When the accounting function starts to strain – close taking too long, errors creeping in, the team feeling stretched – the default response is usually to add headcount. Hire another accountant, distribute the load, and the problems should ease. Sometimes that's exactly right. But often, what looks like a capacity problem is actually a coordination problem. And adding more people to an unmanaged team doesn't fix that. It compounds it.
Additional accounting staff, such as Staff Accountants, Senior Accountants, AP/AR specialists, solve a volume problem. If processes are documented, standards are clear, and the bottleneck is genuinely that there's too much work for the current headcount, more accountants is the right answer.
This is true in specific high-transaction-volume scenarios: a fast-scaling company adding hundreds of daily transactions, a business that's onboarded multiple new entities, or a team that's just brought AP/AR in-house. The work is clear; it just needs more hands.
An Accounting Manager solves a coordination and quality problem. They're the layer between individual accounting staff and the Controller or CFO; they’re the person who makes sure work gets done correctly, consistently, and on time, without requiring a senior leader to be in the weeds managing it.
When that layer is missing, several things happen simultaneously. Junior staff work without sufficient review, so errors accumulate and get caught late. The close process lacks a driver, so it expands to fill whatever time is available. Training and development don't happen because no one owns them. And the CFO ends up supervising accounting operations directly.
Finance operations benchmarks show that teams with an explicit Accounting Manager ownership layer close an average of 3–5 business days faster than comparable teams without that coordination function. Adding more accountants into a coordination-deficient environment doesn't compress timelines, it adds more uncoordinated work happening in parallel.
Do we have a volume problem or a coordination problem?
Volume problem: the work is clearly defined, processes exist, the current team knows what they're doing – there's just too much of it. Add accountants.
Coordination problem: close timelines are inconsistent, review quality is variable, the CFO is spending time on accounting supervision, junior staff aren't developing, and no single person is accountable for the function's output. Add an Accounting Manager.
In practice, many growing companies have both, but the coordination problem tends to be more urgent and more costly to leave unresolved.
For most companies where this question is coming up, the answer is usually: an Accounting Manager first, then additional accountants reporting into them. The manager establishes structure, documents processes, sets quality standards, and then staff execute within that framework.
The reverse order – building a larger team first and then trying to manage them into a functional structure – is significantly harder. You inherit ingrained habits, inconsistent processes, and a new Accounting Manager who has to remediate before they can build.
This is a pattern MAVI sees often. Accounting Managers placed through MAVI come pre-vetted with 5–7+ years of experience and at least two years in management roles – ready to build structure, not just maintain it. Book a call to check out Accounting Manager profiles.
Yes, especially in leaner teams. An Accounting Manager at a growing company often splits time between managing staff and executing accounting tasks directly. The balance shifts toward management as the team grows.
There's no hard rule, but if you have two or more accountants whose work needs coordinating and reviewing, the management layer starts to earn its cost. Many companies bring in an Accounting Manager as their third or fourth finance hire.
US GAAP proficiency, ERP fluency (QuickBooks, Xero, or NetSuite), prior team management experience, and a track record of owning close processes. MAVI Accounting Managers have 5–7+ years of experience with at least two years in a management capacity.
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