Great decisions require time. It is the raw material of effective and strategic businesses – but also arguably their most wasted resource, with hours spent on cumbersome systems and entangled processes.
None more so than in finance, where the financial health of the business is at stake. According to the CFO’s Playbook for 2025, 32 per cent of businesses say their CFOs are doing more admin than five years ago.
In fact, as many as 52 per cent of CFOs say that ‘not having enough time’ is a key factor hurting confident decision-making. The result isn’t just that decisions are rushed, but that they sometimes don’t happen at all, with nearly half (47 per cent) of financial decision-makers saying they have experienced decision-freeze in the past year. Addressing this requires a clearer understanding of where that time is being spent.
How admin became an artform in finance
Finance professionals are rarely drawn to the role for admin work. Their skills extend beyond numerical analysis to identifying high-yield growth opportunities and, as the profile of the team evolves, strengthening financial strategy through communication and collaboration.
Yet finance is dominated by dozens of processes that are poorly suited to efficient use of time. As gatekeepers of financial knowledge and processes, finance teams are often inundated with expenses and invoices to approve. These approval processes are often outdated, overly rigid and ill-suited to how teams work today. As companies grow, they become harder to scale, resulting in more manual admin at precisely the point when more strategic leadership is required.
The finance team’s gatekeeper role also means a significant amount of time is spent manually checking that spending remains on policy. These controls are time-consuming to administer, including managing access to company cards. But this effort can prove inefficient when finance teams still need to manually review activity and address learning gaps.
Whether strategising for the year ahead, managing month-end or preparing for an audit, a lot of the finance role depends on maintaining real-time oversight of budgets and cash flow. Without an effective spend management tool, teams often have limited visibility and rely on manual processes to extract the necessary detail. This can lead to a lack of control, and more hindsight than foresight.
Time back for better decisions
Many finance teams spend the majority of their time on transactional work. This is not only an efficiency problem, but a competitive disadvantage.
Technology and tooling can catalyse a shift from transactional to strategic finance, helping organisations realise long-term value. With more contextual data, decision-making does not become less high-pressure. It does, however, give finance teams the information needed to invest their decision-making skills with greater confidence, placing them in a stronger position to focus on the work that drew them to this profession.
Reducing friction in finance
One effective way leaders can return time to finance teams is through automation. McKinsey & Company reports that 98 per cent of CFOs say their finance functions have invested in digitisation and automation – and with good reason. Used well, automation can shift finance teams’ focus away from admin and towards higher-value work.
One application is automated approvals. At first glance, this may seem risky, but effective solutions execute approvals according to the finance team’s instructions. This means companies retain all of their rules, while removing the busywork involved in managing them.
Approval flows can be configured to trigger real-time notifications based on team, account or cost centre, improving accuracy and reducing the risk of month-end surprises. Real-time audit trails also provide greater clarity over how and where spending occurs, while smart capture simplifies expense submissions for employees.
Similar efficiencies can then be applied to blocks and controls. While finance teams continue to set spending policies, automated tools handle their implementation. This can reduce the need for the finance team to monitor spending, while automating blocks and controls can prevent out-of-policy spending before it escalates. This is the case when finance teams are offline too, with policies still active across multiple entities.
Automation can also address one of the most persistent challenges in budgeting: access to accurate, timely information. Within finance teams, automated solutions can bring essential information into a single dashboard. This helps limit overspend and ensures sub-budgets are protected, keeping cash safe and plans on track.
Accounting on autopilot
Automation often plays a less visible role than technologies such as AI, but it has a significant part to play in the future of finance. This is because ‘accounting on autopilot’ is not about replacing people; rather, it’s about seeing the value that businesses know their employees and teams can deliver.
With tools such as Pleo, a financial technology company focused on business spend management, workflows can be automated, month-end processes simplified and the relationship between finance teams and the wider business strengthened – allowing them to move away from small, mundane tasks and focus instead on strategic priorities.
By Amit Kahana, VP of Credit and Treasury of Pleo
Automation is just one way leaders are making more strategic decisions | Discover more here