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The financial landscape for businesses continues to evolve rapidly. The more you can understand the needs of potential clients, the easier it will be to attract new business, increase client satisfaction, and anticipate service needs–especially when it comes to client advisory services (CAS).
The 2025 Finance Leader Outlook survey from BILL explores the top priorities for CEOs, CFOs, controllers, and other finance leaders. And it’s no big surprise that automation and AI, cybersecurity and fraud, and talent rank as top focus areas. The insights provided in this survey offer a goldmine for accounting firms with helpful information on finance leaders' biggest challenges and strategies for overcoming them.
Opportunity 1: tap into CAS demand
The survey reveals a trend among businesses outsourcing their accounting function. Nearly two in five finance leaders (38%) currently work with an outsourced accounting firm. The open field for more CAS opportunities can provide ample interest in providing client advisory services or upleveling current CAS offering.
Among companies currently outsourcing or open to the idea, more than half (51%) would consider outsourcing most or all of their accounting needs. The data points to an opportunity to create a year-round, recurring CAS revenue stream or expand your current practice. Give finance leaders what they want—a trusted advisory partner.
Among companies currently working with an outsourced accounting firm or open to the idea, more than half (51%) would consider outsourcing most or all of their accounting needs.1
With over 33 million SMBs nationwide2, the potential for growth in CAS is substantial—offering a large pool of potential ideal clients. It is, however, crucial to approach this opportunity with a balanced perspective. While the number of businesses potentially seeking accounting services is significant, the actual market size will vary based on factors such as firm specialization and ideal client profiles.
For added perspective, consider the 2024 CPA.com, AICPA PCPS CAS Benchmark Survey. Practitioners who responded signaled positive CAS momentum with these results:
- The median reportable annual CAS revenue (net client fees) rose by 61% to $1,606,409 for all respondents and $2,959,383 for top performers.
- The median net client revenue rose by 30%, while median total CAS employee FTE rose by 31%.
- CAS net client fees per professional rose to $156,250, an increase of 29% over the 2022 survey.
Opportunity 2: give clients cashflow clarity
Understanding client priorities is key to expanding services. And, as always, cash flow is top of mind for finance leaders. According to the survey, managing cash flow in changing economic conditions is a top priority.
Additionally, 47% of leaders expressed a desire to make better business decisions through improved reporting and analysis.
These two stats represent a 1-2 action plan for firms interested in meeting these priorities.
First, you can enhance cashflow clarity by unifying AP, AR, and expense management on one platform. This creates a comprehensive view of cash in and cash out. It also enables you to help clients control spend with a free-to-use tool that captures expenses in real-time (no more waiting 30 or more days to reconcile them), attaches them to budgets, and enforces expense guidelines.
Second, this platform and data empower you to trade spreadsheets for automated financial planning and analysis. In just a few clicks, you can:
- See into current cash-in and cash-out, and forecast cash flow for up to 12 months
- Simulate various situations (such as hiring, equipment purchases, etc.) and their impact to cash flow—and visually compare scenarios
- Advise clients across a range of industries by creating unlimited custom charts and variables
- Leverage historical accounting data and predictive modeling to create cash flow forecasting
Opportunity 3: build your tech expertise and reputation as a tech-forward firm
The survey reveals a strong belief in the transformative power of AI and automation in business workflows, reflecting that business owners expect to work with tech-forward accounting firms.
Three in 5 finance leaders expect new technology—especially AI, automation, and digital payment processing solutions—to have the greatest impact on the financial operations industry in the next 3 years.1
For accounting firms, this trend signals the importance of staying at the forefront of technological advancements (particularly AI) to provide the level of service clients expect.
There’s a critical opportunity to upskill staff on AI and other emerging technologies—positioning your firm for unprecedented efficiency gains while also bringing AI to your clients to meet their needs, elevate service, and bypass busy work.
Examples of upskilling options include technology certifications, CPE-eligible webinars and courses, and accounting conferences like AICPA ENGAGE and Scaling New Heights.
Remember to not let your tech expertise go unnoticed. Be sure to represent it in your marketing efforts–from your website, social media to emails and more.
Opportunity 4: make automation a reality for clients
Automation is at the center of any well-run business. It eliminates manual input, improves accuracy, and delivers remarkable time and resource savings.
The survey reports that more than half of the finance leaders believe that automation will improve accuracy, provide real-time analytics, and accelerate month-end close processes.
But converting vision to reality may prove challenging for businesses.
Half of leaders admit that procurement, financial planning, and budgeting processes at their businesses aren’t automated at all. And only 4% report they've ditched paper trails and spreadsheets and are fully automated.
Clients may already understand the benefits of automation–which means less education may be needed to intrigue and onboard them to the technology. However, they may lack the expertise to adopt and implement automation effectively and within budget.
The good news is that this is a gap accounting firms can fill. With a fully trained team and a tech stack, your firm can guide clients to the right technologies and optimize them to deliver high-velocity automation.
Opportunity 5: help protect clients from payments fraud
Security remains at the forefront of finance leaders’ minds, and nearly half cite payments fraud as a growing concern. After all, one physical check contains all the information needed for fraud. And cyberattacks continue to target companies. One in five say they have experienced a breach in the past year, meaning heightened security measures–especially around payments—continues to be a necessity.
While many companies are taking steps to address security risks, the survey found that companies with fewer than 10 employees are most likely to say they aren’t addressing cybersecurity threats at all.
Only 29% of finance leaders indicated that they are very confident in their organization’s protection from payments fraud.1
No matter how advanced a company’s security measures are, you can help them protect payments and you don’t have to be a cybersecurity expert to do this. Introducing companies to automated AP and payment processes can help elevate payments security. For example, BILL helps reduce your payment risk in many ways:
- Pay and get paid through our digital network: the BILL network is the collection of millions of customers and vendors using the BILL platform to pay and get paid. Connecting with your vendor allows you to pay them electronically to their BILL account without collecting or storing their bank account details.
- Use virtual cards: Virtual card payments hide your business bank account or credit card number when you make digital payments, keeping your accounts safer.
- Enjoy enhanced security for check payments: BILL Accounts Payable sends checks through a clearing account so that your own account remains hidden. The solution also applies advanced payment protections such as Positive Pay, where the bank verifies the issued check against the presented check to ensure the amount, payee, and check numbers match accurately.
- No third-party issuers: Unlike other Accounts Payable platforms that use third-party services to issue payments, BILL Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable keeps your payment processing in-house. This masks your banking information while giving you more control over your payments and better visibility into payment status.
- Secure data centers: Secure data center facilities with full redundancy in more than one physical location provide back-up protection against malicious attacks.
- Advanced protection against data breaches: BILL ensures customer data is protected at rest with encryption, while Transport Layer Security (TLS) provides bank-level protection during transfer.
For more BILL security measures, visit this spec sheet.
Conclusion
The 2025 Finance Leader Outlook survey provides valuable, predictive insights into the evolving needs and priorities of finance leaders. For firms, these trends represent huge opportunities to expand services, deepen client relationships, and drive growth.
By focusing on technology adoption (AI and automation), enhancing security, and providing strategic, proactive financial guidance via elevated CAS services, firms position themselves as indispensable, strategic partners.
As we move into 2025, firms that successfully navigate these changes and align their offerings with client priorities position themselves to grow and thrive.
To learn more about how BILL can help you upscale your services and meet the needs of today’s finance leaders, contact your account manager or schedule a demo.
About the survey
The 2025 Finance Leader Outlook survey was published by BILL in collaboration with Logica Research. The goal is to provide actionable insights into the priorities, challenges, and strategies of finance leaders and their teams. This comprehensive study, based on data from 354 finance decision-makers, primarily from SMBs with fewer than 200 employees and less than $50 million in annual revenue, offers a roadmap for accounting firms to elevate the client experience by anticipating needs.
Firms can leverage this data to improve their business model and support the ever-growing needs (and concerns) of businesses. Survey data identified many opportunities for firms, including expanding client advisory services (CAS); consolidating AP, AR and expense into a single platform for better data visibility; supporting SMBs with AI and automation; and much more.
1 The 2025 Finance Leader Outlook
2 The US Small Business Administration, Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, 2023
