Mayday + CFO Techstack

The shortlist is in: Meet the 2026 CFO Techstack Awards finalists

The CFO Techstack Awards are about recognising the brilliant people, teams, stories and solutions across this community. They’re a chance to shine a light on some of the best work happening in the M of SME and celebrate the people making it happen.

So much of what we learn as a community comes from people sharing what they’re doing, whether that’s opening up their tech stack on How I Stacked It, telling their stories in our webinars or taking to the stage at Stacked. The awards are a chance to recognise the best of that: the individuals and teams making an impact, the transformation stories others can learn from and the apps helping finance teams work better.

More than 100 submissions came in across the six categories, and there were some seriously strong entries for our judges to choose from. Narrowing them down wasn’t easy, but the decisions are in. We’re very excited to introduce the first ever CFO Techstack Awards finalists.

Finance Leader of the Year

Recognising a finance leader who has made a real impact on their business and finance function over the past year.

Josh Hawkey, Tracksuit
Katrina Bignasca, Asseti
Luke Simpson, JENKI

Finance Team of the Year

For the finance teams doing brilliant work together, from improving how they operate to helping their businesses scale.

Auror
RSGx
Harris Real Estate

FTS Consultant of the Year

Recognising the consultants helping businesses build and get more from their Xero-based finance tech stacks.

Florentina Sandu, Migrate My Accounts
Jeffrey Atizado SMB Consultants
Rosie Cooper, PM+M

Stack Transformation of the Year

Celebrating the best stories of finance teams transforming how they work through their tech stack.

HFL Education
AEI Music
RSGx
SMB Consultants
Talent Acquisition Group

App of the Year

For the established apps making a difference to finance teams building and scaling their tech stacks.

Cin7
Airwallex
ApprovalMax
Joiin

Emerging App of the Year

Recognising newer apps that are starting to make their mark in the finance tech stack ecosystem.

Derive
XPNA
Gojee

Congratulations to every one of our finalists. We can’t wait to see who takes home the awards in a few weeks.

Meet the judges

Our six judges had the unenviable job of choosing the finalists from more than 100 submissions. All are members of the CFO Techstack Finance Leaders Advisory Council: Khalid Ahmed, Fiona MacDonald, Felix Matthews, Steve Jarvis, Tyler Caskey and Laurel Millar.

A heartfelt thank you to all six for giving their time and expertise.

See the winners revealed live

We’ll announce the winners live on 15 September at 5pm AEST / 8am BST, and we’d love to have you there to celebrate with us.

There are also categories where the winners will only be revealed during the ceremony, bringing the total number of awards to eight. So, while the finalists are out, there are still a few surprises to come.

Join us to find out who takes home each award and celebrate the brilliant people, teams and apps that make this community what it is. See the full list of finalists on our website.

COMMUNITY INSIGHTS

🎤 How I stacked it

Carly Zeitz, Financial Controller, Apxium Group

Carly leads a finance team of two at Apxium Group, a fintech provider helping accounting and professional firms across three continents accelerate cash flow through automated receivables, payments and lending. Operating across multiple entities and currencies, Carly's

team relies on a tightly integrated stack to keep reporting, reconciliations and compliance moving without the manual overhead.

Here's what Cassie and her team are using:

Xero. Our core accounting and finance platform for our multiple entities. We also use it for payroll.
Mayday. Used for inter-company and month end requirements, freeing up time reconciling our many inter-entity loans and month-end recharges.
Wise. Apxium operates in multiple regions and currencies. Wise is a good alternative to setting up an overseas bank account and useful for team members who travel, plus for local expenses. A receipt can be attached directly to a card transaction and it uploads as a bill in Xero.
Fathom. Our reporting app of choice, used to produce consolidated reports monthly, annually and for ad hoc periods.
Claude AI. Recently adopted, we have been using Claude to completely rebuild our financial modelling and budget processes.
Primary. Our treasury platform, this enables us to see all of our bank accounts in one place and set up automations to track bank balances.

Read the full stack

If you'd like to share your stack with the community, get in touch with kristin.morgan@getmayday.com.

GIVE ME HOPE

Reader’s question:

"My team is worried about AI taking their jobs. I don't want to be dismissive but I also don't want to make promises I cannot keep. How do I have this conversation honestly?"

Harriet’s answer

Start by admitting what you don't know. Your team will trust you more for saying "here's what I actually think" than for reciting reassurances you don't fully believe.

Here's what I'd tell them. I'm not convinced AI is going to start firing people outright. I've spent enough time reconciling numbers between Xero and the CRM, chasing down mismatched figures and reformatting the same spreadsheet. That's the work AI has taken off my plate, leaving me more time for the judgement calls. That's a good story, and it happens to be the honest one too.

I'd also be upfront that adoption takes time, the same as any process change. If your team is already stretched, ask what space they realistically have to learn new tools properly. That's not a reason to hold off. It's a reason to build the time deliberately, rather than expecting people to pick it up alongside everything else and hoping for the best.

Where I'd draw a line is on how your business handles the transition. If leaders start using AI as a reason to skip backfilling a leaver, or quietly add workload with no real training or support, that's worth naming plainly. Your team will cope with a hard truth. They won't forgive being managed around one.

I'd love to see more finance teams bring in proper support to make this transition well, someone who can help embed new ways of working rather than leaving people to experiment alone. That kind of investment isn't always there yet, and I won't pretend otherwise. But the direction of travel is a good one. Teams that get this right end up doing more interesting work, not less, and spending more time in the room where decisions get made instead of buried in the detail behind them.

So have the conversation, and let your own view come through. Be honest about the adjustment ahead, but don't undersell the upside either. Your team doesn't need certainty from you. They need to know you'll tell them the truth as it unfolds, and that you're genuinely excited about where this can take the way they work.

Have a question you’d like Harriet to answer? Submit your questions here.

AWARDS

🏆 CFO Techstack Awards Webinar

We can’t wait to reveal the winners of the CFO Techstack Awards!

Join us as we celebrate the people, teams and solutions making a real difference across the finance tech community.

Date: 15 September

Time: 8am BST / 15:00 AEST

Save your spot. Register now!

UPCOMING EVENTS

📆 Webinar: Mayday turns 5 - What’s the fuss all about?

Join Mayday founders David Tuck and James Scott-Griffin, Harriet Hope and fellow CFO Techstack FLAC members to celebrate five years of Mayday, hear about the journey so far, including winning People’s Choice at the Xero Global App Awards for the second year running, and where we’re heading.

🇦🇺 9 September, 4pm AEST with guests Khalid Ahmed, CFO at EncompaaS & Andy Colalillo, CFO at RSGx — Register
🇬🇧 9 September, 11am BST with guest Felix Matthews, Founder at Abica — Register

HAVE YOUR SAY

📣 Help shape CFO Techstack

We’ve got lots planned for CFO Techstack, but we want what comes next to reflect what matters to you.

Take our short survey and tell us where you are in your finance tech journey, what matters right now and how we can make the community more valuable for you. We’ll bring the findings back to the community, so you can see what others are thinking too.

THE STACK EXCHANGE

🧵 This week's top threads, from The Stack Exchange

The Stack Exchange is the place to connect with peers, stay on top of the latest apps and industry news, and work through the challenges that don't have an easy answer.

Take a look at what's being said:

Want to join the conversation? Sign up here.

NEW IN THE WORLD OF CFO SOFTWARE

🗞️ News from the stack-o-sphere

Expensify adds new spend controls and accounting automation, including vendor matching and tighter card controls. Released 25 August. Read more
Projectworks launches a Sage Intacct integration, syncing invoices and expenses between the two platforms. Released 24 August.
Read more

WHAT THE DATA SAYS

📊 Stat of the week

49% of Australian SME finance teams spend 40% or more of their time on manual, repetitive work.

Source: Budgetly, 2026 CFO Survey

MORE OF THE GOOD STUFF

And lastly, our top picks!

🎧 Podcast: “318. Inside the 2026 CFO Forum: How finance leaders are preparing for what's next” Inside the Strategy Room / McKinsey & Company, 25 August 2026.

📝 Article: “Q&A with Jennifer Smith, CFO 50 – Class of 2026: Leadership and Building High Performing Teams” Pearse Portfolio, 24 August 2026.

😆 Joke: Finance’s favourite magic trick: turning “roughly” into three decimal places.

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