Tips for Leading a Small Accounting Team Working on Housing Authorities in a Fast-Paced Environment (A CFO’s Playbook)

Leading a small accounting team that serves housing authorities is its own kind of fast paced.

You are juggling client expectations, HUD driven rules, overlapping deadlines, and the reality that your team is often stepping into messy, inherited processes.

From a CFO perspective, the goal is to deliver clean, compliant work without turning every week into a sprint that leaves everyone fried.

Start by defining “urgent” in a way that fits the work you do for housing authorities. I use a simple filter: anything tied to resident impact or payments (like HAP related timing, vendor payments that keep properties safe, critical cash needs) comes first, then compliance and audit risk, then cash visibility, then reporting polish. When your team has that shared prioritization, you spend less time reacting to the loudest email and more time moving the highest risk items forward.

Next, productize your delivery so speed doesn’t sacrifice quality. That means a repeatable monthly close and reporting cadence per client, standardized workpapers, and a minimum viable close you can reliably hit even when a client is late with support. Combine that with small team friendly controls on your side: consistent review points, locked down templates, and a documented “definition of done” for common tasks like reconciliations, draw support, and variance explanations. Improper payments are a known issue across government programs and oversight is real. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported $236 billion in improper payments for fiscal year 2023, which is why your documentation standards and review discipline are not just internal preferences, they are protection for the client and for you.

Because you’re external, communication is a control. Build a simple client intake rhythm that reduces churn: a weekly 20-minute touchpoint for blockers, a standard document request list that never changes, and a “missing items” tracker that is visible and unemotional. If a client’s support is late or incomplete, you can still keep momentum by separating what you can finalize now from what depends on their input, and by documenting assumptions so nothing turns into a memory contest later.

Finally, lead like you want your team to stay. Cross-train the essentials so one person is not the only one who knows a client’s chart of accounts quirks. Automate the boring parts that drain attention, like bank rec matching rules, AP workflow, and a shared close calendar. And keep the tone steady: be direct about tradeoffs, celebrate clean execution, and address recurring client issues with solutions, not frustration. Risk is not theoretical in finance work. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates organizations lose about 5 percent of revenue to fraud each year, which is exactly why consistent processes and reviews matter even when you’re moving fast.