April 28, 2026
There’s a strange thing happening in finance meetings across the US and Canada right now.
A business owner sits down with their accountant and asks: “Why is cash so tight when the P&L says we’re profitable?” That same week, a CFO walks into a board meeting and gets: “What does the 2026 forecast look like — and what’s our exposure to tariffs?”
Different rooms. Different relationships. But underneath, the same anxiety. The economy feels like it should be settling down, and instead it keeps finding new ways to be complicated. Interest rates stayed higher for longer than anyone budgeted for. Tariff policy is shifting faster than supply chains can adapt. And the questions landing on finance professionals’ desks — whether they sit inside a business or advise one from the outside — have a new edge to them. People don’t just want to know what happened last quarter. They want to know what’s about to happen next.
In March 2026, Fathom surveyed 370 finance professionals across three regions in our State of Financial Stroytelling Report. 187 of those responses came from the US and Canada — a mix of in-house finance leaders (CFOs, Controllers, VPs of Finance) and accounting professionals (CPAs, Fractional CFOs, Advisory Managers, Bookkeepers). What came back is a picture of two groups navigating the same economic moment from different angles, facing remarkably similar pressure, and arriving at the same conclusion about what it takes to stay ahead of it.
Cash. It’s the first thing clients ask their accountants about. It’s the first thing boards ask their CFOs about. And across the entire North American dataset, it came up more than anything else.
45% of respondents flagged cash flow as a top question this quarter.
For accountants: 46%. For in-house teams: 42%. Cash is universal.
But the way cash comes up in each context sounds completely different.
When a client asks their accountant about cash, the question tends to be raw and sometimes a little panicked. “How much do I need in reserve?” “Why is cash so tight when my numbers look fine?” “Will I run out if I don’t hit my projection?” One accountant described a client asking three questions that were really all the same question: what’s my runway, can I afford to hire, and what happens if the revenue doesn’t come through?
When a board asks a CFO about cash, the framing is more structured but no less urgent. “What is our free cash flow?” “Where are we versus budget?” “What is our safety net?” A CEO in our survey boiled it down to those exact three things — and noted that the safety net question was the one that came up every single meeting.
Same underlying concern. Same need for clarity. Two very different conversations happening simultaneously across North America.
Here’s something that jumped out of the data.
11% of accountants said hiring decisions were a top client question.
Not an HR question — a forecasting question in disguise.
That might not sound dramatic on its own, but look at how the question is being framed: “Can I afford to hire?” “What’s the P&L impact if I add or downsize staff?” “What does the budget look like if we bring on two people next month?”
These aren’t HR questions dressed up in financial language. They’re business owners standing at a crossroads and asking the person they trust with their numbers to help them decide which way to go. One Fractional CFO described building three separate forecast scenarios — each with a different staffing model — so the client could see the financial impact of each path side by side. Another talked about mapping hiring scenarios alongside return-on-equity calculations that didn’t live neatly in the books.
In-house teams are hearing a version of this too, but it’s packaged differently. Their boards are asking about headcount efficiency, staff utilization, and whether the team is scaled correctly for the revenue they’re generating. Same question, bigger spreadsheet.
What’s interesting is that these hiring conversations are really forecasting conversations in disguise. Nobody can answer “can I afford to hire?” with a backward-looking P&L. You need a forward view. You need scenarios. You need to show what the cash position looks like three, six, twelve months out under different assumptions. And that’s exactly where the best finance professionals — on both sides of this conversation — are spending their time with Fathom Forecasting Tools.
34% said profitability and margins were a top question this quarter.
For in-house teams, profitability questions are tangled up with growth. For accountants, they’re about granular detail.
For in-house teams, 33% cited revenue and growth alongside profitability — their boards want to know not just whether the business is making money, but which parts of it are worth scaling. Which product lines actually generate margin? Which clients look healthy on paper but cost more to serve than they bring in? One VP of Finance described being asked for unit economics by product line in the same breath as a runway question. A Chief Strategy Officer got asked about the debt service coverage ratio, revenue targets, and vendor obligations — all in the same meeting.
For accountants, the profitability question is often more direct. Clients want to know their gross margin by service line, by class, by client. They want to understand where the money is actually going — not in a general sense, but in a “show me which of my five locations is dragging down the average” sense. A CEO of an advisory firm put it bluntly: which clients are actually profitable, and which are draining margin?
This level of detail is harder to deliver than a headline P&L number. It takes segmented data, clean categorization, and a reporting tool setup that can slice the picture multiple ways without starting from scratch each time. The finance professionals who are good at this have built it into their routine. The ones who aren’t are spending the night before every board meeting or client review trying to pull the story together from raw data.
Here’s the stat that ties the whole North American picture together.
31% mentioned forecasting or projections as a core question this quarter.
“What does 2026 look like?” “What happens if we land a million-dollar contract — what does the P&L and cash flow look like then?” “Give me best case and worst case revenue projections.”
One Finance Manager described a board that wanted three things in every meeting: the cash projection for the next twelve months, a version of that projection with staff added, and another version with a large new contract factored in. That’s not reporting. That’s modeling multiple futures in real time and being ready to talk through each one.
For accountants, the forecasting pressure shows up as client expectations that have clearly shifted. Clients used to be satisfied with a monthly report. Now they want to see where things are headed. They want scenarios. One Advisory Manager described using templated reports as a foundation, then tailoring each one per client and using microforecasts to map out specific possibilities — adjusting amounts and timelines until the picture made sense. A Director of Virtual CFO services listed their standard toolkit as cash flow forecasts, scenario modeling across best, base, and worst cases, margin trend analysis, and variance reporting — all layered together, not delivered one piece at a time.
This is where the survey data gets genuinely encouraging. 32% of North American respondents are using forecasting tools regularly. And the ones getting the most value aren’t just running a single forecast and calling it done. They’re combining forecasts with KPI dashboards, layering cash flow analysis on top of custom reports, and building scenario models that let them answer the “what if” questions before anyone has to ask.
Something is shifting in how North American finance professionals think about what they actually do.
An accountant used to be the person who told you what your numbers were. Now the best ones are the person who tells you what your numbers mean — and what to do about them. One strategic advisor in our survey said it directly: it’s not that clients are asking new questions, it’s that their firm is now driving the conversation, challenging clients to rethink spending, realign overhead, and plan ahead rather than react.
A CFO used to be the person who reported results. Now they’re the person who walks in with three versions of the future already modeled and says “here’s what happens under each scenario — which direction do you want to go?”
Both roles have shifted from backward-looking to forward-looking. From reactive to prepared. From reporting on the past to shaping what happens next.
The people doing it well haven’t discovered some secret. They’ve invested the time in building a setup that means when the hard question lands — and it always lands — the answer is already there. The forecast is current. The scenarios are built. The data is segmented the way the board or the client needs to see it.
In an economy that keeps testing everyone’s assumptions, that readiness is the most valuable thing a finance professional can bring to the table.
Roman Villard, CPA and founder of Full Send, modeled his answers to some of these main questions clients are asking and how he answers them in Fathom – watch the full recording to see how a forward-looking answer to your clients questions looks in practice.
The questions from your board and your clients aren’t getting simpler. But the right toolkit means you’re always ready for them.
If you want to see how Fathom helps finance leaders and accountants across North America build that forward-looking setup — from cash flow scenarios and margin deep-dives to forecasts that hold up when someone asks “but what if?” — we’d love to show you around.
Start your free trial today. No credit card required. Just you, your data, and the confidence to answer whatever comes next.
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Based on the Fathom Q4 FY26 Pulse Survey, conducted in March 2026. 370 responses from accountants and SMB finance teams across the Americas, UK, Australia and New Zealand, and rest of world.
Mallory is a campaign marketing manager at Fathom, with a background in sales, field marketing, and growth marketing across sectors. She's driven by helping finance teams discover how Fathom can make a real impact on their day-to-day.
