Wishful Thinking: Accounting Leaders Wants & Predictions for 2026

Don’t default to SALY proceses next year — with the busy season on the horizon, now’s the perfect time to start thinking about the changes your team can implement for a smooth start to 2026.

At the top of December, we hosted our Trendlines dinner series —a three-city experiment designed to take the pulse of finance leaders heading into 2026.

Across San Francisco, New York, and London, we gave our guests a short “Trendlines Card” and asked them for their predictions, frustrations, and hopes for the upcoming year.

We’ve cobbled together some stats and quotes that reflect both how accountants want to change their teams but also how they hope accounting will change for the better next year.

Summary

Across all three cities, the same themes came up again and again: teams are looking for less manual work, shorter closes, better forecasting, and above all, more breathing room.

Many accountants want to do away with the tedium of flux analysis, automate their manual reconciliations, and bring their close timelines down to as few as 3 (or even zero) days.

As for making that all a possibility? Some accountants believe in the transformative ability of AI and automation (“All of the manual work will be automated away,”; I predict 100% automation in 2026,”) while others are slightly more apprehensive ("AI will not replace us!"; “People will need more accountants”).

Regardless, it’s clear that folks believe 2026 won’t be the same as this year, and hopefully, for good reason.

The Questions Posed

At each dinner, guests received a card with three questions asking about their 2026 aspirations.

The questions:

1. The manual task we’ll finally leave behind in 2026 is:
2. By December 2026, my team will have…
3. My boldest 2026 prediction for finance and accounting is:

Below, we’ll look at what themes rang true across cities for each question.

The manual task we’ll finally leave behind in 2026 is:

According to accountants, the manual tasks they look most forward to ditching in the new year include the following:

• Reconciliations
• Flux & Variance Analysis
• AP / AR & Invoicing
• Payments & Cash Applications

No surprises here — each process listed can be a slog to get through without a solid data foundation, adequate headcount, or quality accounting solutions.

Flux is commonly a pain since many teams have no good way to identify which individual transactions are causing period-over-period differences by account. As a result, teams only are able to flux a few key accounts each month, and nothing more.

To help, teams like Brex and STASH have seen great success using Numeric’s AI Flux Agent, which has not only significantly reduced their time spent on flux but also increased their flux coverage across the balance sheet.

By December 2026, my team will have…

The responses for 2026 goals cluster heavily around three main ideas: Automation/AI adoption, Faster Closes, and Work-Life Balance.

Integrating AI & Automation

Mentioned most of all, accountants are looking forward to practical implementation of AI, where they move beyond hype to specific use cases:

• “(my team will have) Learned to create an AI agent”
• “More AI use in Excel”
• “Improved cashflow forecasting via AI”
• “(my team will have) Begun to use AI in some of our processes to automate things like billing”

After a year where AI hype blazed with talks of agents, vibe-coding, and the like, it’s clear that accounting leaders want to get down to brass tacks. To brush up on AI fundamentals and which AI tools are driving real impact for teams today, check out our AI Guide for Accountants.

2. Achieving a Faster Close

Time-to-close is a valuable metric for accounting teams, so it’s unsurprising that teams still believe they can achieve even tighter, more efficient closes.

• “3 day close”
• “Reduced close by 1 day”
• “Reduced close to WD5”
• “Improved close timeline using AI”

One way teams can accelerate close timelines is to move tasks to the pre-close period, free-ing up close time for highest leverage work. Transaction monitors help teams proactively flag discrepancies, allowing them to identify process gaps or issues before the crunch of the close.

3. Forging Work-Life Balance

A significant number of respondents define success in 2026 not by output, but by time reclaimed.

• “More time to breathe during month end closes and work only 9-5”
• “Much more time to do more fun things”
• “More free time to work on important projects & work-life balance”

As tasks pile up and the ongoing accounting shortage results in fewer recruits to the field, accountants are looking for solutions that don’t start and end with more laptop time.