As businesses expand their operations, pursue international business opportunities and rely more heavily on data and technology, the role of the financial controller is changing as well. Regarded as a company’s lead accountant and charged with the oversight of day-to-day financial operations, many financial controllers are now also involved in strategic planning and decision-making. They’re expected to know about accounting and finance reporting systems, have a solid background in data analysis, and possess strong leadership skills, business acumen and communication skills.
Such changes don’t come without challenges. But those challenges aren’t insurmountable. Here’s a look at 10 of the most pressing challenges financial controllers are facing and what they can do to overcome them.
What Is a Financial Controller?
A financial controller is a senior-level manager who is responsible for all of a company’s accounting and day-to-day financial activities. While the scope of responsibilities varies from one company to the next and may fluctuate based on the size of the company, a financial controller’s typical duties include:
- Preparing operating budgets.
- Managing budgeting schedules.
- Overseeing financial reporting.
- Collecting, analyzing and consolidating financial data.
- Performing payroll duties.
- Reporting material budgeting variances or expenditure variances to management.
- Recruiting, selecting, and training staff.
Financial controllers typically report to the company’s chief financial officer (CFO), though smaller organizations—where employees often wear many hats—may combine the two roles into a more strategic position than the one that exists at their larger counterparts.
10 Financial Controller Challenges and Their Solutions
Financial controllers face a variety of new challenges as businesses continue to evolve. Today, they must be stewards of data and technology, prioritize new skills, and assume leadership roles to drive the finance and accounting function forward. Among the items on their priority lists:
1. A Distributed Workforce
A large majority of employers continue to see the value of offering employees the flexibility of working from home at least part time, according to a 2024 survey by HR consultancy Robert Half. Despite the many positives—increases in employee productivity among them—a distributed accounting workforce can hinder financial controllers in terms of team building, communication, and mentoring less experienced staff. All can lead to the perfect storm of errors that can be time-consuming and tedious to fix.
A centralized business system, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, used by all employees can help financial controllers manage their distributed workforce better and ensure the accuracy of everyone’s work. Many ERP systems include workflow tools to monitor bottlenecks, eliminate data silos and provide insights into a team’s workload and productivity — activities that financial controllers once achieved through direct observation.
2. Evolving Technology
Financial controllers today must not only be experts in the financial close, planning, and reporting process, but they also need a strong technology acumen. Process automation, advanced analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) play an especially important role in finance and accounting, letting controllers analyze data in real time and derive valuable business insights they can apply to improve business performance and cut costs. These technologies can also free up employees from error-prone manual tasks and let financial controllers focus more on strategic endeavors.
Data Accessibility
Organizations are collecting data in record amounts. Sometime in 2025 the amount of data in the world will reach about 175 billion terabytes, a leap of 66% from 2018, according to McKinsey and Company. This data gives finance teams much fodder to improve their organizations’ competitive advantage. But providing access to sensitive finance data can prove challenging for financial controllers. Breaking down data silos is one important step. Another is to put that data in consistent formats and give different types of employees different levels of system access to it.
4. Storytelling with Data
They may be the face of accounting, but financial controllers can’t rely solely on the numbers to talk for themselves. That’s why it’s critical for financial controllers to demonstrate strong interpersonal and communication skills, so they can liaise with other departments effectively and win executive buy-in.
Yet more than just communicating effectively, financial controllers must be able to distill financial reports and other new or difficult concepts and ideas into accessible language for clients, investors, board members, management, and their own teams. Telling a story is even more impactful: In a recent survey of 500 company decision-makers, 71% said data storytelling skills—the “why” behind the data—are very important when reporting results to upper management and other key stakeholders. About half (49%), however, said their organizations lack this critical skill.
Financial data dashboards can help controllers and their people develop a narrative that makes a message more memorable, while fostering stronger business relationships.
5. Global Expansion
Expanding internationally presents a number of challenges for financial controllers. For example, they will need to know how to comply with the different tax and regulatory requirements of the various countries with which the organization does business. Other considerations include multicurrency conversion, different financial reporting requirements, and overseeing freight, insurance, and customs processes. Having the right software to manage those and other factors is critical.
6. Changing Business Models
Beginning in 2020, nearly all organizations—96%, according to McKinsey—were forced to revise their business models in some way to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions, regulations, competitive pressures, and other factors. New subscription-based services, ecommerce offerings, and product bundles require more complex accounting. Again, advanced, cloud-based software solutions can help.
7. Talent Retention and Development
Employee retention weighs heavily on finance and accounting managers. Low morale and high rates of burnout are contributing factors.
To boost morale and reduce burnout, financial controllers should work with their human resources departments on implementing and updating employee retention strategies for their teams. Some of these strategies include reviewing and streamlining the onboarding and orientation processes, obtaining feedback through engagement surveys, providing mentorship opportunities, and offering training to upskill employees.
8. Upskilling
While it’s important to provide training and learning opportunities to finance and accounting teams to solidify retention, it’s equally important that financial controllers invest in their own careers by staying on top of the latest trends and brushing up on the newest skills.
While most of the financial controller’s traditional skill set will remain relevant, the addition of new skills is also expected. Examples include development of an affinity for digital tools and technology, expertise in data analytics, and competence in controlling agile teams, according to recent research. One survey of CFOs found that more than a third of them think that business analytics skills should be mandatory for everyone in accounting and finance. Financial controllers should seek out analytics training, e-learning, and certification opportunities for them and their people..
9. Security
Concern about data security and privacy breaches was the barrier most frequently cited by finance executives for failing to realize their full potential as drivers of strategic change, according to an Accenture report.
In many organizations, chief technology officers (CTOs) report to the CFO, leaving finance executives, including the controller, in a good position to have an impact on—and even help lead—information security efforts at their companies. One way to help mitigate security risks is to advocate for cloud-based finance applications, whose security benefits include frequent patching and end-to-end security for remote workers.
10. Robotic process automation (RPA)
Sometimes referred to as “smart automation” or “intelligent automation,” RPA refers to a growing area of advanced software systems that program “bots” to perform a series of tasks that previously required human intervention. When it comes to finance process automation, there’s still much work to do. Some 41% of the CFO respondents to a 2024 McKinsey survey said their organizations had automated less than a quarter of their finance processes. Only 1% had automated more than three-quarters of them. So financial controllers still have an important role to play in their organizations’ RPA efforts. The same skills that organizations have long relied on for investment valuation, project management, process documentation, and assessing, defining, and implementing controls are also critical to an RPA program.
Today, financial controllers are being challenged by a variety of factors — rapidly evolving technology, new business models, increasing amounts of data, changing skill sets and more. Skilled financial controllers armed with top-tier financial management software and data, however, will be well positioned as strategic business leaders capable of driving finance and accounting teams into the future.
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Controller Challenges FAQs
What kinds of problems do financial controllers find?
Financial controllers may encounter a variety of problems, such as financial reporting issues, budget deviations, losses due to theft or mismanagement of risk, unbalanced budgets, errors due to improper techniques, and incorrect data.
What are the challenges of financial management?
Financial management faces myriad challenges. They include accurate record-keeping, managing spend-down, timely financial reporting, financial analysis and regulatory compliance.
What are the challenges of financial accounting?
Suffice it to say, financial accounting is not for the faint of heart. Financial accounting challenges include improving cash flow, managing financial disclosures, hiring and retaining talent, adopting automation and artificial intelligence, upskilling, learning about tax law changes, and understanding expense management.
Is a financial controller a stressful job?
A financial controller is a senior-level manager responsible for all of a company’s accounting and day-to-day financial activities. That’s a tall order. A high volume of work, tight deadlines, compliance demands, team oversight and impeccable accuracy can make a financial controller’s job stressful.
