How finance teams can overcome the accounting talent shortage

Finance teams all over the U.S. are reeling from the lack of working accountants in the market. They are leaving in droves, and the incoming number of accountants can’t make up the difference. 

Three-quarters of U.S. CPAs are headed for retirement in the near term. Bachelor’s degrees in accounting have been declining between 1-3% per year since 2015. And Bloomberg reports that the U.S. has 340,000 less accountants than 5 years ago. 

It’s not just the combination of a high retirement rate with low entry numbers. Established accountants are leaving the profession for a variety of reasons, including low salaries, limited career growth opportunities and an epidemic of burnout.

Long hours, manual processes, and repetitive tasks are a huge contributor to burnout. According to a recent report by FloQast, 85% of respondents had to reopen the books to fix errors in the last year and 81% said that closing the books “disrupted their personal lives” in the last year. 

There’s a lot to do to address the complex set of factors that are driving the accounting shortage. At PEX’s CFO Roundtable, Oren Geshuri, Senior Manager at Deloitte, shared his view on how to address accounting workforce issues:

“Upskilling is absolutely essential. The workforce is changing, and younger generations are prioritizing skill development and meaningful work. To retain talent, you need to provide opportunities for growth—whether that’s through training programs, apprenticeships, or clear career paths.

Automation also plays a role here. If you can automate repetitive tasks, you free up your team to focus on higher-value, strategic work. That kind of meaningful work is more fulfilling and helps with retention.”

Starting with addressing burnout may be one of the fastest ways forward. 

Reducing burnout with automation

Working upwards of 60-80 hours per week can definitely affect job satisfaction, personal relationships and overall mental health. Reducing overtime is one of the levers CFOs can pull to combat these issues. 

Automated tools for finance and accounting workflows drastically reduce the manual, repetitive tasks accountants perform. Expense management platforms like PEX eliminate manual work, reduce errors and increase visibility and spending control. 

3 ways PEX’s automation improves outcomes for finance teams 

Efficiency

Traditional accounting includes a lot of manual, repetitive work – like uploading and chasing receipts, manually tagging transactions with GL codes, importing spreadsheets into accounting software and managing approvals via email. 

PEX’s automation features transfer the manual burden from accountants to the PEX platform. Time-saving features include:

• Receipt capture enables employees to text, email, or upload receipts directly to PEX via their desktop computer or on-the-go with the PEX mobile app.
• AI-based receipt matching scans and matches receipts to the appropriate transaction in the platform.
• Auto tagger automatically applies GL codes to transaction records based on pre-programmed data.

By replacing a paper statement review process with PEX’s digital automations, Family in Christ Community Church replaced 5 hours of data input to 20 minutes of review (per month). And a PEX admin and G2 reviewer reported that the receipt capture feature of PEX “cut my receipt chasing by 95%!”

Accuracy

The manual work of accounting is not just time-consuming – it’s incredibly error-prone. If you’re tagging transactions one-by-one, you’re likely to miss one or assign a tag incorrectly. The same goes for receipt matching. And trying to manually configure a spreadsheet of expense data to upload to an accounting platform multiplies the opportunity for error.

By removing the cause of errors (manual input), the same automations in PEX that deliver massive time-savings also increase accuracy. 

• AI-based receipt matching uses machine learning to match uploaded receipts to card transactions. 
• Auto tagger allows admins to program GL Codes to specific merchants and merchant categories. With the work done upfront, PEX automatically tags transactions as they happen. 
• By standardizing formats and automating uploads, accounting integrations with QuickBooks or NetSuite the margin of error from expense-to-accounting data syncs.

“The integration with GreenSlate creates ease, accuracy, and visibility in reporting. PEX is easy to use and provides a high degree of control, which is rare in accounting software.”

Carl Vorwerk, Head of Production Finance at Wheelhouse Group

Visibility & Control

Manual accounting work usually involves a number of disparate systems – spreadsheets, accounting software, email, and Google Drive, to name a few. Disconnected systems leave finance teams with lots of data in different places. 

With PEX’s expense management platform, everything is in one centralized location. Admins can see a full picture of spending in real time. They can track spend by budget, project, location, merchant, and many more. 

“I like how everything is very transparent. You can see in real-time who is spending what and where it is going.” – Chelsea Williamson, Office Manager, KnightVest Management

Leveraging automation for expense management also allows for great control. Finance teams can create rules and workflows that happen automatically and prevent common problems from occurring.

With PEX, admins can toss the employee expense handbook in favor of an automated spending framework. Auto enforcer eliminates receipt chasing by blocking card usage until employees submit receipts. Advanced approval policies automates approvals by configuring the approver and level of approvals upfront. Custom spend rules prevent unapproved spending before it happens, restricting spending by merchant type, physical location, day of the week, or even cardholder group. 

“PEX offers us the ability to restrict company-wide spending to specific areas of purchases. This allows our employees to feel they have the freedom to purchase what they need.”  – Brenton H., G2 Reviewer

Attract accounting talent with PEX’s automation

With accountants in short supply, it’s critical to make your finance team an attractive place to work. Leveraging PEX’s suite of automated features reduces the workload of potential employees – the first step in reducing burnout in the field. 

With greater accuracy, staff are less worried about having to reopen the books. Automated controls let them stop being the bad guy, and centralized, real-time expense data makes it easy to track against budgets.

Want to learn how PEX’s expense management platform can help you automate your financial processes? Contact us today for a customized demo.