Strengthening Collaboration Between Association Accounting and IT

In the modern association, Finance and IT departments often face similar pressures.  They are expected to deliver accuracy, transparency, and efficiency while navigating constrained budgets, inherited platforms, and increasing demands from staff and leadership.

Despite this shared reality, collaboration between the two functions is often fraught.  Project timelines slip, requirements are misunderstood, and systems that appear functional from a technical standpoint frequently fail to support financial workflows in a meaningful way.

The issue is rarely one of capability.  More often, it stems from a misalignment of priorities, language, and working styles.  Accounting and IT operate on different cycles, interpret risk differently, and define success according to their own frameworks.  For associations investing in systems and automation, improving collaboration between Accounting and IT is a necessary condition for long-term success.

Why the Disconnect Persists

The divide between Accounting and IT is not the result of poor intent or lack of skill.  It reflects fundamentally different operational mindsets and professional cultures.

Accounting teams are trained to prioritize control, consistency, and precision.  Their work is structured around fixed schedules, formal processes, and immovable deadlines.  The month-end close cannot slip.  Journal entries must tie out.  Audit trails must be preserved.  These constraints are not arbitrary; they exist to ensure reliability, compliance, and financial integrity.

Contemporary IT teams, by contrast, operate in a culture where innovation is encouraged and flexibility is expected.  Systems are designed to evolve.  Solutions are developed iteratively, with the assumption that details can be refined through user feedback or future updates.  Change is embraced as part of the process, not a failure of planning.

This contrast in norms creates friction.  Accounting expects data to be accurate, complete, and reconciled before anything goes live.  IT is often focused on whether a process runs, whether an API responds, or whether a workflow functions as designed.  Finance interprets inconsistent data as a problem to fix, while IT sees it as an implementation detail to clarify.  One side expects stability; the other is comfortable with change.

Neither perspective is necessarily wrong.  But unless these cultural differences are acknowledged and addressed, even well-resourced projects will struggle to deliver results that work for both teams.

When Projects Break Down

Misalignment tends to surface most acutely during system implementations, integrations, and report development.  Consider a few familiar scenarios:

• A new event platform launches successfully, but finance cannot reconcile revenue to the GL.

• A dashboard is delivered with attractive visuals, but the underlying data is incomplete.

• An integration pushes transactions nightly, but fails to respect cutoffs or account mappings.

These failures are not caused by technology.  They are caused by the absence of a shared understanding of how the system should support financial operations.

Five Ways to Work Together More Effectively

1. Build Cross-Functional Understanding

Effective collaboration between Accounting and IT depends on a foundational understanding of each other’s domain.  This does not require deep expertise, but it does require enough familiarity to support clear communication and sound decision-making.

When Accounting requests a “revenue report by event,” they are usually referring to earned revenue.  IT may respond with a report based on registrations or payments received, reflecting accurate transactional data but not the accounting treatment needed to reconcile to the general ledger.

Even familiar terms can cause confusion.  The word “batch,” for example, may imply a validated, auditable process to Accounting, but simply refer to grouped processing in IT.  These differences are not semantic; they reflect distinct expectations about control, completeness, and reliability.

Closing these gaps requires more than clarifying terms.  Accounting teams benefit from understanding how data moves through systems.  IT teams need enough accounting knowledge to design solutions that align with reporting and audit needs.  This shared fluency is what makes collaboration work in practice.

2. Ground Requirements Through Examples

Traditional system requirements documents often fall short in Finance–IT collaboration.  Accounting describes what they do.  IT builds what they interpret.  The nuances of reconciliation, timing, and business logic are easily lost in translation.

Requirements are more effective when anchored in actual workflows and source documents.  An Excel workbook that ties out revenue provides clearer guidance than a list of abstract reporting needs.  A walkthrough of how transactions move through the AMS offers more insight than a narrative description.  When IT reviews the month-end close checklist and Accounting reviews the system logs or data mappings, both sides gain a more complete understanding of the real dependencies involved.

Shared review of real-world examples helps eliminate assumptions, clarify priorities, and reduce the risk of building technically correct but operationally unusable solutions.

3. Map Dependencies Step by Step

IT systems do not operate in isolation, and neither do accounting processes.  A single revenue transaction may pass through registration forms, payment processors, integration scripts, and journal posting routines before it is visible in financial statements.

Too often, teams only focus on their part.  Accounting reviews journal entries.  IT monitors API calls.  But to diagnose and fix issues, or prevent them in the first place, both teams need to map out the full transaction flow, step by step.  What system captures the data first?  What field determines revenue timing?  What logic assigns GL accounts?

Visual documentation of dependencies, along with responsible owners, is essential to long-term maintainability.

4. Define Success with Precision

One of the most common breakdowns in Accounting–IT collaboration is the absence of a shared definition of success.  An integration that runs without errors may appear complete to IT, while Accounting views it as unfinished if the resulting data cannot be reconciled.  A report may be delivered on time and in the requested format, yet still be considered inadequate if the figures do not align with the general ledger.

These discrepancies are not superficial.  In financial operations, confidence in the data is non-negotiable.  A technically functional system that produces unreliable numbers is, by definition, not meeting its objectives.

Effective collaboration requires establishing clear completion criteria early in the process.  This includes defining validation steps, setting acceptable thresholds for data accuracy, and identifying who holds responsibility for reconciliation and final sign-off.  When these expectations are documented and agreed upon, projects are far more likely to deliver outcomes that satisfy both operational and technical requirements.

5. Establish Consistent Communication

Trust between Accounting and IT is more easily built during periods of stability than during high-pressure moments such as outages or month-end deadlines.

Regular check-ins, even when no active projects are underway, create space for proactive conversation.  These meetings can surface upcoming system needs, clarify process pain points, and allow each team to stay informed about changes that may affect the other.  Over time, consistent communication reduces the tendency toward reactive troubleshooting and fosters a more collaborative, less transactional working relationship.

Informal updates during quiet periods often do more to strengthen alignment than detailed status meetings held in the middle of a crisis.

Clarify Leadership and Ownership

There is no universal rule for who should own financial systems, but there is a clear distinction between business logic and technical execution.  Accounting defines the rules.  IT is responsible for implementing them in ways that are scalable, maintainable, and secure.

When these roles are respected and the relationship functions well, the outcomes are clear: faster month-end closes, more accurate reports, and more reliable integrations.  Operational issues are resolved more efficiently, with less finger-pointing and greater accountability.

Strong leadership is essential to sustaining this alignment.  The CFO plays a central role, not only by advocating for systems that meet financial requirements, but by structuring cross-functional initiatives that acknowledge the priorities of both Accounting and IT.  This may involve funding shared backlog items, allocating time for collaboration outside of urgent projects, or appointing a translator to bridge business and technical needs.  In some cases, it means bringing in external support with experience in both domains.  This is often where SoundPost is asked to step in — helping clarify requirements, align teams, and move projects forward with shared accountability.

Sustained collaboration does not happen by chance. It requires leadership that is intentional, informed, and willing to invest in the relationship behind the results.

Closing Notes

Effective collaboration between Accounting and IT is not a matter of team chemistry or communication style.  It is the result of structure, clarity, and mutual understanding.  When these two functions operate from a shared foundation rooted in operational realities and supported by leadership, the impact extends far beyond individual projects.

Associations that invest in this partnership see more than just cleaner reconciliations or faster close cycles.  They build internal capability that strengthens every system investment, reduces institutional risk, and improves the organization’s ability to adapt in the face of change.

SoundPost helps associations establish these connections, translate requirements across domains, and deliver financial systems that serve the needs of both people and process.  Collaboration is not a side benefit.  It is the foundation of a sustainable finance and technology strategy.