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There's a calculation most finance leaders run when they have an open accounting role: the cost of the salary they're not paying. That's the wrong number to watch.
The real cost of an accounting vacancy isn't the unfilled headcount. It's everything that quietly breaks while the seat stays empty: delayed closes, reconciliations that slip, AR that doesn't go out on time, a Controller pulled back into the weeds, or A CFO fielding questions about invoices that should have been handled two weeks ago.
None of that shows up as a line item. But it shows up. An open seat in your accounting team costs more than the salary you're not paying. Most companies don't start counting until it's already expensive.
This is the part that catches companies off guard. When an accountant leaves or a planned hire falls through, the assumption is that things will slow down a bit until the role gets filled. What actually happens is that the work redistributes onto whoever is left.
For a lean accounting team, which describes most growth-stage companies, that redistribution has immediate consequences. Month-end close takes longer, AP invoices get coded late, or the AR aging report stops getting the attention it needs. The people absorbing that overflow are doing it on top of their existing jobs, which means something in their actual job is slipping too.
There's also a compounding problem: a two-week delay in the close creates a backlog; a six-week vacancy creates a mess that takes longer to clean up than the vacancy itself lasted; and the longer those books lag, the less reliable your financial picture becomes, which matters more than most companies realize until it suddenly matters a lot.
Rob Owen at MyRunwayHealth – whose platform gives founders real-time visibility into cash position and burn rate – has written about how most founders aren't actually watching the right numbers.
"Most founders think they know their cash position. What they actually know is their cash position as of the last close, which is likely weeks old and adjusted manually for whatever's come in since. That's not the same number. When your accounting team has a vacancy, your financial picture has one too, and they tend to compound each other. And a compounding financial picture reaches into every corner of your business."
The same is true here. A vacancy in the accounting function doesn't just create an operational slowdown. It creates an information problem. Decisions get made on data that's weeks old, forecasts built on books that haven't closed, and cash runway calculations that quietly stop being accurate.
Even before you count the downstream operational impact, filling an accounting role costs real time and real money.
Internal HR teams spend weeks sourcing, screening, and passing candidates to the hiring manager – and that's before interviews, offers, and negotiations. For finance and accounting roles specifically, HR teams often don't have the domain knowledge to filter well, which means hiring managers end up reviewing a lot of profiles that don't fit. External recruiters solve the sourcing problem but introduce their own friction: fees, no real skin in the game on quality, and timelines that still stretch months for mid-level roles.
Job boards produce volume. Volume requires time. Time is the thing finance leaders have the least of.
The accounting talent shortage in the US aggravates all of this. The pipeline of accounting graduates has been declining for years, and the mid-level talent most growth-stage companies actually need – people who can own a close without constant supervision – is getting harder and more expensive to find domestically. Companies still holding out for a full-time US-based hire for every accounting role are going to keep running into the same problem.
The subtler cost – and arguably the most important – is what an open accounting role does to the people working around it.
Controllers get pulled back into hands-on accounting work when a Senior Accountant leaves. That's not where their time creates the most value, and they know it. CFOs find themselves fielding closely related questions they shouldn't have to touch. The remaining accounting staff are overloaded, which increases their own error rate and, eventually, their own likelihood of leaving.
If you have an open accounting role right now, start the clock on what it's actually costing you – not the salary, but the close timeline, the AR aging, the CFO hours, the morale of the team covering the gap. That number is almost always larger than people expect. And it grows the longer the seat stays empty.
This article is part of a series made in collaboration with MyRunwayHealth. Read more here:
What a Stale Cash Forecast Is Really Costing You (Coming soon!)
The CFO Tax: What Happens When Finance Leaders Do Accounting Work (Coming soon!)
The Numbers That Look Fine Until They Don't (Coming soon!)
MyRunwayHealth gives startups and small businesses real-time visibility into cash flow, burn rate, and runway — without the spreadsheet upkeep. Its AI engine, Merlin, connects to your existing accounting tools and keeps your financial picture current as money moves. Start a free 7-day trial here.
The hard costs include recruiting fees, hiring manager time, and any temp coverage you bring in. The softer costs – delayed closes, slower AR collection, overflow onto senior staff – are typically larger and accumulate the longer the role stays open.
Through traditional channels – job boards, internal HR, external recruiters – mid-level accounting roles often take two to four months to fill. For companies running lean teams, that's a significant gap.
For many accounting functions like month-end close support, AP/AR, and reconciliations, yes. The key is vetting. Global talent varies widely in quality, and the most effective placements come from professionals with US GAAP experience, strong communication skills, and familiarity with the tools your team actually uses.
Controllers are typically the most immediately impacted, absorbing hands-on work that pulls them away from oversight. CFOs are next – they end up managing reporting gaps that should be handled below them.
MAVI maintains a pre-vetted pool of senior accounting talent, which eliminates most of the sourcing and screening time. Candidates are matched to your specific role requirements, tech stack, and working style. Placements can begin within five business days of intake.