Dealing with technical debt
- Manuel Guilius Pamorca
- Dec 31, 2025
- 3 min read
EVERY year-end, a repeat finding returns like clockwork.
It appears in the management letter, shows up in the findings tracker, and resurfaces in the same closing meeting where everyone nods because it feels familiar. The wording changes — “Improve documentation,” “Strengthen controls,” “Tighten review” — but the meaning is the same. We’ve seen this before; we meant to fix it, but the year moved faster than the plan.
Most professionals know this cycle. A team decides to fix a root cause, but a deadline moves, a client request escalates, and the urgent beats the important. The fix is postponed. Again.
This is exactly the pattern that “technical debt” describes.
Borrowed from software engineering, technical debt is the price of speed. It is the conscious choice to take a shortcut now to deliver a result, accepting that you must pay the cost later to stabilize the system.
In accounting and audit, technical debt looks like workarounds that become routine and spreadsheets that carry processes that were never designed to scale. It shows up when manual classification becomes a habit, when month-end relies on one person’s memory, and when a “temporary” file becomes permanent infrastructure.
The pressure is real. VAT and withholding deadlines arrive on schedule, whether records are clean or not. Many small and medium enterprises still operate with manual or semi-manual record-keeping. Client readiness varies widely, so audit requests become follow-ups, and follow-ups become their own workstream. In that environment, it is understandable that teams optimize for delivery.
Not automatically bad
To be fair, technical debt is not automatically bad. Sometimes it is the right move. When time is tight and the business needs answers, a workaround can be the difference between progress and paralysis. Taking on some debt is how teams keep things moving.
The problem starts when the debt is never managed.
Like financial debt, technical debt collects interest. In our profession, that interest is paid in rework, delays, repeat findings, and burnout.
A common example is manual classification. It starts small. A quick reclass to meet a reporting cut. A manual mapping to align categories. A recurring “just adjust it” entry that keeps the numbers presentable. Over time, the process becomes fragile. Reviews slow down. Errors become easier to miss.
By year-end, the “small” adjustments turn into a large clean-up done under pressure, with higher risk and higher cost.
Spreadsheets are a good lens for this. They are essential tools, and they are often the fastest way to solve a specific need. They function like small roads, useful for short trips and precise turns.
But the month-quarter-year-end close and audit support are highway traffic. They are high-volume, repeating work that demands reliability. When you force highway traffic onto small roads, they clog.
When the load increases, the road buckles.
Highways are what make work faster. They come from foundations: clear ownership, scalable templates, consistent data, and documentation that lets the work be repeated and scaled correctly.
Building those highways does not always mean buying an expensive system. It often starts with discipline, then improves through better tools, automation, and even AI where it fits, supported by review and validation, so speed does not replace assurance.
Audit teams see the cost of unmanaged technical debt early. When client records are fragmented, auditors spend time rebuilding schedules instead of testing. When timelines compress, teams default to what is most defensible.
That response is natural, and it protects quality. It also reveals a hard truth. The more debt accumulates on the client side, the more pressure shifts to the audit side, and the more the season turns into survival work.
As we enter a new year, the most practical resolution for CPAs and business leaders is not to eliminate technical debt. It is to name it, track it, and manage the risks around it.
Treat it like a real liability that can create real losses when ignored long enough. When teams decide to take shortcuts, they should also decide when, how, and by whom those shortcuts will be paid down.
Year-end will always be demanding. The goal is to make it demanding for the right reasons, not because the process is fragile.
To the accountants, finance teams, and auditors who carried the year on your shoulders, I hope you had a fulfilling year and that you enter the new one with strength, clarity, and a little more breathing room. May you enjoy the holidays you helped make possible, and may the coming months be kinder, steadier, and full of good work worth being proud of. Merry Christmas, and a hopeful New Year.
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Manuel Guilius Pamorca is a member of the Association of Certified Public Accountants in Public Practice (Acpapp) media affairs committee.
