Insights & Resources
Thinking on modern finance
Strategy, systems, and operations for companies in the messy middle of scale.
Your CPA Firm Just Sold to Private Equity
Eighty percent of US accounting firms plan to raise prices in 2026, and PE platforms keep acquiring the firms above them. Your engagement letter is where both arrive.
Software Bills Just Became Utility Bills
AI-driven usage pricing turned SaaS contracts into metered invoices. Finance teams accruing as if it's fixed cost are getting surprised at month-end.
When the Board Asks Why the Forecast Moved
The new FP&A tools generate your forecast on their own, but not the explanation the board asks for first.
Your AI Finance Pilot Has No Owner After Launch
Eighty-nine percent of AI agent pilots never graduate to production. The reason isn't the model. It's that nobody budgeted for the person who runs the agent after the project ends.
States Just Caught Up With Your 2021 Remote Hires
Five years after the remote-hire wave, states are matching W-2 data against corporate registrations. Companies that didn't register where they hired are getting back-tax letters with multi-year lookbacks.
Vendor Surcharges Just Repriced Your Card Float
Growing companies built card-pay vendor strategies on float and rewards. With surcharging now standard at 22 to 35% of small business vendors in 2026, the math on those programs needs a rebuild.
Your D&O Renewal Now Reads Like a Lender Review
Private-company D&O capacity is abundant in 2026 but underwriters are running renewals like lender reviews. The discriminator on rate is documentation, not loss history.
Your AP Controls Were Built For Reversible Payments
FedNow and RTP transactions settle final at the receiving bank. The AP approval workflow most growing companies use was designed around an ACH reversal window that doesn't exist on these rails.
Your Controller Backfill Plan Is Six Months Behind
Controllers are the hardest finance role to recruit for in 2026, three years running. The CPA pipeline numbers explain why. The replacement line in your operating plan needs a rewrite.
Your AI Bookkeeper Has Admin Access You Can't Audit
Most AI bookkeeping tools run under full QBO admin and don't ship an exportable audit log. The first reviewer who asks how an entry got posted will surface the gap.
Your Customer Just Asked to Pay an Invoice in USDC
Post-GENIUS Act, stablecoin payment rails are built into Stripe, Mercury, and most major banks. Your customers are starting to ask. Saying yes without controls creates a reconciliation problem you don't see until Q3.
Your SaaS Renewal Has an AI Tax Built In
Vendors are retiring legacy SKUs at renewal and migrating customers onto AI-inclusive tiers running 20-37% higher. Most growing companies accept the increase as a price update.
Your Cyber Insurance Carrier Wants Receipts Now
S&P forecasts another 15-20% cyber premium increase in 2026. Carriers want documented controls. Companies that send screenshots renew at the lower end. Companies that send 'yes' on the form get repriced.
Your Section 174 Refund Window Closes July 6
OBBBA's fix to Section 174 lets eligible small businesses amend 2022-2024 returns for cash refunds. The deadline is the earlier of July 6, 2026 or the standard statute. Most companies haven't filed.
Your NRR Hides What Your GRR Reveals
The median growing SaaS company posts NRR over 100% and quietly loses nine of every hundred customer dollars each year. As expansion compresses, that gap stops hiding.
Your AP Controls Were Built for Human-Speed Fraud
Attackers are using AI to alter banking details on invoice PDFs in transit. The controls most growing companies have were designed for a slower threat.
Most of Your Vendor Spend Belongs on a Card
Virtual card rebates give 1 to 2% back on AP that already moves through your books. At $300K a month, that's roughly $40K a year.
The Private Credit Squeeze Is Already in Your Bank's Risk Memo
Q1 2026 brought $20.8B in redemption requests at private credit funds. Even if you don't borrow from one, your next renewal has a different tone.
Your Hiring Plan Doesn't Match Your Cash Plan
Comp variance compounds fast. When the hiring plan lives in one file and the cash plan lives in another, you find out at year-end.
The AI Tools Your Team Bought Without Telling You
Per-employee software spend crossed $10,000 this year, mostly from AI tools layered on top of existing tools, charged on cards finance never reviews.
Your AR Aging Report Is Already Too Late
By the time a customer appears on your 30-day aging, you've already lost 30 days of collection runway. New tooling moves the signal upstream.
Your Credit Covenants Were Written When Margins Were Different
Input costs and tariffs have been compressing EBITDA for two quarters. Quarterly covenant tests haven't caught up yet. Q2 will.
Your Payment Terms Are a Financing Decision
Every Net-60 deal transfers cash from your balance sheet to your customer's. Most growing companies don't price that transfer, and at scale the cost adds up fast.
Your Forecast Has No Triggers
Most growing companies update their forecast quarterly. Almost none define when the forecast should change an operating decision.
When Your EBITDA Lies to Your Banker
For working-capital-intensive businesses, EBITDA compresses as you grow. In a tighter credit market, lenders stop adjusting for that.
When Your Best Customer Hurts Your Credit
Revenue concentration above 20% in a single customer stops a bank line cold. Most founders find this out mid-conversation.
The Tariff Pre-Buy Has a Break-Even
Pulling inventory forward to beat tariffs looked smart on a napkin. The full accounting is more complicated.
Banks Lend to Companies That Don't Need the Money
Most founders approach a bank at exactly the wrong moment. Building a banking relationship is a two-year project, not a two-week one.
Your Budget Assumed Stable Input Costs
When tariffs hit mid-year, most companies find out their cost model is broken three months too late.
Your Cash Balance Is Earning What Your Bank Decides
Most growing companies have $500K–$2M sitting in an operating account at near-zero yield. The fix is a two-hour setup, and the math is not trivial.
Your Gross Margin Is Probably Overstated
Most growing companies have 5-10 gross margin points sitting in the wrong expense bucket. It's not an accounting error. It's a classification habit that no one has revisited since the company was smaller.
Rule of 40 Is the Wrong Benchmark
Most founders are still optimizing for a metric that doesn't predict valuation. There's a better one.
Most Companies Build a Budget. Almost None of Them Use It.
A budget is a guess. A variance process is what turns that guess into a management tool. Most growing companies have one and skip the other.
Supplier Terms Are Free Working Capital
Most growing companies treat accounts payable as administrative. The ones that don't are funding growth without taking on debt.
Your Cash Forecast Is Built on Due Dates
New data shows AI can cut cash flow uncertainty from 68% to 17%. Most companies that don't see those results aren't missing a tool. They're missing the right inputs.
Capital Efficiency Isn't Austerity
Three years of 'do more with less' has left founders conflating cost-cutting with efficiency. New data from actual company books says the two aren't the same.
The Evidence You Can't Build in Eight Weeks
Only 20% of 2022 seed-stage companies have reached Series A. Institutional investors now require metrics that take 12-18 months to build. Most founders start assembling them two months before a raise.
Your Monthly Close Is Already Six Weeks Late
Most growing companies finish their monthly close by day 10-15. By the time leadership reviews the numbers, they're making decisions on data that's 45 days old. That gap has a cost.
The Finance AI Dividend Is in Your AP Queue
Founders shopping for AI forecasting tools often have a more immediate problem: their AP process is consuming 30-40% of their finance team's capacity on exceptions, duplicates, and manual reconciliation.
Burn Multiple Is an Operating Metric
Investors are using burn multiple as a threshold before they'll take a Series A meeting. Most growing companies don't track it until they're already eight weeks out from raising.
When Your Revenue Number Is Wrong
A lot of growing companies are booking revenue incorrectly. It doesn't matter until it suddenly does.
The Cash Visibility Gap
New data puts a number on what operators already feel: companies that know their cash position accurately make better decisions than those that don't. The gap is bigger than you'd expect.
The Offer in Your Dashboard
Shopify, Square, and a dozen other platforms will lend you money in three clicks. That convenience is engineered, and it costs something.
Your Finance Team Is the Integration Layer
When finance systems don't talk to each other, a person fills the gap. That's why finance headcount scales faster than it should.
What Mastercard's 'Virtual CFO' Gets Right
Mastercard just launched an AI CFO product for small businesses. Here's what it actually does, where it stops short, and how to use both well.
Cash Flow Monitoring Is Becoming a Bank Feature. Now What?
Mastercard just announced a virtual CFO product for small businesses. What it chose to build first reveals a lot about where finance value is heading.
The Finance AI Problem Isn't Access. It's Implementation.
Every growing company can now buy AI-assisted cash flow forecasting and anomaly detection. Most don't get value from it. The bottleneck was never the technology.
Your Annual Budget Is Already Wrong
Q1 is almost over. If your January budget still matches reality, you either got lucky or you didn't plan precisely enough to notice.
Your AI Tools Are Already Making Decisions. Do You Know Which Ones?
Most growing companies adopt AI tools faster than they build controls around them. Here's the governance framework we use before anything touches a client's financial data.
Why Growing Companies Overpay for Bad Financial Data
Bad financial data doesn't just slow you down — it actively costs you money in ways most founders never quantify.
Cash Flow Isn't a Report — It's an Operating Discipline
Most companies treat cash flow as a backward-looking statement. The best operators treat it as a forward-looking management tool.
When Is the Right Time to Hire a Fractional CFO?
Most companies wait too long. Here's how to know when you've outgrown basic bookkeeping and need strategic finance leadership.
How AI Is Changing Finance Operations (And What to Do About It)
AI isn't replacing finance teams — it's making them dramatically more efficient. Here's what modern finance workflows actually look like.
The Finance Operations Playbook for Companies Scaling Past $5M
Your finance processes that worked at $1M won't survive at $5M. Here's the operational playbook for the messy middle of scale.
AI Won't Replace Your CFO — But It Will Redefine the Role
AI is transforming what finance teams can do. But the companies betting on AI to replace judgment are making a costly mistake.
What a Modern Finance Stack Actually Looks Like in 2026
Not a vendor listicle. A strategic architecture for the tools and integrations that power best-in-class finance at $3M-$20M companies.
The Case for an Outsourced Finance Team
Building an in-house finance team too early is one of the most expensive mistakes growing companies make. There's a better model.
The Fractional Model: Why the Best Finance Talent Doesn't Want Your Full-Time Job
The top finance operators are choosing fractional work — and that's great news for growing companies that can't compete for full-time hires.