Sandeep Aujla, CFO at Intuit, says CFOs are more than just scorekeepers

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sandeep Aujla became CFO of Intuit in 2023. Previously, he was senior vice president, finance, at its small business and self-employed group and technology organization. He spoke with CFO Brew about taking on the role and the great potential he sees in the small business market.

How did you first get into finance?

I spent the first eight years [of my career] doing investment banking at a mix of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, primarily focused on the tech merger and acquisition sector. And then I had the good fortune of joining one of my clients, Visa, to set up the corporate development function. We did a deal that didn’t pan out. The Visa CFO looked at me and said, “Hey, you did the deal. Go fix it.” I vividly remember that because my son was just born and I was walking out of the hospital with him when I got that call [to take the role of vice president, finance, at Visa], but what I call that introduction to finance through happenstance ended up changing my life.

How do you view the role of the CFO?

The role of the CFO is really two-pronged. On one hand, it’s to preserve the value that’s there. On the other hand, the role of the CEO is to absolutely put growth points on the board. Your job’s not to keep score; it’s to actually score points and to focus on people, and unlock everyone's potential so they’re having the greatest impact.

You have a really ambitious forecast for the next few years, especially in the small business area. What underpins your confidence in this forecast?

One of the reasons I came to Intuit is the potential I saw in small business. When I [started] it was mostly a QuickBooks business. And we wanted to make it the ecosystem because that’s where the revenue pool really is. Two trillion invoices get recorded on QuickBooks, and we run about $150+ billion in payment volume. I see untapped opportunity for us to electronify those invoices.

We have historically focused on the smaller customers, those with zero to 10 employees. We are moving midmarket, and currently we define midmarket as 11 to 100 employees. And that comes with much more accounting revenue because you have multiple entities. We get to run their payroll and they, by definition, have lots more employees than a small business. So that’s revenue upside.

What’s the biggest change you’ve seen moving from senior vice president to CFO? What’s stayed the same?

Even when I was a senior vice president, I was, in essence, leading finance for a $9+ billion revenue business. So it was a great platform to learn how to scale, and Intuit did an amazing job coaching me along the way.

But one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed is context switching. I am, on a given day, having conversations with investors, with reporters, with our teams getting deep in operations…with board members, and then switching between Credit Karma and TurboTax.

But the factors that are the same are around focus on talent. One thing I’ve done for years is make sure I spend at least a third of my time on the capabilities across my organization and across the company. And now what I’ve added to my portfolio is also to be an external voice for the company.

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