From burnout to breakthrough: Inside the ‘Fourth Age’ of finance

Moving into 2026, intelligent automation is redefining the finance function – with automation, processes improvement and better data integration restoring balance for accounting and finance professionals and driving the industry towards a new age.

In the current market, accounting and finance teams are being pushed to their limits. Burnout is rising, talent pipelines are thinning, and finance leaders are expected to deliver sharper insight and guidance than ever before, often while relying on tools and processes built for a different era.

According to BlackLine group vice president and APAC general manager Mac Weaver, this pressure isn’t simply the result of workload, but of a system still trapped between old eras of spreadsheets and ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning software systems).

As a result, intelligent automation is becoming more than a technology upgrade and can drive the profession towards sustainable, future-ready finance functions, making work more efficient and protecting teams against burnout.

This notion is something Weaver echoed in a recent webinar as part of BlackLine’s 2025 Finance Innovation Series: The future ready platform for the CFO, where he said the demands of the profession have evolved.

“Five or 10 years ago, a CFO could scrape by with surface level briefings, educated guesses, summary level information, perspectives that are often held together with hope and the sweat equity of an overworked team,” he said.

“That's no longer enough. Effort alone will not get us there.”

In the webinar, Weaver distilled the accounting and finance professions down into three ages: the age of the ledger, where double entry bookkeeping gave the profession a “single trusted source of truth”; the age of Excel; and the age of the ERP, which consolidated key systems and sources of business transaction into a single platform.

The “Fourth Age”, according to Weaver, is the “age of intelligent autonomous finance” and will be defined by “real time insight based on consolidated accurate data, allowing us to deliver impact as a strategic function”.

“The ‘Fourth Age’ of finance is about shifting focus and actively guiding the business forward. In practical terms, this means automating the manual processes that slow the close, like account reconciliations, and freeing up time for more strategic work,” he told Accountants Daily.

Key areas for finance and accounting teams to prioritise

For organisations to begin this journey and use tech to advance business, rather than reacting to it, leaders in the finance function should prioritise three key areas: process and data, technology and people.

According to Weaver, implementing a culture of having a “growth mindset” should be the first step.

“True transformation and preparedness comes from fundamentally rethinking how the work is done, demanding a culture of rebuilding your foundations in conjunction with change, not in reaction to and by leveraging an enterprise platform to help guide the way,” he said during the webinar.

When it comes to data, the purpose is simple: to make informed decisions. Yet in many organisations, data remains trapped in silos, scattered across systems and teams, and ultimately under-utilised. Fragmentation forces leaders to fall back on gut feel, not insight. But when data is centralised, accurate, and connected, it stops being a collection of numbers and becomes something far more valuable: actionable intelligence that drives decisions and outcomes.

This year alone, 70 per cent of finance leaders across APAC have admitted to using inaccurate data to make strategic decisions – something Weaver said was unsurprising.

“That statistic doesn’t surprise me at all, and it’s because the root cause isn’t just a system flaw; it’s a process flaw. ERPs have a gap in the financial close and finance teams use spreadsheets to bridge that gap, creating an endless, manual cycle of exporting data, manipulating it, and re-uploading it, hoping it all ties back,” he said.

This, according to Weaver, should be a key priority for finance leaders, particularly in light of AI transforming work skills and causing a “seismic shift” across the profession.

“Instead of trying to bridge the gap with a manual spreadsheet, intelligent automation creates a direct, controlled link to your ERP and other data sources. The system does the heavy lifting; automating reconciliations and matching millions of transactions in minutes to proactively find the exceptions and flag the risks,” he said.

“It closes the accuracy gap by eliminating the very manual steps that create the errors, giving you a foundation of data you can actually trust to guide the business.”

Modern finance tools can also model and stress-test business scenarios, alerting stakeholders with timely tactical and strategic insights. Together, these capabilities push finance and accounting teams toward what they are increasingly expected to become: a proactive, insight-led strategic powerhouse, Weaver said in the webinar.

“For trusted organisations like BlackLine, who have decades of domain expertise, our AI solutions aren't just marketing stories, rather a layer of business applications that will transform how companies work. The technology is finally giving us a forward-facing view,” he emphasised.

“Instead of just reporting on last period's results, we can model what happened next. Now more than ever, this is what it means to be a proactive strategic business partner using the right tools to move us to the age of intelligent, autonomous finance.”

Lastly, intelligent automation can also relieve burnout and assist with the talent crisis in accounting, with Weaver emphasising that people are “the most important” element in organisations reaching the “Fourth Age” of finance.

“By automating the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that burn out our best people, we free them to focus on what truly matters; analysis, strategy and partnership,” he added.

“This is how we solve the talent crisis. This is how we enable the next stage of autonomous, intelligent finance. This is how we upscale our teams, by turning the spreadsheet wizard of yesterday into the strategic advisor of tomorrow.”