Our Consulting Accountants Weigh in on the Most Important Accounting Topics this Year

At the end of last year, the popular accounting resource Accounting Today published an interview with 100 of accounting’s top minds where they asked the simple question, “What is the most important issue currently facing the accounting profession?” and recorded their responses. Their answers ranged across topics such as staffing shortages, independent audits, AI, financial reporting, private equity, and technological advancements. If you get a chance to read it, you should! There’s some great insight to glean. 
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Since we employ a vast network of consulting accountants across Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, we asked our consultants to do something similar. However, instead of having them focus on what’s important right now, we asked them to be more forward-thinking in their responses. We posed the question, “What will be the most important topics in accounting this year?” These were some of their responses: 

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Mike Bussing

Finding good quality help in a time of low supply! It's difficult times for any business owner these days. Finding an experienced and trustworthy employee or contractor to take over the books when your current accountant/bookkeeper retires or quits to take a better position elsewhere is rough. Can you trust this new person to not steal you blind? Do they have enough experience to do the work correctly and efficiently? These are all keeping business owners up at night.

Find out more about Mike >

Mark Emerson

Keeping staff and, more importantly, hiring staff. The numbers are getting too unbalanced. There are too few new accountants. We are entering a 'silver wave' of baby boomers retiring in the next few years. And pay is not keeping up for accounting staff. As a result, it is almost impossible at this point to find a CPA firm to do your year-end returns unless you move up-market and pay significantly more for a top-tier CPA firm. And the accounting staff that they do have are getting burned out because there is too much data to process – hence the celebration of AI to help automate a huge chunk of this! It's always in the back of my mind about the push/pull of AI/automation. Is it driven by lack of accounting professionals? Or is it driving more and more people to avoid the field in the first place? Regardless, AI/automation is allowing the field to sort of keep up with the declining numbers of accounting professionals.

Find out more about Mark >​

Quinn Finnigan

​The issues that seem to be driving people away from going into accounting, which include the fifth-year requirement to sit for the CPA exam and new industries competing for those who are graduating. These are acting as precipitating factors in what has been a 25-year trend in that direction. It will be interesting to see what movement is made by the AICPA on the 5-year requirement and what kinds of changes public accounting firms make to be more attractive to new grads.

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Scott Fowle

The accounting considerations around conducting business internationally continue to evolve as our world becomes more globally connected. I don’t see this trend slowing anytime soon, though domestic business growth still remains a top priority for most companies.

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Jason McGill

​Due to the ongoing accounting talent shortage, there continues to be a shift in industry. Many organizations now support cloud-based accounting systems and hybrid work arrangements are highly desired over 100% office-based roles. Additionally, with improvements in automation, today’s accountants are moving beyond bookkeeping to increase their analytical skill set to keep up with the demand for their services. I expect finding good talent to cost more, as the industry contends with losing skilled professionals to retirement and other industries such as tech, finance, and supply chain that respect the value they offer.

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Eric Moore

AI is all anyone can talk about right now, and with good reason. AI applications are being built into all the major accounting platforms to assist with all sorts of routine tasks and deliverables. At this point AI is inescapable so we need to figure out how to embrace it and leverage it.

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Joss Stokke

Post-pandemic recessionary concerns never really panned out and unemployment has remained low, so employers are having a hard time finding talent. There’s definitely a supply-demand issue but employers can still find top talent by being competitive on compensation and benefits.

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Randi Weinstein

​As a non-CPA in nonprofit, I see the accounting profession from a different perspective, that of the line accountant in the ‘employer’ trenches.  While most nonprofits have very visible statements and commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, I have not seen visible DEI statements in the local CPA firms. Those that do have statements have them buried so they are not easily accessed. Adding diversity, equity and inclusion to the profession would bring an influx of new talent.

Find out more about Randi >

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​If you need an accounting consultant’s help, please reach out to us! We offer domestic outsourced accounting services to organizations across the pacific northwest and beyond! Our team of consulting accountants can come alongside your company or nonprofit organization to provide as much or as little help as you need. Contact us to find out more about the types of accounting work we can do!