Last week’s Transform conference gathered hundreds of accounting and finance leaders for one reason: to figure out what’s next – and how to get there with confidence. Six sessions. Twelve speakers. Four and a half hours. Tons of practical insights. And 4.5 CPE credits for those who need them. From preparing for the next wave of tariffs to audit-proofing SaaS metrics to deploying AI in your close, these are the highlights you’ll want to bring back to your team.
1. *Keynote* The Future of Finance and Accounting
Featuring Rodrigo Brumana, CFO of Poshmark. Watch on-demand here.
In a candid conversation with Leapfin CEO Ray Lau, Rodrigo Brumana shared how he balances long-term thinking with short-term agility. He emphasized the strategic shift CFOs must make – from number stewards to data-enabled growth architects – and highlighted how smart infrastructure investments have helped his teams unlock speed and accuracy.
Top Takeaways:
- Uncertainty isn’t an excuse to wait – it’s a mandate to plan smarter.
When variables like tariffs, global supply shifts, and election cycles create chaos, finance leaders must scenario-plan with foresight and speed.
“We plan for the worst and expect the best. That’s the job. When you plan around uncertainty, you give yourself optionality without paralysis.” –Rodrigo Brumana, CFO, Poshmark
- The modern CFO must drive business outcomes – not just report results.
Forget passive compliance. Today’s CFO is expected to lead investment decisions, systems strategy, and cross-functional alignment.
“If all you’re doing is closing the books and reporting results, you’re not a CFO. That’s table stakes.” –Rodrigo Brumana
- Smart systems don’t just provide speed, they provide peace of mind.
Rodrigo credited Leapfin as a foundational system that helped Poshmark’s finance org become faster, more accurate, and dramatically less stressful.
“Over the past 18 months, we implemented four systems here, including Leapfin. Today, the organization has amazing working conditions. We are faster, more accurate, and – this is important – drama free. We used to wait until the end of the month to see what happened in revenue. Now with Leapfin, we have a real-time way of looking at things.”
–Rodrigo Brumana
2. Rise of the Super-Controller
Featuring VPs of Finance and Controllers from Help Scout, Guideline, and Eight Sleep. Watch on-demand here.
This powerhouse panel of female Controllers shared how their role has expanded far beyond month-end. From driving ERP transformations to influencing GTM contracts, today’s Controller is at the center of it all – and forward-thinking leaders like Alicia Arntson (Eight Sleep), Jenny Rush (Help Scout), and Rebecca Wang (Guideline) are more than up for the challenge.
Top Takeaways:
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Controllers are now embedded in strategy, not siloed in compliance.
If you’re a Controller, your FP&A partners, sales leaders, and legal teams need your insight – and they expect you to come to the table with perspective, not just reports.
“The stronger Controllers are actually business partners. We’re expected to understand the ‘why’ behind the numbers and help drive smarter decisions.” –Rebecca Wang, VP Finance & Controller, Guideline
- Tech ownership isn’t optional – it’s a core function of the role.
If Accounting teams don’t lead system design and data governance, someone else will – and that someone might not know how your debits and credits flow.
“We’re leading ERP re-implementations and flagging data governance issues across the business. Because we’re the ones who feel the pain when systems fail.” –Alicia Arntson, VP Controller, Eight Sleep
- Versatility is more valuable than headcount.
With lean teams, Controllers need people who can reconcile revenue one day and prototype automation the next.
“Everyone on my team needs to be part-accountant, part-systems thinker, and a little bit coder.” –Jenny Rush, VP Finance & Controller, Help Scout
3. Bridging the Gap: How Systems Teams Empower Accounting
Featuring Systems Leaders from SeatGeek, Poshmark, and Outschool. Watch on-demand here.
This panel dove deep into the operational disconnect that can exist between Accounting and Finance or Business Systems teams. The message? Leaders like Controllers and VPs and Directors of Finance must challenge logic, own data flows, and partner early to scale intelligently. Joe Blanchett (SeatGeek), Shiv Kapoor (Poshmark), and Luke Lohden (Outschool) showed how their teams are doing exactly that.
Top Takeaways:
- Process ownership starts with ruthless curiosity.
Automating a broken spreadsheet just digitizes bad logic. Controllers and revenue accounting teams must interrogate every formula, assumption, and dependency before turning it into a system.
- Cross-functional alignment starts with shared systems and shared goals.
Shiv described how his team at Poshmark uses Leapfin to bridge accounting and systems with real-time financial logic, custom calculations, and reporting layers.
“We’ve built calculations in Leapfin to determine profitability in different scenarios, and to route expenses to the correct accounts. And we dove into the exciting and novel Luca AI capability to configure and develop reports. Our team does the prompts, reviews the data validation, even looks at the code itself. If we want to expand a query from a week to an annual search, we can go in and easily manage that.”
–Shiv Kapoor, Head of Finance Systems, Poshmark
- Get one win, then expand.
Joe shared how his team started with revenue automation – and used that success to unlock broader strategic visibility.
“We started by automating revenue recognition with Leapfin. Now that pipeline runs like a machine – and our CFO’s asking how we can use that precision to empower FP&A and distribute data out to the business.” –Joe Blanchett, Director, Business Systems, SeatGeek
4. From Data to Decisions: The Power of Accounting-Ready Data
Featuring Michelle Cheng, CPA, Customer Solutions Manager, Leapfin. Watch on-demand here.
Leapfin’s Michelle, a CPA-turned-solutions-leader, laid out what it takes to unlock real-time visibility and eliminate reporting friction. This session was a masterclass in how accounting-ready data changes everything – from close to cash flow forecasting.
Top Takeaways:
- Finance shouldn’t have to beg for their own numbers.
Reporting bottlenecks kill agility. You need direct access to structured data that’s audit-ready, reconciled, and tailored for accounting – not just BI dashboards.
“It’s your data. You shouldn’t have to go to an engineer or analyst just to validate your own numbers.” –Michelle Cheng, Leapfin
- Reconciliations don’t have to be a weeklong project.
One e-commerce customer went from stitching 16 Excel sheets together to pulling a real-time report in seconds – with no loss in accuracy.
“Now they don’t just reconcile faster – they finally trust the numbers.” –Michelle Cheng, Leapfin
- Your reports should shape your systems – not the other way around.
The biggest reporting mistakes happen when teams structure data reactively. Instead, start with your KPIs – define the business questions first, and then build backward to design your data scheme to answer those questions.
5. AI in Action: A New Era of Revenue Data Exploration
Featuring Erik Yao, Co-Founder and CFO, Leapfin. Watch on-demand here.
To catch up the late adopters, Erik provided an easy overview of AI, including popular current examples like ChatGPT and Amazon Alexa. Then, he introduced Luca, Leapfin’s purpose-built AI agent for revenue data exploration and analysis, built specifically for Accounting and Finance teams. Unlike general AI tools, Luca speaks fluent accounting – and shows its work to build trust and confidence.
Top Takeaways:
- Luca is your new AI data analyst.
Luca writes and validates its own SQL, explores your accounting data graph, and returns structured answers to your natural language questions – not just raw data.
“You’re not sifting through reports. You’re asking questions and getting validated answers, instantly.” –Erik Yao, CTO, Leapfin
- Turn a five-day audit request into a five-second prompt.
Controllers used Luca to instantly retrieve transaction evidence, payment ties, and transaction event histories. A customer said using Luca replaced a week of BI tickets.
“The customer said, ‘Can we just give the auditors access to Luca so we don’t have to deal with them?’” –Erik Yao
- AI can spot what you can’t.
From multi-entity credits to deep reconciliation chains, Luca untangles data knots too complex for spreadsheets – without breaking controls.
6. High-Stakes SaaS Finance: The Blueprint to Audit-Proof, Board-Ready Revenue Data
Featuring Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO. Watch on-demand here.
Ben, aka The SaaS CFO, walked through what it really takes to build trust in your SaaS revenue data. If you’re preparing for audit, diligence, or board-level forecasting, this session delivered a blueprint.
Top Takeaways:
- Clean revenue categories are the foundation of confidence.
SaaS companies often blur ARR with usage or managed services. That confusion cascades through metrics, forecasts, and compliance.
“Know which revenue streams are truly recurring – and structure your chart of accounts to reflect that.” –Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO
- Your MRR schedule is your north star.
From retention to CAC payback, every core SaaS metric depends on clean MRR logic – and investors will test it.
“Treat your MRR schedule like gold. Segment by revenue type, track by customer, and reconcile it monthly.” –Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO
- Don’t co-mingle metrics – segment or be sorry.
SMB and enterprise metrics should never be averaged. Same with product lines. Segmentation reveals the real story.
“If your CAC or NRR includes every customer type, you’re looking at fiction – not a forecast.” –Ben Murray
Final Thoughts:
Across every session, one message was clear:
Finance and Accounting teams who take control of their revenue data – who structure it, explore it, and act on it – will outperform.
The systems exist. The automation is real. And with AI entering the mix and demonstrating its value, the time to modernize is now. As Rodrigo Brumana shared in the keynote, "Those that don't embrace AI could be replaced, either by AI or by those who know how to use AI."
Watch all Transform sessions on-demand here (and earn up to 4.5 CPE credits!)
