sorren CPAs PC for attest services and Sorren Inc. for business advisory and non-attest services, the combined firms have 85 partners and approximately $170 million in revenue, with plans to add more firms going forwards.
Many of the founding firms met as members of the BDO Alliance, and their leaders had gotten to know one another as attendees at alliance meetings and managing partner roundtables, according to Josh Tyree, the president of Sorren, who was previously president of Harris CPAs, an Idaho-based firm that was the first of the group to go the PE route, signing up with DFW in January 2024.
“Harris had started looking at that process with DFW for a good chunk of 2023,” Tyree recalled, “and I remember we were having a managing partner roundtable meeting in Nashville that year in the fall, and they were all there and I raised my hand after two hours of talking about PE and I said, ‘Hey guys, I think I’m going to jump in feet first and you guys should all come and join us.'”
And they did — with individual firms joining up with DFW over the course of 2024, and a large group in January 2025.
“There was a level of comfort,” he explained. “We knew all of our firms and our people and what we do and how we do it because we’d shared so much information over the years.”
Apart from Harris, the other firms currently comprising Sorren are:
- Acuity (Georgia);
- Aycock & Co. (Texas);
- Capital Nomics Valuations (California);
- Chigbrow Ryan Murata (Idaho);
- Hoerber Tillman & Co. (Florida);
- JRJBF (Illinois);
- KDP Advisors (Oregon);
- KMA Advisors (Wisconsin);
- Pisenti & Brinker (California);
- Roeser Accountancy (California).
- SBF Advisors (Florida);
- Stockman Kast Ryan & Co. (Colorado).
Allan Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, said in a statement, “What makes Sorren stand out is the way these firms came together — with intention, shared values, and a commitment to staying deeply connected to their local markets. This group didn’t just merge for size; they united around a common purpose. It’s a blueprint for how innovative firms can grow, while staying true to who they are.”
The firms all have a strong focus on small and middle-market businesses and nonprofits that want a local firm feel and relationship, even if they need services across the country. As it adds new firms, Sorren will prioritizing those that are a fit with their current culture.
“If we go into another region, we want to start with leadership and good people; we’re not just randomly going out to try and find any firm that meets [a client need],” Tyree explained. “It really has to fit our culture and it has to have a leader in that area for us to go into that services.”
He also made the point that Sorren is still very much a work in progress — relying on current firm expertise to build national practices in tax, assurance, CAS and advisory.
“One goal when we originally started was we wanted to get to enough mass size that we could really start to build this by using leadership from and talent from all the firms that came on board,” Tyree said.
“It’s going to be super fun, but it’s a lot of work,” he added. “If all you’re looking to do is do a rollup or something like that, that’s probably not our style. We’re trying to create this for our type of client and our type of cultures. And we think there’s a little void there where we can do it.”
Donald Trump’s promise to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status prompted criticism Friday from a former Internal Revenue Service commissioner in the president’s first term, who said the process would take years and need a judge’s approval.
“The IRS will not allow itself to be weaponized,” former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News. Rettig, who oversaw the agency from 2018 to 2022, was asked to respond to Trump’s social media post early Friday that said: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”
Trump made the announcement after weeks of threatening a change to the school’s tax-exempt treatment, stepping up his attack on the Ivy League school.
Federal criminal law bars President Trump or the vice president from ordering the IRS to punish his political opponents or reward his allies. Rettig said the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration “closely monitors and investigates efforts to possibly influence IRS operations.”
The IRS cannot take any action on an organization’s tax-exempt status “without conducting an appropriate examination that would provide relevant information objectively supporting such an action,” Rettig said. “The IRS does not and should not conduct a ‘fishing expedition’ designed to hopefully uncover a relevant issue.”
Organizations also have administrative and judicial appeal rights that can take years to resolve before a federal judge approves a change in tax-exempt status, he said. “Throughout that process, there are many opportunities for resolution that would not result in the removal of the tax-exempt status of an organization,” he wrote.
Trump’s fight with Harvard escalated after it rejected his administration’s demands to reform campus policies to combat antisemitism and promote viewpoint diversity. The administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funding that supported projects including ALS and tuberculosis research.
On April 21, Harvard sued the U.S., claiming the funding freeze violated its free speech rights, and the government cannot dictate what it teaches, who it hires, and which students it admits.
In Trump’s second term, four people have held the IRS commissioner’s job on an acting basis.
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