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Transform accounting’s busy season into an organizational asset

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For many accounting and finance teams, the fiscal year-end brings a cycle of intense workloads that can extend into the new year, as accountants and auditors work to close the books, address complex accounting issues, and manage escalating audit demands. This grueling “busy season” can also limit accountants’ ability to provide strategic insights to their organizations. 

Rising stakeholder expectations and a growing talent crisis due to seasonal burnout underscores the need for a shift in year-end audit preparations. By embracing forward-thinking practices, CFOs and accounting leaders can alleviate the pressure on their teams and turn busy season into an opportunity for innovation and value creation.

Reframing the year-end “inevitable”

Most companies wait until the fiscal year-end to tackle the more nuanced accounting issues, such as impairment analyses and revenue recognition adjustments, which adds stress to accountants’ already limited resources. Valuations, impairment analyses and documentation for M&A transactions are often squeezed into year-end, resulting in bottlenecks as companies compete for the same specialist resources. This surging demand, coupled with resource constraints at providers, drives up costs as specialists become increasingly scarce during this time period. 

The pressure of these time-sensitive requirements is a major contributor to the shortage of accounting professionals. These various pressures also frequently cause a company’s accounting and finance function to be overburdened for the first couple months of the year and unable to shift their focus to strategic annual planning until the first quarter is nearly over. To prevent this reactive cycle, the time to shift to more strategic audit preparation is now. 

A successful audit cycle starts with sound project management. Companies should assign a dedicated in-house point person or qualified advisor to oversee the audit process. This person should prioritize the prepared-by-client list from the auditors and critical items such as impairments, recording M&A transactions, going concern analyses and other complex accounting in relation to restructuring debt and equity financing arrangements. Taking a proactive, methodical approach to the audit cycle will help streamline the process during busy season. 

Embracing AI and automation for a strategic shift

Implementing new tools and technologies can elevate the abilities of the accounting and finance team during and beyond busy season. Other professions have managed to modernize and streamline their workflows, but the office of the CFO has often been more hesitant to adopt technologies that could alleviate the demands of busy season. The rise of automated and AI-enabled technologies presents new opportunities to streamline the audit cycle. Process improvements and AI-powered tools can potentially manage intensive data-crunching tasks and free up accountants’ time to focus on interpreting results, responding to auditor’s priorities, and building more strategic relationships with their stakeholders.

For example, AI has the potential to identify data anomalies in financial performance before they arise, reducing the last-minute rush and helping accounting teams manage their workflow more effectively. Automation can help ensure audit-related tasks are completed earlier, allowing teams to bring greater focus to more complex issues with greater strategic importance. AI can revolutionize the accounting profession and reduce pressures during busy season by enhancing efficiency and risk mitigation through its automation and real-time insights.

As AI becomes increasingly integral to audit and accounting, however, professionals must navigate and proactively manage the related risks. To mitigate these risks, accounting teams should integrate AI tools thoughtfully, ensuring both human oversight and robust governance. Companies must implement strict policies for AI development, testing and changes, focusing on the financial reporting impacts. Continuous monitoring, audit trails and segregation of duties are crucial to maintaining transparency and preventing errors. For example, AI systems that automate journal entries should have controls in place to verify the accuracy of the entries and detect any anomalies. 

Reclaiming value: the accountant as strategic advisor

In the current cyclical model, many accountants spend the first quarter of the new year working solely on the previous year, limiting their ability to provide their organizations with meaningful strategic insights. Alleviating pressure during busy season can allow accountants to play a larger role in providing forward-looking insights that help guide business strategy. This shift would not only elevate the responsibility of the profession but also help address some of the burnout issues that have exacerbated the current talent gap. 

Moving away from reactive year-end cycles is essential for the long-term growth of the accounting profession. Embracing automation, ensuring continuous audit readiness, and positioning accountants as strategic advisors can help move busy season from a yearly hurdle to a time for growth and impact. By planning ahead and leveraging new technologies, leaders can strengthen their organization’s future by bringing efficiency and strategic insight to the year-end audit process. 

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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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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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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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