M&A Is Back on the CFO Agenda, but the Close Behind Every Deal Is Still Manual

Finance leaders feel better about the next three years than they did in the spring, and a growing number are pointing that confidence at deals. The work that makes a deal survivable, closing the books on time and trusting what comes out, is a different story. In at least one large survey it is still done mostly by hand, and an acquisition adds entities, ledgers and tax positions to a process that is already straining.

Confidence Is Back, and Deals Are Moving Up the List

U.S. Bank surveyed 1,000 senior finance leaders between August 5 and 26, about half of them CFOs, all at businesses with at least $100 million in revenue. In the results released September 29, 68% were positive on the U.S. economy over three years, up from 58% in the spring, and 71% were positive on their own company's finances, up from 64%. M&A exploration moved into the top three strategic priorities after ranking fifth earlier in the year. Among manufacturers, 78% expect M&A activity to rise.

The optimism is long-dated. Only 41% are positive on the economy over the next 12 months, and 50% on their company's finances. Cost-cutting remains the single top priority at 37%, narrowly ahead of revenue growth at 35%. Finance leaders are weighing a deal pipeline against a budget that is still being squeezed, which means any acquisition has to pay for itself in a close and a consolidation that do not add cost.

Technology is the other pressure point. The same survey found 51% saying their AI spending exceeded budget over the past year, and 72% investing in AI and automation for productivity as a response to inflation. Adoption is uneven by size: use of agentic AI for cash forecasting runs from 23% at companies with $100 million to $250 million in revenue to 74% at those above $5 billion. An April survey of nearly 500 CFOs by Oliver Wyman and the New York Stock Exchange, reported by CFO Dive, found 70% still at the planning or piloting stage for AI in key finance activities, and 8% with AI-enabled solutions deployed at scale.

The Close Is Where Confidence Meets Reality

A separate survey shows what that foundation looks like. Odoxa polled 303 CFOs for Sixthfin at private UK companies with 250 or more employees, fielding the survey in March and publishing it September 14. It is vendor-commissioned and UK-only, so treat it as directional for a U.S. audience. Even so, the pattern is hard to ignore: 67% named improving the reliability of accounts as their top priority for the close, ahead of reducing delays at 57%, and only 42% described the way their organization manages the close as very satisfactory.

Speed is not the complaint. Some 74% close within three to eight days. The strain is in the tools and the people: 67% use Excel for account analysis and justification, 61% lean on collaborative tools such as Teams and email, and just 3% use a dedicated account reconciliation solution. A full 97% say the close affects team workload and 93% say it affects motivation. Sixthfin's chief executive, François Vallana, put it this way: "the greatest pressure sits within the review process itself."

None of these surveys measures how M&A changes the close, so the link between them is our inference rather than a finding. It is a reasonable one. A deal brings new entities, a second chart of accounts, unfamiliar tax registrations and a new set of intercompany balances. A close that depends on spreadsheets and individual know-how has little room to absorb that without slowing or losing accuracy.

What a Deal-Ready Close Looks Like

The finance teams best placed for a deal are not necessarily the ones with the most automation. They are the ones that can answer three questions quickly. Can every balance be traced to a document? Does tax compliance scale across new jurisdictions without a manual rebuild? And do the headline metrics reach the board in a form leaders trust? Each question points to a different layer, reconciliation and review, tax data and platform capacity, and the reporting that sits on top.

With 51% over budget on AI, adding another tool is not the obvious answer. Fixing the layer where reliability is lost, the review and the reconciliation, is a smaller and more defensible spend than a new initiative, and it is the one a deal will test first.

The Playbook: Make the Close Deal-Ready Before the Deal

• Measure close reliability, not just close speed: Track post-close adjustments and restatements alongside days to close, since 67% of CFOs in the Sixthfin survey rank reliability first.
• Move reconciliation out of spreadsheets: With only 3% on dedicated tools, start with the highest-risk accounts and give each a clear owner and an audit trail.
• Test the close against an acquisition: Walk through how a new entity, a second ledger and its intercompany balances would flow through your consolidation, and fix the first point that breaks.
• Check tax compliance before the signing: Map the registrations and filing obligations a target would add, and confirm your tax process can scale without manual rework.
• Fix the platform constraint early: If your ERP or accounting system is already the limit on growth, decide on migration before integration begins, not during.
• Agree the board metrics in advance: Settle the handful of numbers that will govern a deal and make sure each can be produced reliably from the ledger.