Tupperware—that “burping” brand you may have taken your sandwich to work in today—is the latest company to fall victim to the accounting shortage.

The company announced it would delay filing its annual report due in part to internal control issues stemming from a lack of accounting staff, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Significant attrition” in its accounting department contributed to material weaknesses, and it needed to take additional procedures to address them.

Tupperware’s hardly the only company grappling with this shortage: In the first half of 2023, almost 600 US-listed companies reported material weaknesses resulting from personnel issues— 40.6% more than in the first half of 2019, data from Bedrock AI reported in the Wall Street Journal shows. Even larger companies, such as Advance Auto Parts, LegalZoom, German biotech Evotec, and air taxi company Joby Aviation, have reporting problems due to staffing shortages.

Filing delays and admissions of material weakness can cause investors to worry restatements are on the horizon, Geof Brown, president and CEO of the Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS), told CFO Brew.

Click here for more on how the accounting shortage is impacting financial reporting. —CV

Accounts Payable (AP) may be evolving with the times, but the same challenges are still sticking around. *Shakes fist at the sky.*

Turn AP into a major strategic player—and leave lengthy invoice processes and excess paperwork behind—with Basware and Ardent Partner’s AP Metrics That Matter in 2024 report.

Let’s face it: From too-long invoice cycles to slow processing and mixed invoice formats, AP gets bogged down with a whole lot of paperwork. By tracking the right metrics (+ boosting efficiency), AP can play a bigger role in supporting financial decision-makers and ops instead.

In the report, you’ll learn what it takes to transform AP into your MVP. Here’s how other teams are winning big:

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Get in the game.

The cannabis industry wasn’t exactly riding high in 2023. A glut of inventory drove prices down. Sales slowed in states where weed’s been legal for a while, such as Colorado and California. And even at the dispensary, budget-conscious customers opted for lower-priced goods over midrange ones in early 2023, Trulieve CEO and founder Kim Rivers said during an earnings call in February, though customer spend went up in Q4.

But some of the nation’s largest cannabis providers bucked this trend, and scored record earnings last year. Curaleaf, which runs 147 dispensaries, saw its retail revenue top $1 billion for the first time, beating 2022’s by 6%. Verano, with 138 dispensaries, grew its revenue 7% in 2023; Green Thumb, with 91 dispensaries, grew 4%. (Trulieve, however, which has 193 dispensaries, saw its revenue drop 7%.)

And Big Weed’s hoping to bring in even more green in 2024. There’s reason for it to be hopeful: Several states are poised to legalize recreational marijuana this year, opening up new markets. As Rivers noted, Florida alone “could be a $6 billion market opportunity, effectively tripling from today's medical only market.” Ohio could be a $2 billion market, she estimated, and Pennsylvania’s could total $4 billion.

For more on Big Weed’s growth potential, click here.—CV

Jonathan Boldt has been the CFO of the health data company Inovalon since 2018. He worked at Deloitte before joining the company. In 2021, nearly seven years after helping Inovalon go public as its controller, he helped take it to a $7.3 billion private equity-led acquisition.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You helped Inovalon go public in the 2010s. How did you prepare the company to go private again?

At Deloitte, I was part of teams bringing companies public, but when [Inovalon] went private in 2021, I didn’t have a playbook. It really wasn’t a skill set or experience that I had—it was trial by fire. I spent an exorbitant amount of time reading [about] take-privates, prior proxies on companies that went private, spent time with our law firms to understand the mechanics of…how [to] delist yourself from public markets, and then make sure that all of your shareholders get paid once the transaction closes.

I reached out to two other CFOs just to kind of, without talking specifics, [learn about] their experience, what were some of their pitfalls on their own private transactions, to at least allow me and my team to avoid them the best we could.

Click here for more on asking other CFOs for help.—GD

Protection you can bank on. Financial institutions, such as credit unions and banks, are among consumers’ most trusted orgs. Uphold your people’s trust by providing them with digital identity protection tools like virtual cards, private browsers, and secure comms—which can also foster new revenue streams. Check out Anonyome Labs’ free ebook to learn more.