FloQast: How AI Transforms Accounting & Finance Functions

Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are navigating a perfect storm: talent shortages, escalating expectations from CEOs and boards, and the friction of global operations. Against this backdrop of complexity, AI has emerged as the essential lever for teams to maintain velocity and accuracy.

Mike Whitmire, CPA (Inactive), FCA, Co-Founder and CEO of the accounting transformation platform FloQast, has seen this evolution from the front lines. With a career spanning audit and private industry accounting for software-as-a-service companies, Mike is intimately familiar with the industry's systemic bottlenecks.

These challenges were the catalyst for FloQast. The platform initially solved for the month-end close and reconciliations for technology-forward firms. Today, FloQast has scaled to more than 800 employees across multiple global hubs, evolving from a niche tool into a comprehensive accounting transformation platform.

FloQast’s trajectory mirrors the ingenuity of its users. Controllers began leveraging the platform to manage every internal workflow, far beyond the close process. Mike describes this organic shift as customers "hacking" the application to centralise their operations.

“We found that a fifth of our customers had hacked FloQast for at least one non-close workflow,” Mike explains. “So we said, ‘all right, let’s lean into that.’”

This realisation led to the development of FloQast Ops, a solution that allowed teams to formally create and manage specific workflows outside the close process. However, the mission didn’t stop at mere management. By observing how users were utilising Ops to track complex manual tasks, FloQast identified the next frontier: moving from management to automation.

This insight catalysed the creation of FloQast Transform. Building directly on the foundation of the Ops workflow, Transform empowers teams to build and deploy AI Agents that actually execute the tasks within those workflows.

“This is a prime example of our ‘by accountants, for accountants’ philosophy in action,” Mike notes. “We saw our users striving for more control over non-close processes, so we built the management framework. Then, we saw them drowning in the manual steps within those processes, and we knew we could use AI to help automate them. It’s a constant feedback loop that ensures we’re solving real-world friction, not just theoretical problems.”

This evolution from Ops to Transform illustrates FloQast’s commitment to upskilling the profession. By providing the tools to build custom agents, the platform allows accountants to move from being the preparers of data to the architects and reviewers of automated systems.

Responding to a fundamental shift in accounting operations

AI is accelerating a structural change in how professional teams operate – and the accounting profession is no different. The shift moves away from manual, repetitive data entry toward analytical and strategic partnership.

“What excites me about FloQast is the opportunity to help teams collaborate more effectively,” Mike says. “Freeing up their time is incredibly energising, and seeing that transformation in real-time is rewarding. When I think back to when I was doing the work, the stuff that we’re automating isn’t the stuff that I enjoyed doing. The things accountants will have time to do when they’re automating these incredibly manual tasks are much more strategic and, honestly, rewarding as a professional.”

FloQast specifically targets a crisis currently plaguing the US market: the significant accounting talent gap. With the number of accounting graduates falling behind economic demand, and more accountants retiring or leaving the profession entirely, Mike identifies three primary methods organisations are using to bridge the void:

• Outsourcing: Shifting transactional accounting functions to offshore locations
• Technological Investment: Utilising software to drive efficiency gains
• Labour Inflation: Pushing existing teams to work excessive, unsustainable hours.

“This is the reality of the industry today,” Mike notes. However, these trends are exactly what prompted FloQast to act. As excessive hours create a cycle of burnout and low retention, AI offers a human-centric path forward.

“We build technology that automates repetitive work,” Mike explains. “It allows accountants to think critically, be more strategic and ultimately, be more impactful. We want to move people out of spreadsheets and manual reconciliations so they can focus on high-value initiatives that can impact the business’ bottom line.”

For Mike, FloQast’s mission transcends mere efficiency – it is about fundamentally evolving the nature of accounting work itself to ensure the profession remains viable and vibrant.

Building the foundation for accounting AI success 

AI is only as powerful as the foundation it sits on. In the high-stakes, regulated world of finance, impact is reserved for those who master the triad of structured data, unified workflows and absolute process integrity.

“The cleanliness of the data requires you to understand the purpose of the data,” Mike says. “The accountant is the one who knows the purpose best. They’re in the best position to plug it into FloQast and undertake automation with it. Data is hyper important and it extends into who’s working with the data.”

FloQast is demoing its latest product, Data Studio, which is scheduled for a full release later this year. The tool allows accountants to map any dataset against any external systems their teams use, representing a significant shift from standard integrations to a truly agnostic data layer. Whether integrating with internal file transfer protocols or warehouse management systems producing data, FloQast ingests information, crucially enabling the accountants to perform this work themselves, rather than the process being fully automated without any human control or oversight.

Mike says: “The more data you have, the more context you can give AI. It goes back to our philosophy of “by accountants, for accountants” – if we can empower accountants to figure out a way to get that data into the application, they know how it should be structured, what matters and how the data should be mapped. ”

FloQast’s philosophy permeates every corner of its operations. The company hires extensively from accounting backgrounds throughout its organisation, including sales roles. Built on a flexible AWS backbone, the platform is designed to align across  accounting standards. Whether companies use cash or accrual accounting, generally accepted accounting principles or international financial reporting standards, the platform adapts. Whether you operate under GAAP, IFRS, cash or accrual, FloQast doesn’t just support your methodology – it masters it.

The partnership with AWS extends beyond infrastructure, too. “We use AWS’ tooling and their solution to build our product, but we also have a business relationship with them where many companies use AWS internally for managing systems or hosting data, meaning they often buy it on a credit-based system,” Mike says. “The programme we have with AWS allows our customers to move their contract onto the AWS credits and effectively pay for FloQast through unused AWS credits. The benefit there is AWS has a partner collecting the dollars instead of them losing them. For FloQast, the benefit is obvious – it makes it effectively free. It’s a really nice win-win partnership.”

Emphasising the human side of AI adoption

Successful AI adoption requires more than just technical implementation, it demands a fundamental mindset shift. For the transition to be effective, every stakeholder must be aligned on a unified vision of how human expertise and machine efficiency coexist.

“I’ll say it again, but a key area of our core focus areas is ensuring that accountants own the future of accounting with AI,” Mike says. “That is non-negotiable. When you look at how automation is deployed, there are two hurdles: domain expertise and technical build capacity. AI has accelerated our ability to build tools rapidly, which makes it incumbent upon us to put that power directly into the hands of the domain experts. Accountants are now the ones supervising AI agents and refining the automation of their own workflows.”

This “accountant-first” philosophy ensures that every feature is designed for ease of use, management and deployment. The goal is to drive operational impact by giving professionals the cognitive space to think strategically rather than being buried in manual tasks

The trust and auditability mandate

In a highly regulated environment, trust is the ultimate currency. If AI systems cannot be audited, the consequences are severe. While this is true in any sector, the stakes are exponentially higher in accounting.

“Our platform is flexible enough to adapt to the specific needs of any business while adhering to varying regulatory frameworks,” Mike explains. “The real risk with technology emerges during the audit. If AI is deployed in a ‘black box’ manner that lacks transparency, it presents significant material risk. We have to think today about how the technology we deploy will stand up to scrutiny a year from now when the auditors arrive.”

To mitigate this, FloQast Transform embodies the mission of compliant innovation. It places AI power directly within the platform, allowing for high-impact automation that still requires human accounting knowledge for proper configuration and oversight. By prioritising auditability, FloQast ensures that the move toward AI-driven efficiency never comes at the expense of professional integrity.

How partners drive transformation

Reflecting on FloQast’s journey, Mike highlights that strategic implementation partnerships have been essential to the platform’s evolution. The company now strategically segments its partner ecosystem to meet specific market demands. For instance, alliances with global advisory firms facilitate enterprise-level implementations for large-scale accounts, while specialised mid-market partners provide deep expertise in specific industry verticals.

“Building out this ecosystem has been vital,” Mike says. “Given the scale of our platform and the breadth of the opportunity ahead, these partnerships are mission-critical.”

Mike acknowledges that FloQast’s mid-market origins occasionally created perception challenges when moving upmarket. However, deep integrations with leading cloud infrastructure providers and validation from global leaders have proven invaluable in demonstrating enterprise-grade capabilities to CFOs at the world's largest companies.

“I can advocate for our enterprise readiness all day, but when a major global consultancy validates it to a CFO, it carries a different level of authority,” Mike says.

Eyes on the horizon

From its initial focus on the month-end close to its current status as a global leader in accounting transformation, FloQast remains focused on further expansion.

“The last 12-18 months have been dedicated to preparing the organisation for its next phase of growth,” Mike explains. “We have moved through a period of significant transition and are now in a position of operational stabilisation, ready to execute. Our focus is squarely on customer success – ensuring our users love the platform while we fulfill our mission of helping accountants lead the AI-driven evolution of the profession.”

For Mike, the pieces are finally in place. “I feel like we’re at a point where it’s all coming together, and we’re driving more value than ever for our customers,” he says.