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AI as finance pain reliever: Tabs CFO

As they begin to integrate AI further into their systems and teams, the perspective around the technology among CFOs is also beginning to shift. Gone are the early days of experimentation and testing: today, the “smart, strategic CFO” is thinking about how they can tap AI to solve key challenges, Tabs CEO and co-founder Ali Hussain said.

For instance, one of the priorities often cited by potential clients of Tabs — an AI-powered platform for billing, collections and other parts of the invoice-to-cash process — is “we are scaling, and the systems we have cannot support that scale,” Hussain told CFO Dive in an interview. The business has hit a certain revenue threshold, and its current systems cannot catch up to handle simple processes such as the order to-cash process. Such CFOs are seeking areas where technologies like AI could best alleviate key pressure points.

“If something around spend management or reconciliations is working fine, I think they’re just fine with it,” Hussain said of CFOs’ thought processes. “They don’t need an AI strategy there. What they’re looking for is, where is most of my pain?”

Stewards of technology                             

Today’s CFOs are looking for AI-driven solutions which can open up crucial bottlenecks in areas like the order-to-cash process. The greater attention to where AI can best be applied is due to a number of factors, Hussain said: first, CFOs are still navigating a shortage of qualified accounting talent — and the talent they do have is “just not interested” in chasing down payments, he said. Secondly, there’s “a lot of board pressure right now to keep these [finance] teams leaner than ever,” Hussain said.

Hussain co-founded the New York-based platform, which provides AI-powered revenue and reporting tools to finance teams, in 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Tabs, he served seven years as chief operating officer for IT services and consulting firm DOOR — formerly Latch — and held previous roles at Boston Consulting Group and Google.

Yet another factor influencing the strategic application of AI among finance leaders is the fact that many CFOs today “have to demonstrate that they are being good stewards of the new technologies in this world,” Hussain said.

Bringing in AI to make revenue reconciliation or accounting easier and more efficient can be a “big win,” therefore, as finance leaders are both looking to understand how to use such tools and under more pressure from their CEOs or boards to demonstrate to leaders in other areas of the business that they are “walking the walk” when it comes to AI’s use, he said.

In Hussain’s view, it’s also important to note that much of agentic AI’s current usage today comes down to user comfort, and not necessarily its technical capabilities. For instance, Tabs itself sees AI agent usage areas surrounding billing or collections “are more viable for our customers, and they’re more trustworthy using that end to end, than necessarily starting with something more intimate and high risk like audit,” compliance or revenue reconciliation, he said.

 The turning point

Hussain does see 2026 as being a crucial year for AI within finance, he said. For companies such as Tabs, last year was a “massive capitalization moment” where businesses were able to raise large “war chests” of capital to build. In September, Tabs closed a $55 million Series B round led by Lightspeed, aimed at building out AI agents for billing and collections, according to a blog post at the time.

As such, “what I think is really exciting this year is, it’s really going to be the year where the technology and also just the infrastructure we’ve all built is at a turning point,” he said.

That inflection point doesn’t mean the end of the finance team or of certain finance roles, Hussain said, but what it does change is the way CFOs “think about how they spend their time and where they need to try to attract labor on the functional level,” he said.

“I do think there are open questions around, at what point is there a turning point with these technologies where you no longer need a lot of those jobs to be done in the more tactical [finance] roles,” Hussain said, and the focus shifts to enabling those roles to add “value and impact on other parts of their team.”

CFOs must rethink ROI amid talent shortage: HubSync

The ongoing shortage of qualified accountants, coming as experienced accountants retire and not enough new graduates come to replace them, has left CFOs in a quandary.

On the one hand, they need to do more with less: to run leaner teams that can close the books faster, cut down expenses and support growth during a time of continued economic uncertainty. On the other hand, they need to ensure that they can entice and retain skilled financial talent, which includes not creating unrealistic expectations that may lead to burnout.

Creating those “lean” teams means CFOs need to be strategic about how they support their accounting and finance employees, from the technologies they integrate to how they think about upskilling and mentorship, Mahati Mukkamala, SVP of finance and operations for accounting tech platform HubSync said. In short, they need to change the way they think about return on investment here.

“I think sometimes we only look at ROI as, are you making a money back on this software based on hard costs?” Mukkamala told CFO Dive in an interview. “And I think ROI should be measured based on: is it making my employees better? Are they doing more with less?”

Pinpointing the tech use case

The accounting talent shortage has occupied a prime place of concern for finance chiefs for many years, especially as CFOs are increasingly looked to by their companies to drive strategy as well as take stewardship of the numbers.

The growing number of states that have passed legislation to create alternative certified public accounting licensure pathways, nudged enrollment in accounting programs upward last year, CFO Dive previously reported. However, several other roadblocks remain in place to reverse the years-long slump in skilled talent, such as higher starting salaries in other professions or the uncertain role of AI and automation in accounting — putting more pressure on finance leaders that need to attract and retain accountants, Mukkamala said.

“In a world where you’re seeing a shrinking workforce, what you want to do is empower people that are in your workforce to enjoy doing the work and become more analytical,” he said.

Mukkamala’s “bread and butter has been post-transaction and/or post fundraise” in private equity, he said, with roles in treasury and financial planning and analysis. He joined HubSync in his current role last October, previously serving as VP of FP&A for Digital.ai, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has also served as principal, FP&A consultant for Seed 2 C Consulting and as treasurer for Asian Women for Health.

Approaching technology with an eye toward empowerment, rather than replacement, can be one way to change that ROI perspective and better support the team. Mukkamala sees technology as a great equalizer, but “I think we still have to get back to the root cause of, what is it that you’re using technology for,” he said.

“Whether it’s fixed asset software, whether it’s ERP software, whether it’s procurement software, whatever it is, write down the problem that you’re trying to solve with it and actually see if it solves the problem,” he said.

Resetting realistic expectations

Another challenge finance leaders face when it comes to finding top talent is pressure to meet unrealistic goals from the top of the organization that is now falling on the finance team itself, Mukkamala said.

For instance, a company that has raised money and now finds itself racing to meet growth targets that justify that valuation will likely turn to the CFO, he said. In the private equity space, the team will look to reduce expenses or improve margin, but “all of those are stop gaps for the fundamental problem, which is, you signed up for growth that may or may not be realistic,” he said. “I think if you’re not able to have that conversation, that pressure now builds downwards on the accounting team: ‘Hey, why are you guys closing the books fast enough. We’re not able to make decisions sooner.’”

That’s only becoming more of a challenge in a world where there’s a “voracious hunger for data and data quality and speed,” and it oftentimes falls to the accounting team to fulfill that want, he said.

“There’s not that many decisions that you can make if the accounting close is done, versus five days versus 11 days, but it’s a thing that people can point to and say, ‘well, if only I was able to close the books in four days, maybe I could have done something different, right?’” Mukkamala said.