Finance topic
The record-to-report engine room: close calendars, reconciliations, consolidation, controllership and the shift toward a continuous close.
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BlackLine’s Verity Prepare pushes AI from answering questions about the close into producing work that becomes close evidence. The design question is whether an accountant can still take responsibility for the result.
IFRS 18 is mandatory for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2027 — but comparatives make it a 2026 close problem. The work sits in account mappings, consolidation rules, expense dimensions and MPM governance.
AI agents and continuous accounting are beginning to shift the close from a monthly sprint toward a continuously managed financial process.
Record-to-report vendors pushed AI deeper into reconciliations, journals and accruals through 2025. The controller’s job is separating useful automation from automation layered onto inconsistent data and weak process design.
Controllers Council’s 2025 study found 53% of respondents reporting no finance-and-accounting talent shortage — even as controllers stayed hard to recruit. The signal is a split market: softer hiring overall, persistent scarcity in experienced roles.
The financial close is full of work that is repetitive but not trivial. Agentic close software promises to prepare, reconcile and explain — as long as every action can be audited.
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SAP
In this SAP Finance Connect keynote, SAP presents how AI assistants and agents could fit into core finance workflows, from accounting and consolidation to planning, billing and payments. As a vendor-hosted keynote, its product capabilities and reported benefits are SAP and participant claims rather than independently verified outcomes.
Senad Mustafic · Chief Accounting Officer, 1Password
Senad Mustafic, Chief Accounting Officer at 1Password, joins Kinter controller Armen Aklian, CPA, for an on-demand fireside chat (The CFO Track) about his path from financial analysis into controllership, how his thinking on AI has changed, and his approach to AI adoption at 1Password.
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CFO Weekly
Host Megan Weis and Kerrie Jones, Financial Controller at Peak Living, on why following the correct process doesn’t guarantee a sensible outcome — and how controllers can teach accountants when to question the output, including AI’s. CFO Weekly is produced by Personiv.
The Accounting Podcast
A hands-on experiment testing an AI agent on real accounting reconciliation work, including transaction matching, prepayments, bills and the practical limits of agentic accounting automation.
The Accounting Podcast
Real-world AI use cases in accounting and audit, Sage Intacct's AI roadmap and a provocative look at how automation could radically change the traditional financial close.
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