By Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR
Accounting might not be the most exciting part of running a business, but it’s essential. No founder launches a company dreaming about reconciling receipts or wrestling with R&D tax claims. Yet neglect it, and the business unravels.
For decades, accounting has been treated as a box-ticking exercise, a compliance cost rather than a source of advantage. That mindset isn’t t just outdated; it’s about to be dismantled by a wave of embedded finance innovation that turns accounting from a burden into a growth engine. Here’s how you can take advantage of this opportunity and get your company on the right track for 2026.
The Real Accounting Problem
Take R&D tax credits. They’re meant to reward innovation, but for most small and mid-sized businesses, they’re a bureaucratic maze. Complex eligibility rules, patchy documentation, and disconnected systems mean many firms never see the money they’re entitled to.
The same dysfunction runs through VAT, payroll, and expense management. Businesses operate across systems that don’t talk to each other, drowning in manual data entry, compliance risk, and wasted time. Instead of propelling growth, accounting becomes an anchor that slows it down.
Where Embedded Finance Simplifies
Embedded finance has already transformed payments, lending, and customer loyalty. Its next frontier, and arguably its most powerful, is accounting.
Imagine a financial ecosystem where every transaction automatically lands in the books, categorised, reconciled, and ready for tax submission in real time.
R&D credits: Eligible costs are identified and queued for claim as soon as they’re incurred.
Expenses: Card payments feed directly into accounting platforms, no receipt chasing required.
Cash flow: Forecasts update dynamically as data flows through connected systems, not weeks later via spreadsheets.
This isn’t about adding another app to the pile. It’s about orchestration, weaving banking, tax, and accounting together so financial data moves seamlessly and securely across platforms.
Orchestration: The Hidden Infrastructure
Right now, banks, accounting tools, and regulators each sit on their own islands of data. Those silos are where errors, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities live.
Orchestration breaks those walls down. It’s the connective tissue that ensures when a payment leaves your account, it’s instantly logged in the right ledger, categorised correctly, and factored into your tax position. The result: no more year-end scrambles, no more lost claims, no more wasted effort.
Why This Moment Matters – very chat, change it up
Rising regulatory pressure and shrinking margins leave no room for inefficiency. For SMEs, missing a tax credit or misreporting VAT isn’t just annoying, it’s existential.
Meanwhile, customers expect seamless digital experiences in every other part of their financial lives. Why should accounting still feel like 1997?
Embedded finance and orchestration together create the infrastructure for real-time accounting, where compliance happens automatically and insights surface instantly. The payoff isn’t just time saved; it’s clarity, accuracy, and the ability to make faster, better financial decisions.
The End and the Beginning
Let’s be honest: founders shouldn’t have to double as tax experts and CFOs shouldn’t spend days reconciling systems that were never designed to work together.
The traditional back office, with its silos, spreadsheets, and month-end panic, is finished. In its place is an orchestrated financial ecosystem that does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Compliance becomes automatic and insights appear in real time.
The businesses that embrace this shift will outpace those that don’t, not just by being more efficient, but by being more strategic.
The back office is dead because orchestration killed it. Accounting is shaping up to be more like a vehicle for growth than a stationary mechanism.
