Zone & CO CFO Chad Wonderling oversees accounting, tax, treasury, financial planning and analysis and business operations at Zone, and leads corporate development across mergers and acquisitions, capital strategy and long-term planning.
Before Zone, he spent nearly six years at Salesloft, including as Chief Accounting Officer, where he helped guide four acquisitions, raise more than $300 million in debt and equity financing and complete the $2.3 billion sale to Vista Equity Partners. He began his career at KPMG and was named to the 2026 Georgia Titan 100.
Ahead of SuiteWorld 2026, we sat down with Chad Wonderling, to talk about where AI in finance is realistic and where the pitches run ahead of the reality.
5 questions and answers with CFO Chad Wonderling
SuiteWorld has a pretty big AI narrative this year. What’s an AI pitch or claim that you’re most skeptical of heading into this year’s event?
Chad Wonderling: The claim I’m most skeptical of is how fast and how autonomously vendors say AI will act for finance. I do believe Office of the CFO tools can’t just generate insights and have to initiate action. I sent a message about that in August of 2025 and it has aged well, and it fits what we’re building, where Zoe [by Zone] writes back into NetSuite to take action. But that action has to happen with human oversight. The agent might prepare the accounting or propose what to do, but at the end, it’s the human who gives the final approval.
The second one is decision-making. I think finance should lead, with AI informing the decisions, and I’m skeptical of pitches that suggest AI will lead them.
AP automation has been around for quite a while at this point. Everybody’s got AP automation offerings for customers. But what’s different about AP Intelligence, and how has intelligence changed what you see as a CFO? Not just how fast the team is working, but what information you are getting from AP Intelligence or other intelligence products that you didn't get before?
We’ve had AP automation for years, and it’s certainly made finance organizations more efficient. But I think intelligence introduces an entirely different dimension.
It's no longer just about processing an invoice more quickly or reducing manual intervention. It's about being better informed. Understanding how and when we’re paying vendors, identifying patterns in our payment activity, and using those insights to make better decisions around working capital.
As a CFO, that’s what I find particularly compelling. We’re moving beyond simply automating transactions to using the information within those transactions to help us manage the business more effectively and proactively.
And I think that’s an important distinction. Automation makes the process more efficient. Intelligence makes the finance organization more effective. Ultimately, that’s where I see the greatest opportunity, not just with AP Intelligence, but with the broader application of AI across the Office of the CFO.
Let’s say a CFO, a peer of yours, tells you that they want to add AI work into their workflows for their finance team. What’s the biggest piece of advice that you have for them?
I think a lot of finance organizations are still trying to figure out what AI they should incorporate into their operations. But before you answer the “what,” I think you have to answer the “how.” Start by looking at your workflows. Order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, budget-to-actual reviews. All of those are workflows.
Then look at them with a fresh set of eyes and identify the friction points. What’s particularly interesting is how many inefficiencies become institutionalized. People get so accustomed to doing something a certain way that they stop questioning why they’re doing it in the first place.
That’s where I’d start. Identify those friction points, understand the opportunity, and then determine where AI can meaningfully improve the process. Don’t start with the technology and go looking for a problem.
So what’s something that you expect AI to handle almost entirely within the next 18 to 24 months?
I think one of the most compelling opportunities is the entire order-to-cash workflow. And I'm not talking about automating individual tasks, but AI intelligently managing and orchestrating much of that process from beginning to end.
Think about what happens when a customer signs a contract. The terms need to be interpreted, billing and revenue recognition schedules established, invoices generated, and ultimately cash collected and applied. Today, that involves multiple systems, handoffs and significant human intervention.
I believe that within the next 18 to 24 months, AI will be capable of handling the substantial majority of those activities, not simply executing predefined rules, but interpreting information, understanding context, identifying exceptions and initiating action.
We’re moving from automating individual tasks to intelligently orchestrating entire business processes. That’s a fundamental shift in how finance organizations will operate, with people increasingly focused on oversight, exceptions, and higher-value decisions. And it’s particularly exciting for us at Zone, given the capabilities we’re building across the order-to-cash lifecycle within NetSuite.
But then within that workflow, where do you see the importance of still having a human in the loop? And what is something that you think AI will never be able to replace in that human review step?
I think there are two areas that stand out to me. The first is the customer experience. Take collections, for example. AI will increasingly be able to understand the broader customer relationship through product telemetry and other information, but there are nuances to those relationships that still require human judgment and oversight.
The second is financial accountability. I believe AI will move beyond generating insights to actually taking action within the ERP. But there’s an important distinction between executing an activity and being accountable for the outcome. That doesn’t mean a human needs to approve every transaction, but it does mean we need the appropriate controls and oversight.
Ultimately, I think AI will shift the role of finance professionals away from transactional work and toward judgment, exception management, and higher-value decision-making.
Visit Zone at SuiteWorld 2026
The Zone team will be at SuiteWorld in Las Vegas this October. Keep an eye out for our session, Global AP, Built to Scale: Specialist AI Agents Embedded in NetSuite on Tuesday, October 27 at 3:45 p.m., and stop by booth #643 to talk through what you’re working on and see Zone in action. Find all the details on our SuiteWorld 2026 page.
