A Finance Leader's Guide to the 2026 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition

From August 15 to 18, 2026, association professionals from across the country will gather in Indianapolis for the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition, held at the Indiana Convention Center.  For CFOs, controllers, and finance directors, it is one of the few points in the year to step outside the daily routine and compare notes with peers who understand the financial and operational realities of running a modern association.

SoundPost will be exhibiting at booth 1225.  Before heading to the exhibit hall, finance professionals should think about how to get the most from a program that spans more than 100 education sessions.  This guide highlights the sessions, main-stage speakers, and events most likely to serve finance teams working on reporting, planning, systems, and board engagement.

Finance Sessions Worth Your Time

The 2026 program includes a focused set of sessions built specifically for finance leaders.  The four below are the finance-oriented education sessions currently on the published schedule.

Turning Financial Data Into Strategy: Benchmarking Financial Performance

Monday, August 17, 10:30 to 11:00 AM, Room 238-239 Speakers: Thomas Nordby, CAE (CliftonLarsonAllen LLP) and Joy Davis (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists)

This session works through benchmarking association financial performance using operating ratio metrics, drawing on ASAE's Association Finance & Operations Navigator.  t is useful for finance leaders who want to connect peer comparison data to budgeting, board conversations, and planning, rather than treating ratios as an end in themselves.

No-Surprise Budgets: A Financial Planning Framework for Annual Meetings

Monday, August 17, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM, Sagamore 6 Speaker: Cameron Magee (avad3)

A practical framework for building defensible budgets for annual meetings and other high-stakes events.  The content covers core cost drivers, forecasting for variables such as labor and venue, and the communication of trade-offs to executives and volunteer leadership.  For finance leaders who own event P&Ls or referee cross-functional planning, this addresses a recurring source of variance.

One CFO's Blueprint for AI-Powered Association Operations

Monday, August 17, 2:00 to 3:00 PM, Sagamore 2 Speaker: Gregory Cohen, CPA (Chief Financial and Operations Officer, American Society of Landscape Architects)

A CFO's account of applying AI to reporting, KPI automation, and self-updating reports, with attention to where AI produces quick wins and where it requires deeper investment in systems and data. Relevant for finance leaders evaluating automation against team capacity and budget.

Financial Storytelling: Engage Boards and Prove Your Impact

Tuesday, August 18, 9:00 to 10:00 AM, Room 234-235 Speaker: Jackie McLaughlin, CPA (Chazin)

A session on translating balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow reports into narratives that boards, staff, and funders can act on. For finance leaders who present regularly and want to connect financial performance to mission outcomes, this offers a repeatable framing approach.

A suggested sequence

Taken together, these four sessions form a coherent arc for a finance leader: benchmarking and ratios, budgeting and forecasting, technology and AI in operations, and board-facing communication.  Monday carries three of the four, so finance-focused attendees will want to plan that day carefully.

Worth a look beyond the finance track

Two sessions filed under other tracks may also reward a finance audience. When Dashboards Deceive: Leading Beyond the Numbers (Tuesday, August 18, 10:15 to 11:15 AM, Room 236-237) examines how KPIs and dashboards can embed hidden assumptions and mislead decision-makers, a useful counterpoint for anyone who owns the metrics leadership relies on.  The AMS Exodus? Why Best-of-Need Is Gaining Ground (Monday, August 17, 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM, Room 236-237) looks at associations moving from all-in-one platforms toward more flexible technology ecosystems, a shift with direct consequences for how financial data flows from revenue systems into accounting.

Main Stage

The keynote lineup runs across all three main days:

• Oz Pearlman, Emmy Award-winning mentalist and author, on Sunday, August 16.
• Amy Edmondson, the Harvard Business School professor known for her work on psychological safety and "the right kind of wrong," on Monday, August 17.
• Van Jones, CNN host and Emmy Award-winning producer, closing the meeting on Tuesday, August 18.

Catalyst speakers include Anthony McLean, Sheri Jacobs, and Justin Patton.

Beyond the Sessions: Connection and Community

ASAE Annual is also a chance to reconnect with peers and see a city investing heavily in its convention infrastructure. Several events anchor the week.

Opening Celebration, Saturday, August 15, at White River State Park.  The meeting opens at the Everwise Amphitheater with a performance by Babyface, the Grammy-winning songwriter and producer and an Indianapolis native.

Indy Experience Tours, Saturday, August 15, 1:00 PM.  A set of guided city tours, from a monuments-and-microbrews walk to a sustainability-themed outing, most with limited space.

Indy Gives Back: Pack with Purpose, Saturday, August 15, 1:00 to 4:00 PM.  A community service project for attendees who want to arrive early and give back before the program begins.

5K Fun Run/Walk, Sunday, August 16, 6:30 to 7:45 AM.  A wellness-focused start to the day and an informal space for peer conversation.

Morning Yoga, Sunday through Tuesday, 6:15 to 7:15 AM.  Offered each morning of the meeting for attendees who want to reset before sessions.

ASAE Research Foundation's The Classic, Monday, August 17, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with general admission from 7:30 to 9:00 PM and VIP entry at 6:00 PM. A ticketed evening event that tends to sell out, so early registration is worthwhile.

Closing Celebration: Monumental Moments, Tuesday, August 18, at Lucas Oil Stadium.  A send-off on the field of the Colts' home stadium, with interactive activities and behind-the-scenes tours.

Visit SoundPost at Booth 1225

SoundPost will be exhibiting at booth 1225, positioned within a group of Blue Cypress companies that includes Betty, Cimatri, Izzy, Rasa, Sidecar, and Skip.  If your team is working to streamline financial operations or close the gap between revenue systems and accounting, we would welcome the conversation.

SoundPost Bridge is an accounting integration, automation and analysis platform that connects association revenue systems, such as AMS, event registration, LMS, e-commerce, and fundraising platforms, to the accounting system, such as Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, or Business Central.  It pulls transactions from upstream revenue systems, normalizes them into a standard data structure, determines the correct accounting treatment, and posts journal entries to the accounting system according to each client's business rules.  The result is cleaner data, a more efficient close, and more reliable reporting.

At ASAE Annual, we will also be debuting SoundPost Copilot, a new AI-powered financial analysis capability embedded within SoundPost Bridge.  Because SoundPost Bridge already holds clean, structured, reconciled accounting data, Copilot can answer questions with the accuracy of an accountant who intimately familiar with the association's ecosystem.  It can explain the accounting behind a specific order in plain language, identify top-performing products for a given period, or examine how financial performance is trending over the year.  It also delivers scheduled digests covering data quality, close readiness, and ratio and aging trends, and it can detect and remediate data quality issues in the transactions it receives from revenue systems.  Stop by booth 1225 to see it in action.

Whether your current focus is shortening the close, integrating revenue and accounting systems, or getting more insight from the data you already have, we would like to hear about your priorities and show you how SoundPost Bridge and SoundPost Copilot fit.

Closing Notes

ASAE Annual is one of the few events on the calendar where association finance leaders can step back and assess not only what they are doing, but how they are doing it.  The exchanges between sessions, the perspective of peers facing similar problems, and the exposure to new approaches make it a worthwhile investment of time.

Choose sessions that match your priorities, make time to connect with peers outside finance, and if closing the books faster or integrating systems more effectively is on your mind, we hope you will stop by SoundPost at booth 1225.

We look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis.