7 Key Trends for Finance and Accounting in 2025

As 2024 draws to a close, it’s time to focus on what’s coming in 2025, including expected accounting trends. Anticipating these trends now will allow business leaders to better understand the market and make more informed decisions to grow their business.

As this list will show, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely continue to linger in the business world. The pandemic accelerated business innovation, reinforcing existing trends, starting new ones, and stress-testing concepts like remote work. Many of these trends are here to stay, but the emergence of new technologies has also led to other changes in the finance space.

Here are our top expected 2025 finance trends.

1. Increased Automation

Rising automation has been a trend in business since at least the Industrial Revolution, if not before. It accelerated with the widespread adoption of computers and business management software, and again during the COVID pandemic. This trend is expected to continue, but with one key difference. In the past, automation often occurred within silos, meaning the company automated processes within one department but did not automate tasks between departments. The focus now will be on automating end-to-end processes that affect multiple departments or business areas. This type of end-to-end automation allows business to streamline operations and get the most value out of their investment.

Deloitte predicts that automation in finance will focus on using big data, analytics, and predictive modelling when creating business strategy. This will allow business leaders to make better decisions and accelerate business growth.

2. Finance Taking on Additional Functions

The finance department is expected to expand beyond its traditional role and take on additional functions. More accounting firms are expected to expand their Client Advisory Services (CAS), offering financial planning, business strategy, and technology consulting service in response to client demand.

Financial leaders will be expected to have an integrated view of business performance, including using operational issues and metrics in their financial models. Agility and adaptability, which were crucial to successfully adopting to the shock of the COVID pandemic, will continue to be key concerns in the financial space. Finance leaders must be prepared with multiple future scenarios that are responsive to changing market conditions.

3. Increased Emphasis on Sustainability Reporting

Sustainability remains a growing concern among many customers. While the sustainability market can be lucrative for companies, it also poses potential risks if they fail to meet shareholder or public expectations. Investing in sustainability initiatives can also increase production costs or cause issues with reliability if the company ends up relying on new, unproven sustainable technologies.

As environmental protection awareness grows in the business world, we predict that sustainability reporting will become a lucrative segment of the accounting industry in 2025. This means accountants will need to become proficient in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting standards, including both the Sustainability Accounting Standards Boad (SASB) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). These standards help businesses measure their sustainability performance and report it to investors and the general public. Accountants are expected to play a key role in developing and managing sustainability data collection processes.

4. More Cloud-Based ERP

Businesses have used enterprise resource planning ERP software for decades to streamline operations, cut costs, and grow market share. We expect large ERP vendors to continue adding more advanced functionality to their products and bringing more data into their ERPs. In the marketplace, more companies are likely to adopt cloud-based ERP systems. These cloud-based ERPs have lower implementation and maintenance costs and will serve as front-office drivers of business value.

5. Continued Prominence of Big Data

Data and data management has been an important business trend since the 1960s onward. With the rising adoption of the internet, social media, and ERPs and other data storage technologies, businesses are able to leverage data as never before to spot trends, avoid risks, and find new ways to connect to their customers.

For business, big data can generate profit, but it also poses risks, too. Many companies’ databases are bogged down with inaccurate, duplicate, or outdated data. Different databases may also contain misaligned data. Cleaning up the database and maintaining good data requires good processes, organizational changes, and leadership mandates.

Unfortunately, AI and increasing automation won’t fix the problem of bad data. Issues related to bad data may even get worse as companies increasingly rely on databases, ERPs, and predictive analytics. Ensuring that companies make the most out of the technological investments and aren’t hindered by bad data requires finance leaders to implement strong enterprise data strategies.

6. Cybersecurity and Data Protection

In 2024, scams and data breaches were everywhere. They’ve also become more sophisticated and harder for many consumers to detect. This trend is expected to continue in 2025, with cyber threats expected to become even more sophisticated and frequent. This means companies will need to demonstrate a firm commitment to cybersecurity and protecting customer data.

The costs of a data breach can be devastating for both businesses and customers. We expect that businesses will increase their investments in cybersecurity, including encrypting customer data. Finance leaders are likely to take a key role in these efforts along with IT.

7. Remote Work

Remote work rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the years since 2020, many workplaces have remained more flexible and embraced a combination of remote and hybrid work. However, return-to-office mandates have also become more common. In 2025, we expect that leading finance organizations will increasingly be set up to accommodate remote work. This set-up increases their access to a widely dispersed workforce and may serve as an added incentive for attracting top talent.  

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