Ledge report reveals challenges in tech finance teams, with rapid headcount growth and increased reliance on skilled experts amid an accountant shortage.
According to Ledge, an automated finance operations operating system provider that recently published a report on the finance industry, finance teams at tech businesses are frequently compelled to inefficiently increase their workforce in order to handle the intense burden of their finance operations.
According to new benchmark data, the headcount of the finance team rises at a rate of 3.5 times as businesses move from the early to late stages of development. This is approximately 20% faster than the growth of the company’s total functions put together.
Even in the face of an unparalleled accountant scarcity, Ledge’s findings highlight the fact that digital companies are more reliant than ever on qualified finance experts to manually handle complicated and high-volume finance procedures.
The quantity of prospective CPAs is at its lowest point since records have been kept, and 87% of companies report that it is getting harder for them to locate the necessary accountants.
A variety of new methods to pay and be paid have been added to the traditional payment stack by the quick acceptance of digital payments, and at the same time, transaction volumes have increased dramatically. According to PwC, the number of cashless payments made worldwide has increased by 42%, and by 2025, it is predicted to rise even further—from 1 trillion to over 1.9 trillion transactions.
For finance teams at rapidly expanding companies, this revolution in the payments industry has presented insurmountable hurdles. These teams must manage enormous amounts of payments data that are dispersed throughout disparate silos using spreadsheets and manual procedures. Processing transactions takes up 40% of the time for finance teams, and 48% of them say that fragmented data is the biggest obstacle to them completing their books.
International businesses “still do not have the automated tools they need”
This strain is reflected in Ledge ‘s finding that finance teams expand 20% quicker than the rest of the organisation. Tech companies are forced to dedicate an increasing amount of staff to their finance operations in order to stay afloat due to the increased complexity and effort.
“While the digital payments space has seen considerable innovation, most finance systems and processes haven’t changed in decades,” said Tal Kirschenbaum, CEO and co-founder of Ledge.
In order to manage their finance and treasury operations, finance professionals still heavily rely on Excel, which they use to connect an incredibly disjointed stack of banks, PSPs, billing systems, databases, an ERP, and more.
“Elite financial experts working for top multinational corporations still do not have the automated tools they require to effectively report on even the most fundamental parameters, such as revenue and cash position.
Instead, as our research shows, these teams are compelled to add more employees through labor-intensive manual procedures, which significantly raises the possibility of costly audits, material losses, compliance problems, and other difficulties.
