Management Reporting Pack: What CFOs Actually Need Every Month
A practical guide to building a monthly management reporting pack that explains what changed, updates the outlook, and helps CFOs make decisions.
Budget Variance Analysis: How FP&A Finds What Actually Matters
There is a particular kind of monthly Finance meeting where every variance gets treated like it has committed a crime. Travel is $8,000 over budget. Explain it. Software is $11,000 under. Explain it. Office supplies are $3,700 over. Apparently we need closure. Meanwhile, revenue is $2.4 million below plan and somehow we’ve allocated roughly the […]
FP&A Software vs. Excel: When Has Finance Actually Outgrown Spreadsheets?
I need to disclose something before we begin. I like Excel. A lot. I’ve spent enough of my career in Excel that I’m probably entitled to some kind of common-law marriage. So when somebody tells me Finance needs to “get out of spreadsheets,” I don’t immediately nod thoughtfully and start scheduling software demos. I usually […]
What Is FP&A? A Practical Guide to Financial Planning & Analysis
FP&A has a branding problem. Tell someone you work in Accounting and they have a general idea what you do. Tell them you’re in Sales and they definitely have an idea what you do. Tell someone you work in Financial Planning & Analysis and there is usually a small pause. Then: “So…finance?” Yes. Technically. That […]
FP&A Software: When Does Your Finance Team Actually Need It?
I like software. I also like buying things. Amazon has documented this extensively. So you might assume I’d be very supportive when someone tells me their Finance team needs a new FP&A platform. Not necessarily. In fact, one of the first questions I’d ask is probably the least exciting one: What problem are you trying […]
Driver-Based Forecasting: How to Find the Right Business Drivers
I get suspicious when someone tells me they have 47 drivers in their forecast. At that point, I don’t think you have drivers. I think you have a very complicated spreadsheet. There is a difference. Driver-based forecasting is one of those FP&A ideas that sounds almost impossible to disagree with. Instead of taking last year’s […]
Financial Forecasting Methods: How to Choose the Right One
I have never understood why companies spend enormous amounts of time building sophisticated forecasts and then use essentially the same forecasting method for everything in them. Revenue? Historical growth plus an adjustment. Travel? Historical growth plus an adjustment. Software? Historical growth plus an adjustment. Headcount? Last year plus the people we think we’re hiring. Coffee? […]
Financial Scenario Planning: How FP&A Can Build Scenarios That Actually Help Management
I have trust issues with scenario models. Not because I don’t like scenarios. I do. I’ve built plenty of them. I’ve also sat in meetings where we had so many scenarios that I started to suspect we were using Excel to avoid making a decision. You know the meeting I’m talking about. Base case. Upside […]
How to Measure AI ROI: A Practical Guide for CFOs and Finance Teams
Every company seems to be saving thousands of hours with AI. I would like to know where everyone is keeping them. Because apparently AI wrote the email, summarized the meeting, analyzed the data, drafted the presentation and saved Brenda six hours on Tuesday. Fantastic. What happened Wednesday? I ask because companies are getting very good […]
AI in FP&A: Can You Trust an AI-Generated Financial Forecast?
I wouldn’t have written this article a few years ago. Mostly because nobody was asking me whether I trusted the financial forecast built by a robot. Finance has changed. Now AI can analyze historical results, identify patterns, generate baseline forecasts, flag anomalies, help build scenarios and explain variances. Some newer systems are moving toward something […]
Sarah Schlott
FP&A consulting, forecasting, accounting support and finance strategy for CFOs and growing finance teams.