---
title: "Automation is No Longer Optional: 5 Stats That Will Define Finance in 2026"
description: New industry data reveals 2X AI adoption year over year as Finance teams try to keep up with business growth and change. See what 200 finance pros said.
image: https://www.leapfin.com/hubfs/blog-image_soafra-week-1_14NOV25.png
---

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# Automation is No Longer Optional: 5 Stats That Will Define Finance in 2026

[ Dave Bor, Director of Content at Leapfin ](https://www.leapfin.com/blog/author/dave-bor)

 Updated on  November 18, 2025

![Automation is No Longer Optional: 5 Stats That Will Define Finance in 2026](https://www.leapfin.com/hubfs/blog-image_soafra-week-1_14NOV25.png)

Finance and Accounting teams are in the middle of a major shift.

Growth hasn’t slowed, but capacity has – and the only sustainable answer is automation.

The [2025 State of Automation for Finance and Revenue Accounting report](https://www.leapfin.com/state-of-automation-for-revenue-accounting-2025) surveyed nearly 200 finance professionals across SaaS, e-commerce, and marketplace businesses. The results show a function stretched thin, wrestling with fragmented data, and accelerating toward AI whether it’s ready or not.

Here are five stats finance and accounting leaders should expect to define 2026. 

## 1. 73% of Finance teams say the business is growing faster than they can keep up

That’s up from 48% last year – a 25-point jump.

Controllers, managers, and specialists feel it most, confirming that operational strain lives closest to the data and the close. Finance isn’t short on effort; it’s short on scalable systems.

> "Mentally and physically, we can't keep up." -Director of Accounting, E-commerce company

## 2. Data quality is the current #1 barrier to automation

We asked 200 finance professionals...

What's your biggest barrier to adopting more automation?

In 2024,  they said 1) cost and 2) lack of internal resources. 

This year's answers were markedly different: 

1. Data quality issues (23% of responses)
2. Security and compliance concerns (21% of responses)
3. Lack of internal expertise (20% of responses)

Data quality and internal expertise are two sides of the same problem: too few teams truly understand their data – where it comes from, what it means, and how it connects. Without a trustworthy data foundation, automation just multiplies confusion.

## AI adoption in finance and accounting has doubled year over year

In 2024, only 23% used AI for finance or accounting tasks.

In 2025, that number jumped to 49%.

The three most common use cases: 

- Variance analysis
- Narrative reporting
- Data prep

Finance is no longer debating *if* AI fits. The question now is *where* it creates the most leverage without eroding control.

> “What worries me most is scaling people and processes fast enough. Our tooling and data pipelines weren’t built for the next 2–3X growth.” -Director of Finance & Accounting, SaaS company

## Finance’s trust in AI is growing fast – but it’s still fragile

64% of finance and accounting pros say they somewhat or strongly trust AI to perform finance tasks, up 8 points from 2024.

Controllers lead the trust curve (65%), executives are next (58%). Experience appears to drive confidence – hands-on users trust the outputs more than observers.

## Manual work remains the silent tax

Half of respondents close their books within five days, yet the top manual process everyone wants to eliminate is data reconciliation (28%).

The close may be faster, but the effort hasn’t disappeared – it’s just hiding behind spreadsheets.

> "We already make errors. I'm worried that more complexity will cause other issues I am not even thinking of." -Director of Accounting, E-commerce company

## The takeaway

Finance can’t automate its way around bad data.

As companies scale, the true bottleneck isn’t people – it’s architecture.  
Building clean, connected data pipelines is what lets automation deliver accuracy and control at scale.

The full report explores:

[Read the report →](https://www.leapfin.com/state-of-automation-for-revenue-accounting-2025)

 

### See how Leapfin works

Get a feel for the ease and power of Leapfin with our interactive demo.

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Leapfin is the trusted AI infrastructure that powers your entire record-to-report process at scale. Leapfin helps companies accurately account for and report on revenue by standardizing large volumes of siloed, inconsistent operational data into usable, GAAP-ready financials and automating manual accounting tasks. 

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