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 […]
What would you do if you walked into a five-year-old company with more than 170 legal entities, roughly 10,000 budget lines, no FP&A planning system, department heads who had never worked with a structured P&L, and tax rules capable of changing while you were still building the budget? I think I’d need coffee first. Probably […]
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 […]
If you’re building an FP&A team, I have one request. Please don’t start with the org chart. I know it’s tempting. CFO at the top. VP of FP&A underneath. Director. Manager. Senior Analyst. Analyst. Look at that. We have a department. We haven’t figured out what any of these people are doing yet, but the […]
I have a complicated relationship with revenue growth percentages. Not because they’re useless. Because they have a tendency to arrive before the explanation. “Revenue grows 10% next year.” Okay. Why? “Well, we grew about 10% this year.” That is certainly information. It is not yet a revenue forecast. One of the easiest ways to build […]
I have never understood why December 31 gets so much authority over financial planning. Apparently the calendar changes and Finance is supposed to lose interest in what happens next. It’s October. We have a three-month forecast remaining. Very useful. Management is making hiring decisions that will affect next summer, Sales is talking about deals that […]
I don’t think a company wakes up one morning and suddenly needs FP&A. There usually isn’t a ceremony. Nobody cuts a ribbon. What happens instead is that the CEO asks a question that used to take ten minutes to answer, and three days later Finance is still working on it. Someone wants to know what […]
I can usually tell when a company has confused its budget with its forecast. It’s September. The business has changed. Sales are running below plan. Hiring moved. A product launch slipped. A large customer expanded unexpectedly. Marketing changed its spending. And somehow the forecast still looks remarkably similar to the budget everyone approved nine months […]
“FP&A consultant” is one of those job descriptions that can mean almost anything. Build a forecast. Fix a model. Help with the budget. Prepare something for the board. Figure out why margins are falling. Untangle a reporting process that apparently requires three people, six spreadsheets and one person who absolutely cannot take vacation. All technically […]
I don’t start reviewing a financial model with the formulas. This occasionally bothers people. They’ve spent a lot of time building those formulas. There may be nested IF statements. INDEX MATCH. XLOOKUP. Maybe something involving OFFSET that nobody wants to discuss. I’m sure it’s all very impressive. I want to know why revenue grows 12%. […]
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