Crunch: It can be an interesting texture to add to a dish. But when it comes to cash flow, avoiding a crunch is arguably one of the CFO’s biggest responsibilities.

Sometimes even the most dogged finance chiefs end up in situations where the past-due bills are piling up, the company’s receivables are ballooning as customers delay payments, or both.

Regardless of the reason, when liquidity dries up, it can send finance into a panic. “If you’re not watching cash and taking steps to ensure you have enough of it, you are putting your business on shaky ground,” Ram Charan, an advisor to boards and CEOs, wrote in his book, Leading Through Inflation.

Have a process and plan. Preventing a cash flow crunch in the first place seems like an obvious idea, but Mark Zeffiro, managing partner at professional services firm Brooks International, told CFO Brew that without a link between a business’s financial and operating standards, pricing and predictability can quickly get out of control.

Keep reading.—DL

We don’t have to tell you that the accounting and finance industry is facing major challenges, whether it’s from AI or an aging workforce.

But a recent BambooHR survey found a troubling datapoint for the industry—a third of new accounting and finance hires quit within their first year. The survey results also showed a 3:1 senior- to entry-level hiring ratio.

BambooHR’s survey of full-time salaried employees, business owners, and C-suites of small to midsize businesses in the US garnered 1,248 responses between March 24 and April 9, 2026. BambooHR’s analysis is derived also from six years of workforce data—from approximately January 2020 to February 2026—encompassing over 480,000 employee data points from more than 2,000 companies around the world.

Unclear remit. One root cause of the “quit” numbers among hires, at least at the entry level, BambooHR CFO Justin Judd told CFO Brew, is likely mismatched expectations between new hires and senior management amid the rise of AI.

Keep reading.—DL

You know IPOs are back when everyone from an e-scooter startup to the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts is announcing plans to go public.

But perhaps the best example of a buzzy IPO market is Enhanced Games, an Olympics-style international athletic competition where performance-enhancing drugs are encouraged. Shares jumped over 20% on the company’s first day of trading after a SPAC merger last week.

Zoom out: For years, the IPO pipeline was frozen thanks to higher interest rates and ongoing market volatility. But over the past year, the tech sector has embraced lax regulation and, taking a cue from investors, is shrugging off red flags about the economy and moving full-steam ahead. Major IPO filings like SpaceX may be the flashiest, but a slew of others show just how hungry investors are for new investment options.

The chips are down…to go public. This is about to be a busy week for new listings, and it all starts with Cerebras Systems. The AI chipmaker just signed a major contract with OpenAI in December, and since the company filed for an IPO earlier this month, it’s become a highly anticipated debut.

Keep reading on Brew Markets.—LB

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Learn what Aidana Zhakupbekova, CFO of expense-management software firm Rydoo, had to say about budgeting, visibility into spending, and pivoting quickly to keep down costs.