As year-end approaches, CFOs and finance leaders are laser-focused on the usual tasks: closing the books, completing audits, finalizing budgets and preparing board presentations. But the best leaders know December isn’t just about wrapping up the year. It’s a chance to challenge assumptions, reset priorities and plan for the next year of the finance function.
For middle-market companies, private equity (PE) portfolio businesses and public companies, year-end is the perfect moment to step back and ask: How did we perform against our goals and budget last year, and what are our goals for 2026? Are we just reporting on performance or actively shaping it?
To help you answer that question and relay it back to company leadership and key stakeholders, here are eight priorities every CFO should consider for 2026.
1. Challenge Your Forecast
Most forecasts are built on muscle memory and old assumptions about demand, margins and cash timing. Now is the time to question them. According to Cherry Bekaert’s 2025 CFO Survey, 39% of CFOs expressed concerns about forecasting accuracy.
Middle-market and PE-backed company CFOs should validate that margin improvements are sustainable. Meanwhile, public company CFOs should ensure external guidance reflects realistic market and rate scenarios.
Regardless of company size, go beyond the spreadsheets and run stress tests on:
- Customer Churn: What happens if retention dips by 5%?
- Pricing Flexibility: Can you hold margins if discounting increases?
- Cash Conversion Speed: How quickly can you turn revenue into liquidity under pressure?
Throughout 2025, we saw the market shift and a significant amount of price volatility due to economic factors that a lot of companies were not prepared for. To be more prepared for volatility, these exercises of running stress tests on certain metrics often reveal hidden risks — but also untapped opportunities to improve resilience, agility and strategic clarity. The best CFOs use year-end not just to forecast performance, but to reshape it.
2. Audit the Efficiency of Your Data Flow (Not Just Your Spend)
Automation gets all the attention, but integration is the real differentiator.
CFOs should ask themselves these questions:
- How seamlessly does data move across your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other reporting systems?
- How much time is your team spending manually bridging gaps that technology should close?
- Are you confident in the accuracy and timeliness of the data that you are using to drive your decisions?
For middle-market CFOs, the challenge is often overspending on tools while underinvesting in connectivity. Fragmented systems slow down decision-making and dilute insights. The result? More effort is spent reconciling data than analyzing it.
In fact, the CFO survey also found that nearly 50% of mid-market CFOs identified a lack of system integration as their company's biggest challenge.
For PE-backed companies, integration gaps can stall scale-up plans or complicate exit readiness. Investors expect clean, connected data flows that support rapid reporting and operational transparency, enabling them to make decisions and understand the current state as quickly as possible.
Treat data flow like cash flow — because both determine how fast your business can respond, adapt and grow. A well-integrated finance tech stack doesn’t just reduce manual work; it unlocks real-time visibility, accelerates forecasting and empowers strategic agility.
3. Turn Finance Into an Internal Consulting Engine
Year-end is the ideal time to reposition your finance team from record-keepers to internal business partners who drive strategic decision-making.
Challenge each finance lead to deliver one “business diagnostic” before the new year. These should go beyond financial reporting to uncover:
- Operational inefficiencies that slow growth
- Pricing risks that erode margin
- Cash conversion opportunities that improve liquidity
Diagnostics can be tailored by function or business unit. For example:
- Sales might analyze discounting trends and product mix
- Operations could assess inventory churn or vendor payment cycles
- Marketing might evaluate return on investment (ROI) across channels or campaign pacing
When finance leads these conversions, they shift from reporting the data to interpreting it, challenging assumptions and co-creating solutions with the other functions across the business. This helps build trust across the organization and accelerate enterprise growth and value creation.
4. Align Talent for 2026
Headcount reports show who’s on the team. But a skills matrix reveals whether your team has the right capabilities to support your strategic plan for the coming year. This distinction is especially critical in lean portfolio companies, where every role must drive measurable impact. Your organizational chart should reflect not just reporting lines — but readiness for transformation.
Ask yourself:
- Are you staffed for analytics, automation and business partnering?
- Can you consider upskilling, role redesign or strategic hiring?
- Where are the gaps, and do you have a plan to close them?
Map your team’s strengths across key capabilities such as analytics and automation, then align your 2026 talent and upskilling plan accordingly. This isn’t just about filling seats. It’s about building a finance function that is curious, connected and future-ready to assist the company in making strategic decisions.
The future of finance isn’t just technical, it’s strategic, digital and insight-driven.
5. Revisit Vendor and Customer Terms To Realize Hidden Cash
In a year marked by inflation and rising interest rates, supply costs have shifted the cost of capital, yet many companies haven’t adjusted their payment terms in years.
Work with sales, treasury and procurement to model the impact, but a five-day swing in days sales outstanding (DSO) or days payable outstanding (DPO) can free more cash than a 2% cost cut. This could deliver short-term liquidity without taking on new debt.
6. Refresh Your “Finance Story” for the Board and Stakeholders
Beyond closing the books, year-end presents a valuable moment to reframe the narrative. The best CFOs don’t just present numbers, they tell the story of progress, resilience and future potential.
As you prepare for Q1 board meetings or investor updates, anchor your message around three strategic questions:
1. What Structural Changes Made Us More Resilient This Year?
Highlight operational shifts, cost discipline or digital/ERP investments that strengthened the business. Show how these changes position the company to weather uncertainty and scale efficiently.
2. What Value-creation Levers Are Ready for Next Year?
Identify the growth drivers — pricing power, margin expansion, new markets or mergers & acquisitions (M&A) opportunities. Frame them as intentional bets, not hopeful assumptions.
3. How Does Our Balance Sheet Enable Growth or Return of Capital?
Whether it’s funding innovation, supporting acquisitions, or returning cash to shareholders, show how your capital structure supports strategic flexibility.
Your finance story should connect the dots between performance, strategy and stakeholder value. It’s not just about what happened, but it’s about what’s possible next. When CFOs lead with clarity and conviction, they build trust and credibility, shape perception, and reinforce confidence in the path ahead.
7. Modernize Your Tech Stack To Power Digital Finance
Legacy systems weren’t built for the pace and complexity of modern finance. To stay competitive, finance leaders must take a hard look at their technology foundations by:
- Evaluating ERP, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), and reporting tools for scalability, flexibility and seamless integration across functions.
- Prioritizing platforms that deliver real-time insights, support automation and foster cross-functional collaboration.
Digital finance isn’t a nice-to-have, but the backbone of strategic decision-making. Modernizing your tech stack enables faster responses, sharper forecasts and stronger alignment across the business.
“We reduced our monthly close cycle by 80%, and finally have time to focus on growth, not just compliance.”
8. Build a “What-if Library” To Accelerate Decisions
In today’s climate of constant uncertainty, agility is a competitive advantage. Leading finance teams are prepared with pre-built scenarios for interest rate changes, supply chain disruptions, M&A opportunities and strategic divestitures, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.
A dynamic, living “what-if library” transforms forecasting from a static exercise into a continuous, adaptive capability. It empowers your organization to pivot faster than the competition, make informed decisions with confidence and stay ahead in a rapidly changing environment.
Treat Year-end as a Strategic Launch Pad
Year-end is more than a checklist — it’s your opportunity to reset, refocus and relaunch. The most successful CFOs in 2026 won’t be those who forecast with precision, but those who adapt with speed and clarity.
Use this year-end to sharpen your story, modernize your systems and elevate your finance team’s role in driving strategy. The close may wrap up the year in the books, but it should also ignite your next chapter.
Your Guide Forward
Cherry Bekaert’s CFO Advisory team collaborates with finance leaders to turn year-end into a strategic launch pad. Whether you're navigating complex forecasts, modernizing data flows or reshaping your finance story, we bring the tools, insights and experience to help you lead with confidence.
From middle-market agility to public company precision, we help CFOs move beyond reporting to actively shape performance. Let’s make this year-end your springboard for transformation.
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