Adam Larson: 00:29

Welcome to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson, and today we're diving deep into one of the most persistent challenges accounting and finance professionals face, the month end close process. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by endless spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, or hunting down missing accruals and prepaids, this episode is for you. Joining me today is David Buchanan, a product leader at FinQuery who brings not only a wealth of experience from the audit world, but also expert insight from the forefront of accounting automation. Together, we'll break down why the month end close can feel like a chaotic scramble, how legacy processes can leave teams stuck with stale data, and real risk of missing key expenses.

Adam Larson: 01:10

More importantly, we'll explore how AI and automation are changing the game, moving teams from the last to know to being proactive partners in the business. So if you're looking for practical tips on streamlining your close, strengthening internal controls, and making a shift from manual to modern, stick around. Let's get started. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Excited to have you here and excited to talk about financial close and processes that our accountants and finance professionals can work better and do better.

Adam Larson: 01:44

And I the way I wanted to start the conversation is is, you know, walk me back to when you first started seeing the financial close process up up close. You know, because when you just get into accounting, sometimes you get little parts and little bits of it. And then, you know, what did that monthly grind actually look like for accounting teams? And what made you think, hey, there's a better way to do this?

David Buchanan: 02:02

Yeah. Absolutely. And thanks, Adam. It's good to join you today. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about accounting.

David Buchanan: 02:09

So, yeah, as far as the month end grind and everything that you mentioned there, you know, I'm a former auditor. I was an auditor at E and I for some years, and I think my first exposure to the financial close process really came from that. Right? We would walk through the process itself, map out entire close cycles for certain accounts. I was involved in receivables, cap software, debt, fixed assets, and some others.

David Buchanan: 02:38

And, you know, really, what you start to see is the traditional month end close is really really defined by, like, a chaotic scramble. Right? We're trying to capture the financial activity that occurred weeks prior. So that grind really begins with, like, data collection, for example. Right?

David Buchanan: 02:56

We're, like, relying on email threads, trying to find certain emails, you know, manual ERP exports where there's, you know, a risk of omission. And then also reconciliation. That's a big one. Right? The you know, mapping the GL to certain statements in Excel, flagging discrepancies always results in slower close cycles and also things like period cutoff.

David Buchanan: 03:19

Let's make sure that transactions are dated correctly and, you know, supported by appropriate documentation. So the reality when you dive into it is that the process tends to be, you know, far from disciplined. Right? And teams are frequently facing bottlenecks, you know, waiting for that external data to finalize things, and for a lot of people, the realization is there has to be a better way. Right?

David Buchanan: 03:43

Because we tend to, you know, these obstacles are recurring and they're systemic. So even a typical manual close can, you know, last more than ten business days, right? And that leaves executive leadership, you know, relying on stale data. Right? That that should be used for strategic planning earlier.

David Buchanan: 04:02

So kind of being in that audit environment and seeing that up close is where I really started to see there has to be a better way to do that.

Adam Larson: 04:10

Yeah. There has to be. And and when you think about the close, a lot of times, things that kind of get hung up are things like accruals and prepaids. You know, what does that process look like for most people, you know, when they're when they're really honest about what that looks like? Because, you know, I I it's it's probably a thorn in some folks' side.

David Buchanan: 04:27

Yeah. Absolutely. Accruals and prepaids are is a big one. Right? Not not super technical accounting.

David Buchanan: 04:34

Right? It's not like, you know, other areas of accounting, but it can be very tedious and can really drag out close. Right? That's a good question. I mean, I think starting with prepaid expenses, you know, what does that process typically look like?

David Buchanan: 04:48

Right? Typically, organizations are waiting for those invoices to come in through the door through their AP process, and at that point, the AP clerk codes that to the prepaid asset account. And at that point, we know, okay. We have a prepaid asset. And then, you know, what we've seen is typically at the end of the month during financial close, that's when you have a staff or a senior accountant pick up all those invoices that were coded to prepaids.

David Buchanan: 05:15

And then they have to manually open up their large prepaid Excel workbook with tons of tabs and rows and sort of type in the invoice number and vendor and, you know, like, you know, create the calculation to set up straight line amortization. Like, again, this is not complicated accounting per se, but it's tedious to maintain that workbook, especially if it's large, especially if you have an acquisition and you're taking more prepaids on the books. And, you know, in in today's day and age, there's a lot of SaaS agreements out there. Right? And those SaaS agreements tend to be prepaid arrangements.

David Buchanan: 05:48

So it's very easy. My point is, like, it's very easy for that workbook to kinda balloon, you know, very quickly, and and that becomes something difficult to maintain. Some some other things that come to mind related to prepaids is, you know, even if you set up a recurring journal entry in your ERP, you gotta reconcile that back to your workbook, and if there's any variances, you have to deal with that. And, you know, oftentimes invoices come in late. That's very common.

David Buchanan: 06:14

Right? Prepaid invoices come in late, and that necessitates a catch up entry. Right? Someone has to calculate a catch up entry. Hey, we weren't expecting this.

David Buchanan: 06:24

Let's catch up expense and set up the remaining amortization moving forward. Another thing that comes to mind is sometimes the AP team is not as familiar with what is a prepaid and what is not a prepaid. Right? Mhmm. So they might just see that invoice and code that entire thing to expense, and they're sort of miscategorizing that spend and taking all the expense at once.

David Buchanan: 06:53

And, typically, you don't find that until, like, the last day of close in your flex analysis, and then you have to go in and do a manual reclass and set up amortization for that. So there's just a lot here that can slow down close. And, you know, it's 2026. There's better things that we can be doing with our time than Yeah. Taking care of prepaid expenses.

David Buchanan: 07:13

Right? You also asked about accruals, Adam. And on the accrual side, that tends to be a little bit more complex in the sense that, you know, we're on the hook to make sure that expense is recorded as it's incurred in the business even if we haven't made that payment yet. So from the prepaid standpoint, we get an invoice as the trigger. Okay.

David Buchanan: 07:35

Let's do some accounting. From the accrual standpoint, where there is no trigger. Right? So that's difficult because we need to go figure out, okay, you know, what was contracted in the business this month? What was signed in the business?

David Buchanan: 07:50

What spend was initiated? Otherwise, we don't find out until months later when the late invoice comes in or the in arrears invoice comes in, we realize, man, we need to book a huge catch up for this. Not fun to escalate that. Right? So that tends to be some of the when you talk about the process, that that that's what we've typically seen become very time consuming for both prepaids and accruals.

Adam Larson: 08:13

Yeah. Well, with accruals, sometimes the only way you can see what it's for is some note, like somebody's note in a spreadsheet somewhere locked away in in one of those tabs of those spread those massive spreadsheets you were talking about. And then having to hunt that down can be a huge headache for especially when your month end close, you're trying to close the books and you said it can take up to ten days. You're ten days into the next month where you're supposed to be already doing your next month's work.

David Buchanan: 08:37

Right. Exactly. Absolutely. There there has to be a better way.

Adam Larson: 08:41

There has to be a better way. And then you just mentioned, you know, especially when something like an accrual kind of slips through, you know, then that can be on the onus on the organization trying to catch up or trying to put money where they didn't weren't planning for, and then suddenly, some of other books are put off where you can't pay other bills, and so it just it can balloon to this huge thing.

David Buchanan: 09:00

Absolutely. Yeah, really. I mean, there's a lot of, like, consequences to missing accruals, right? I think you mentioned some of them. And thinking about, we've studied, at Fincor, we've studied this process a lot, especially in the past months, related to prepaid expenses, accrued expenses, and we found that companies handle this hunt for missing accruals different ways.

Adam Larson: 09:23

Okay.

David Buchanan: 09:24

So, yeah, so what what we've seen out there is, like, you know, sometimes they'll do, like, a manual reconciliation during financial close where they have, like, okay. Here's all my open POs, all my open purchase orders. Here's all my AP transactions and invoices that came through the door, and sort of literally doing like a v lookup in Excel to figure out, okay. This one matches. This one matches.

David Buchanan: 09:49

Okay. These five were missing, and now we need to book an accrual for that. Right? But that typically involves, you know, involving IT, data. It's just a lot of work, you know, a lot of headache to do that during during close, especially.

David Buchanan: 10:07

Another way that folks, like, try to look for that is some will even extend their close. Right? So they'll add, like, a few days to close in hopes that, hey, if we just add a few days, hopefully these late invoices will come in, right, in in the days that we've extended, and we can book according to actuals, but, like, nobody wants to do that. Right? Nobody wants to extend close.

David Buchanan: 10:29

Super stressful time. Like, we wanna be done and go home. Right? So that's another thing that we've seen out there. I would say probably the last way that folks handle handle this that I've seen a lot of is is relying on that flux analysis.

David Buchanan: 10:45

Right? That expense trend analysis, and that's typically done on the last day of close where we're sort of like, okay, what is expense this month? We're comparing that to the prior month. If it's way less than the prior month, then we realize, hey, we probably missed an accrual here, right? We're probably missing expense.

David Buchanan: 11:03

And we talked to someone, Adam, who found a very large missing accrual through that process that would've caused them to break their debt covenant, actually. Yeah. Which is crazy. I mean, you do not wanna break your debt covenant, right? So, yeah, there's a lot of consequences to that, and, you know, if we're solely relying on, like, a manual flux analysis as some backstop control, it's, you know, we're not gonna find everything.

David Buchanan: 11:29

You know, it's not that reliable. And, you know, thinking more of some of the consequences that you mentioned, right, like, those large catch up entries, not good. Right? Not good for forecasting, not good for budgeting, planning, strategic decision making. And then, you know, from an audit standpoint, one of the procedures that auditors need to do is is something called the search for unrecorded liabilities.

David Buchanan: 11:53

Right? That's like a foundational audit procedure where they're like, okay. We're looking at year end or quarter end, and I'm gonna look at all of the subsequent disbursements. And look at all the cash payments in the next month, and determine, are these cash payments related to a product or service that was actually used in the prior month, and I should have recorded an accrual for that. Right?

David Buchanan: 12:16

So those sort of, like, cutoff procedures. And, you know, I remember doing that as an auditor, and, you know, a lot of the times things are missed, right? And so even, you know, I'm thinking of a statistic like the Center for Audit Quality found that about 30% of restatement announcements are from the wrong accounting for accruals, reserves, and estimates. Those are cited, you know, most frequently. So this is a very sort of common thing.

David Buchanan: 12:46

And, ultimately, a restatement is a consequence we don't wanna deal with financially or toward our reputation. So, anyways, there's a lot there. Right? There's a lot there that we don't wanna get into.

Adam Larson: 12:58

Yeah. For sure. Well, and then thinking about prepaids, you mentioned a lot of stuff about prepaids, But when you and I were first chatting before this conversation, you had mentioned, you know, a lot of times accounting is the last to down. And Right. And I think people who are listening to this conversation would resonate with that.

Adam Larson: 13:15

You know? And maybe help me understand kind of what does it look like, you know, when you think you've gotten things under control and then something like catches you off guard because, by the way, by the way, we prepaid this in like, wait, wait, wait, what? You know?

David Buchanan: 13:27

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We see that all the time.

Adam Larson: 13:33

Yeah.

David Buchanan: 13:33

At FinQuery, we we deal with lease accounting automation, accruals and prepaids, fixed assets, debt, and it I would say it's across the board. Right? This is like a common thing. Like, accounting is always the last to know. Unfortunately, a lot of that comes from, you know, like, think about a contract that is signed in the business, accounting is not really looped in.

David Buchanan: 13:57

Right? It's sort of like, yeah. Someone, like, marketing signs a contract, they need a SaaS arrangement or whatever. Maybe they involve legal, red line the contract a little bit, right, involve IT, but then that contract gets parked away in a shared drive somewhere unbeknownst to accounting. Right?

David Buchanan: 14:13

Mhmm. And that's true with new spend, with amendments to existing leases, or, you know, whatever it is, and then, as accountants, we get this invoice come through AP a few months later, and it's like, we throw up our hands, and it's like, No one told us about this. How are we supposed to account for this? Now we need to book a big catch up, or we need to, you know, open our books and change something, true up something. So, it's certainly a common theme that we find amongst accountants, that sort of catches them off guard.

Adam Larson: 14:41

Well, then somebody said, we'll say, oh, well, you know, put all our spreadsheets on PowerPoint. You know, Version Control's all taken care of. We don't have to worry about that. We can share everything because everything's in SharePoint, you know, or whatever cloud service you're using to share your spreadsheets. You know, what what is your response to that kind of an approach?

David Buchanan: 14:59

Yeah. Look. I mean yeah. When we're talking about, like, version control software, you know, you're still using Excel. You're just parking it in a place that you can see, you know, who made changes to that.

David Buchanan: 15:14

So it's sort of like a sturdier shelf, but you still have, like, a broken product in a sense. Right? And that's, you know, we all love Excel as accountants. I don't wanna, you know, Excel is extremely flexible, but you're trading flexibility for a lot of risk. Right?

David Buchanan: 15:29

With Excel, there's like a lot of risk for human error. There's a lot of risk because there's not an immutable audit trail. Like, I could get everything perfect, and someone comes behind and fat fingers something or adds a row and messes up my formula, breaks something. Right? And and, again, it's not a standardized systemic process at that point.

David Buchanan: 15:51

It's flexible, but but it introduces a lot of risk, which tends to issue in weaker con internal controls. Right? More human error. So even with that version control, that version control is not automating accounting processes. Right?

David Buchanan: 16:06

It's just sort of some cloud storage and and some, you know, solid solid versioning there, but we really wanna drive at how can we improve and automate the accounting process itself so that we're not reactive, we're proactive. Right?

Adam Larson: 16:22

That you know, that's that's hugely important. And we've been spending a lot of time talking about the problem. And I think everybody's listening to this conversation is like, yeah. We know the problem. So let's Right.

Adam Larson: 16:30

Maybe talk about some solutions because, you know, things like AI and automation have really kind of changed the equation when it comes to these manual processes. So maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, what it looks like when a team moves from that manual to from that reactive to the proactive kinda system driven processes for these things we've been discussing.

David Buchanan: 16:49

Yeah, absolutely. Good question. I mean, we live in an exciting time, right? AI, agentic, automation, really transforms the close process and moves us closer to a zero day close, right? That is like, that that's the gold standard.

David Buchanan: 17:02

That's what we wanna get to. Right? Sort of continuous close, a zero day close. And and leveraging AI, you know, sort of changes us from reactive and historical record keeping to proactive, real time insights, right, to drive the business. You know, harkening back to that phrase we just talked about, Adam, about accounting is the last to know, I'm just, you know, thinking about that, like, system driven AI changes that, and the way that it changes that, like, I'm thinking of an example with us at FinQuery.

David Buchanan: 17:35

We recently released a, what we call our global inbox feature. Okay? So Okay. The idea is, like we talked about, anytime spend is initiated in the in the business, right, that contract is being sent to legal or to IT. If you just cc FinQuery in that byline, it gets sent to us.

David Buchanan: 17:55

Right? And AI gets to work setting up this record. So now accounting is aware of this spend from the outset. Right? And it's like, this is a place where we can set up expected payments, expected expense schedules, account numbers, allocations, you know, renewal alerts, things like this that are are helping us be proactive, Right?

David Buchanan: 18:21

Instead of realizing that we have this new spend when that first invoice comes in with zero context. Right? So sort of kind of catching it proactively at the front end. We've also introduced something called auto payment reconciliation, where it's like, hey, now that we have our contracts in the system, we know what we're expected to pay. So there's not Yeah.

David Buchanan: 18:45

That sort of eliminates, like, the hunt for those missing accruals. Right? We're not, like, manually matching that. It's like, hey, the system lets you know. It flags, hey, you're expecting these payments, and then the system can sort of match what's expected against what actually came in, and can true up your expense schedules, reconcile those variances.

David Buchanan: 19:08

And for things that didn't come in, quickly defer it to the next month. Right? And an accrual is booked. And once it comes in, it's trued up, and there's an audit trail. So these are ways that we can sort of pivot from being very reactive to very proactive.

David Buchanan: 19:26

Right? Catching things at the front end and using AI to automatically match what's expected versus what actually came in, reconciling those variances, recording accruals for what's missing to help us out during financial

Adam Larson: 19:40

And that all sounds sounds amazing, but what is that, you know, what does that transition look like? Because, you know, if you're if you're used to it one way, and accounting and finance professionals are wonderful people, but we can be very set in our way sometimes. And so, you know, what does that look like as you're as because, you know, you you've worked with a lot of teams making that transition. What does that look like for them?

David Buchanan: 20:03

Yeah. And yeah. Another another great question. I mean, you know, yeah, we're we're used to our processes. We like our processes.

David Buchanan: 20:10

Right? But I would argue the process is the way it is because there was not a better system that was Right?

Adam Larson: 20:19

Sure.

David Buchanan: 20:19

So, when you think about that, like, reversing, I've been thinking about reversing journal entries, for example, for accruals, right, where, okay. We realize something what is missing. We book a reversing entry, you know, but there there's some issues with that. Right? Which is, like, it's very difficult difficult to tell if I'm looking at a whole listing of reversing journal entries.

David Buchanan: 20:43

Like, it's hard to tell what came in, what's still outstanding, what the true up was. Right? Because it's sort of buried in in reversing journal entries versus a system that but there's a schedule that lays out for you. Here's the actual that came in. Here's what we hit expense with.

David Buchanan: 21:02

Oh, it didn't come in, so we deferred it and and recorded an accrual. Right? That sort of tells the story of what happened instead of that being buried in an ERP as reversing journal entry. So that's an example of a of a very common process that there wasn't really a system to handle that a different way before. Right?

David Buchanan: 21:21

Now, but AI sort of opens up the door where we can have more control and we can be more proactive and we can tell the story better and it's easier to audit and it's easier to see what's come in versus what hasn't come in and our variances moving forward. So my advice, Adam, would be, you know, in the in this, you know, agentic age, if you will, is is to kinda state take stock of what are our our our processes today? Do we find ourselves being surprised? Where it's like, the invoice comes in again, on the last note, I wasn't aware of this. Does that happen often?

David Buchanan: 21:59

Are we booking catch ups often? Sort of pinpointing those pain points in the process, and then taking a look at some automation, even through software. Right? That that can help us sort of take care of these very common pain points. Maybe before we didn't realize that there was an option out there, but there is options out there.

David Buchanan: 22:17

Right? That helps to automate these processes and get us past past this and closer to a zero day close.

Adam Larson: 22:23

Yeah. I I I like that approach of, you know, just because it's the process we've always done doesn't mean it's the best process. And, also, it was the process because there was nothing better at the time. And when you take that mindset, it kind of it kind of outweighs the, oh, this is all the way we've always done it. Well, it's the way we've always done it because there was nothing better.

Adam Larson: 22:42

So let's find something better so that we can do this better.

David Buchanan: 22:46

Exactly. Exactly. I'm I'm thinking of one, you know, I've I've been talking to a lot of customers lately, like you've mentioned, and, you know, one one use case that they always bring up is, you know, I I have something that I prepaid. It's on my prepaid schedule, and it falls off my schedule. I try to find out from the business if it's gonna be renewed.

David Buchanan: 23:09

This is very common. Right? I'm trying to find out, hey. Is this thing gonna be renewed or not? And maybe, you know, they don't get back to me in time, or they tell me, yes.

David Buchanan: 23:17

It'll be renewed and it wasn't or vice versa. So I think we're done with this contract. So it falls off my schedule, and then I'm surprised when that late invoice comes in. Or the flip is the the flip side is is true too. Right?

David Buchanan: 23:30

Like, they tell me, yes. We're renewing this contract at this amount. And then what they don't tell me is that actually, it fell through in negotiation and we didn't end up, you know, going for that. So now I need to sort of reverse the accrual that I set up. Right?

David Buchanan: 23:46

So so these sort of, like, renewal accruals is is very common. And before, again, there wasn't a great way to handle that. But with software, you can have renewal alerts. You can set up expected spend. You can automatically reverse things that fell through.

David Buchanan: 24:01

Right? So there's a better way to handle a lot of these common pain points in these cycles.

Adam Larson: 24:06

And what does that look like when you're trying to improve your internal control, have clean audit trails? Because I can imagine if you're having these processes in place and being able to, like, have these alerts, I'm sure that it can help your internal controls as well.

David Buchanan: 24:18

Absolutely. Yeah. And I would say that's, like, that's the thing we're driving at. Right? Like, we want to improve internal controls so that we have, you know, completeness and accuracy, and we want efficiency.

David Buchanan: 24:31

Right? We wanna be done with closes as soon as possible. So Yeah. If you're working from a central source of truth, right, a sort of centralized repository for your prepaid expenses, accrued expenses with that audit trail where even the auditor can jump in, have read only access. They can pull everything they need for their testing so that you're not stuck trying to provide the auditor with the documents for their sampling and testing, which we know, like, is is is rough during audit time.

David Buchanan: 25:03

Like, this improves internal controls. This quickens our processes moving forward and gets us done faster. Right? So it's it's it's very much worth investing in in in a new process like

Adam Larson: 25:14

There's, you know, there's a term you mentioned, Jen, just a few minutes ago, the zero day close. And I've had different folks who represent ERP systems who are or connected to, like, and they also say, like, you know, hey. We our goal is a zero day close. And I think the question I like to ask most is, like, is that even possible? Like, it's a it's a great in theory, but is it even possible to do a zero day close, especially, you know, AI systems aren't do you still need human intervention in there?

Adam Larson: 25:40

And, you know, you can get that you can bring that down greatly, but is it is it possible to a zero day close?

David Buchanan: 25:46

Yeah. I think that that's what we're gonna find out, you know, and and that's what we're we're, like, approaching that. Right? Like, that that is what this automation is bringing us toward, is a zero day close, where the close is less, you know, these, like, intense ten days, and we're sort of moving with AgenTic, with AI. We're moving a lot of the tasks into the month.

David Buchanan: 26:12

Continuous. We're doing continuous reconciliation. Right? Yeah. And all of that is documented, and it's there in an audit trail.

David Buchanan: 26:19

So I would say absolutely, yes, it's possible, and that is where we're headed. And that is, you know, at FinQuery, that's where we're headed. That's what we're building our automation toward with that in mind, because AI unlocks a lot of amazing possibilities in this arena, and of course, there still needs to be humans in the loop at certain, you know, points in the process, of course, but, you know, we're we're greatly reducing the time to close there.

Adam Larson: 26:47

Yeah. And some people would even call that like that, like, a continuous account or continuous close where you're constantly Right. You're closing almost every night because everything is up to date, and the only way we can do that is with automation and and those tools helping us out because otherwise, you know, it's not humanly possible to almost do that sometime.

David Buchanan: 27:03

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely agree. Yeah. The the possibilities are are amazing with what we're seeing coming out recently.

Adam Larson: 27:11

Yeah. It's it's it's definitely an exciting time. You know, so maybe somebody's been listening to this conversation and they're saying, okay. I'm in the grind. You know, we're we're doing some we're doing some automations.

Adam Larson: 27:20

You know, we're kind of getting there, but we're not quite there yet. And, you know, maybe maybe you can kinda give them some advice. Like, hey. Tomorrow tomorrow, this is the first step I'm gonna take so that I can start on this journey to do to to, like, have our operations work better in our finance and accounting teams?

David Buchanan: 27:36

Yeah. Good good question here. I mean, I I think I would sort of mirror my own process Okay. Working at FinQuery, which is, you know, I'm in on the product team designing a lot of our accounting automation, and when when we when we're starting to look at something, Adam, we start with the pain points. Right?

Adam Larson: 27:53

Yeah.

David Buchanan: 27:54

We we figure out, like, what are the biggest pain points in this process, and what do people want, and how can we automate that and take away those pain points? So I think the first thing I would do, again, is sort of map the current state. Take a step back once you're done with your close. Right? And think about what is the what are the recurring things that I really don't wanna do during financial close?

David Buchanan: 28:20

Right? And taking account of that and taking stock of that, and then looking at a FinQuery, looking at an AI first solution that that has invested and and done discovery around those pain points and those processes to automate that and get that off of your plate. Right? And go see a demo. Go sign up for a demo.

David Buchanan: 28:41

Go go check it out and start to have those conversations with your leaders like, hey, I I have I see an opportunity here to strengthen our internal controls, to reduce risk, to reduce time to close, and that that I think is worth the investment. And even with these accounting standards that are coming out that are more complex, such as ASC eight forty two with leases

Adam Larson: 29:04

Yeah.

David Buchanan: 29:05

You know, even leveraging the complexity of those standards to go to leadership and say, hey, it's time for a new process. We can no longer be the last to know. Not with the complexity that just came down the pipeline. Right? Let's be more proactive.

David Buchanan: 29:21

Let's invest in something that is AI first and that can increase and strengthen our internal controls.

Adam Larson: 29:28

That's amazing. You know, and as people are looking at possible softwares, you know, whether it's FinQuery or some other AI forward software, you know, are there things that they should be looking for in those softwares? Are there any red flags that they say, hey. This is this is something that you might want to say you might wanna think twice about if you see this in in a solution.

David Buchanan: 29:47

Yeah. Great, great question. I mean, reviews matter. Right? People who have been using the software matters big time.

David Buchanan: 29:54

Right?

Adam Larson: 29:55

Yeah.

David Buchanan: 29:57

We've been at the top of of lease accounting for the past twenty quarters on g two, which is, like, you know, something that we're really excited about and we take a lot of pride in, and, you know, we care about technical accounting. We care about getting things right, and and you can see that come through in the reviews. Right? So I would definitely look at a g two, look at some reviews as you consider different options, and bring some of your use cases to those demos. Right?

David Buchanan: 30:23

Don't don't let them just tell you about the software and be like, hey, here's my problem. Here are the common things that I'm running into. What does that look like in your system? How can we automate this, you know, going forward so that you really have have a use case and a business case that you can bring to leadership related to to relate.

Adam Larson: 30:41

Well, awesome. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been great chatting with you, and I know you brought some great insights that I hope our audience will take away and and move forward and do amazing things in their accounting teams.

David Buchanan: 30:52

Absolutely. Appreciate the opportunity, Adam. Thank you.

Announcer: 30:57

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.