Supporting data to consider
What Autonomous Finance Means for the Controller
Streamlining Financial Accuracy with Autonomous Finance
Controllers are the backbone of financial accuracy, but manual processes often hold you back. Month-end close is taxing. Reconciling project costs, subcontractor invoices, and materials data is slow and error-prone. And by the time you catch errors, it’s often too late to act on the insights.
Autonomous finance removes the grind. AI-powered tools can capture data, classify expenses, and detect anomalies automatically, while maintaining continuous audit trails.
What this enables
- Automated, error-resistant accounts payable that captures and validates invoice data, matches it to purchase orders, and routes approvals without human intervention
- Predictive cash flow forecasting based on real-time actuals, contracts, and historical trends, giving you an earlier warning on potential shortfalls
- Continuous close capabilities that reconcile accounts daily instead of monthly, shortening your close cycle and reducing audit risks
- Exception handling is embedded into workflows, so your team only intervenes when something falls outside policy
- Real-time visibility into project-level financials so you can flag budget risks before they become overruns
28%
of shared services report a 10–15% improvement in error rate on their best-performing F&A automated process. (SSO Network)
64%
of CFOs expect autonomous finance inside six years – aligns the Controller’s move from transaction processing to exception-led governance. (SSO Network)
Up to 20%
of cost-savings in expense/spend management via AI-driven sourcing/autonomy in procurement functions. (The CFO)
10-15%
error-rate improvement with automation (SSO Network)
How your role evolves
Rather than being buried in reconciliation, you’ll design workflows, define rules, set up exception paths. Your value becomes monitoring & governance, not just execution. You’ll work more with IT to make sure tools plug in cleanly and reliably.
First steps
- Find your most manual, error-prone processes and map them (invoices, expense entry, approvals).
- Establish clear policies and definitions for exceptions.
- Choose tools with strong ERP integration.
- Set metrics to track improvements: close time, error rate, hours saved
Let's Start the Conversation
Reach out to us to start a conversation about how you can begin your autonomous finance journey with aec360 and Microsoft.
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