Small Business Shared Interest Group

Today I watched a webinar through the IMA Minneapolis Chapter and I have been reading about the talent shortage for Accounting & Finance professionals. In my opinion and experience, the talent shortage is evident in small businesses. Especially small businesses located in rural communities. I myself rely on an assistant with no accounting background to handle data entry, as finding talent proved challenging. I know of people in other organizations who do bookkeeping without any formal training. The scarcity of skilled Accounting & Finance professionals might be putting small businesses in a vulnerable position in their decision making abilities. My thought is that due to the talent shortage, small businesses might be missing the skills needed use financial data to its fullest potential to make good business decisions. However, a great opportunity exists for skilled Finance & Accounting professionals to practice their leadership skills to assist a small business owner with utilizing financial data to make good business decisions.

What are yours thoughts on the talent shortage and how it affects small businesses? 

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Samuel Smith, MBA,CMA
Controller/Office Manager/HR Manager
Kirksville, MO
United States
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I started my career in a small Idaho town. It was the largest town within a 30 minute drive and boasted a whopping 50,000 population. My pay rate tripled when I moved to Miami, Florida. It's not a talent shortage, but more of a pricing problem.

Accounting education focuses on transactions and scenarios that 95% of small business accounting will never experience. Not one of my clients was listed in the stock exchange so those MONTHS of learning about the various ways publicly-traded companies buy back stock, issue stock, and provide dividends was way too long to focus on. The same can be said of the certification tests. They focus on what the really big companies worry about, not what the majority of businesses actually have problems with. The reason is because most of the money is in those big businesses. Small businesses get the scraps. Small businesses can't afford to pay their accounting staff the same rate larger companies do.

Another problem is that most small business owners don't see the value in having a well-trained and educated accounting staff. Accounting for most companies is not seen as a profit-producing department so they find the cheapest they can get away with.

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David Belnap, CMA, CSCA, CPA
David.Belnap@...
Pembroke Pines, FL
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Thank You @David Belnap for your response. I agree with your thoughts, especially with the training/education being strongly focused on big business transactions. I was fortunate to begin my formal training journey at a community college that taught small business scenarios. I can understand that small businesses don't have the resources to offer competitive pay packages or may not see the value in good accounting staff. In my experience, creating value for the accounting position in a small business meant working closely with the business owners teaching/learning how to use the financial data to make business decisions. 

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Samuel Smith, MBA,CMA
Controller/Office Manager/HR Manager
Kirksville, MO
United States
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Samuel,

I agree with David and your opinions on this matter.  Another focal point is that less people are going into the accounting field in college these days.  This trend has been happening for awhile, but has started becoming more noticeable as our peers are retiring, people are moving up to these higher positions, and the low level account positions can not get filled.  While AI and other automation can assist with this clerical tasks, your middle accountants are still shrinking, leaving less people to back fill as there are retirements.

One way that some companies in the mid-west have been doing is to ensure a good benefit package to find and retain talented people.  I know with my company, we have eliminated clerical positions by automating and making process improvements.  This did not eliminate positions, but allowed us to streamline the processes to have the acct department focus on more "value added" tasks.

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James Ward CMA
Chief Financial Officer
Coxs Creek KY
United States
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-22-2025 05:51 PM
From: Samuel Smith
Subject: Talent Shortage

Thank You @David Belnap for your response. I agree with your thoughts, especially with the training/education being strongly focused on big business transactions. I was fortunate to begin my formal training journey at a community college that taught small business scenarios. I can understand that small businesses don't have the resources to offer competitive pay packages or may not see the value in good accounting staff. In my experience, creating value for the accounting position in a small business meant working closely with the business owners teaching/learning how to use the financial data to make business decisions. 

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Samuel Smith, MBA,CMA
Controller/Office Manager/HR Manager
Kirksville, MO
United States
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Thanks you guys for engaging in such a lively chat @James Ward @Samuel Smith @David Belnap

I saw this email chain.

Wanted to ask - is this just based on the webinar, and local personal 1st level observations?

The general labor market is not tight, despite the BLS data, if you unpack it. The unemployment rate is very high if you adjust it back to normalcy.

The number of openings at large companies as another matter, is to misrepresentative, because large companies tend to keep positions open for the "diamond in the rough", they also tend to cycle through positions periodically opening and closing them with hopes of securing unusual exceptional talent.

We have had conversations in media and mentions here and there that open positions on LinkedIn for example or other job boards for  (including heavily weighted toward professional sector) the jobs receive hundreds of applications within hours. There are many other factors to indicate that things are not as tight and that the demand may not be all there as a general across the country.

I agree on training and experience, the path into the profession and junior positions.

I started my career and finished all my schooling in NYC - Deloitte, investment banking, then I went further south, now I live in Florence, SC, city of 40K and county of 150K people. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree w the group in re service offerings ad market differences.

I too went to a community college first, I think many did. It could be wise monetarily, convenience, to get grades up...

 

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Ilya Ilienko, dual MBA, CPA, CMA
Board Member / Director
East Coast - United States
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James, 

Thank You for your input. Like you said, shrinking accounting enrollments is noticeable now. I think your company responded well to the situation. Improving processes to allow accountants with more time to focus on value adding tasks is definitely important. Less paper pushing. I know when I took over at my company 8 1/2 years ago there was a major need to improve processes.

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Samuel Smith, MBA,CMA
Controller/Office Manager/HR Manager
Kirksville, MO
United States
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Thank You @Ilya Ilienko for your input on the employment situation. Yes, my post is based on the webinar and personal observations. The "Diamond in the Rough" goes with my thought that there is an opportunity for Finance & Accounting professionals to take on a leadership position of utilizing their skills to assist small business owners with discovering the value of utilizing financial data to make good business decisions. As through my observations, positions are being filled by unskilled people to handle bookkeeping/financial reporting thus a shortage of talent/skills not necessarily a shortage of people.  

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Samuel Smith, MBA,CMA
Controller/Office Manager/HR Manager
Kirksville, MO
United States
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@Samuel Smith - your original point resonated and continues to resonate w me.  I do notice that there is a very large number of people entering or switching to beginning level and mid-level bookkeeping and fin reporting roles. Many of whom are not well-equipped for the reasons of education/training/(lack of drive)/coming from adjacent but mildly related fields so on . . . like I said its a deep topic and we can share and engage on it from many angles. Its a super thoughtful fluff-less thread you created. Kudos my friend!  Chime in you guys?!?!

(Looking for a friend in you)

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Ilya Ilienko, dual MBA, CPA, CMA
Board Member / Director
East Coast - United States
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