I’ve been in finance long enough to remember when FP&A was the last to be invited to the big meetings—if we were invited at all. We were the spreadsheet people. The ones who showed up late in the process to confirm what everyone else already decided. That version of FP&A is dying. And in 2025, […]
I’m not going to waste your time. You know as well as I do: finance isn’t what it used to be. The quiet back-office role of FP&A, once a sleepy corner of the corporate structure, has turned into a high-stakes battlefield where only the smartest, fastest, and most adaptable survive. The rules have changed, and […]
There’s this idea floating around that forecasting is a young company’s game. Fast, agile startups pivoting on a dime. Old companies? Too slow. Too political. Too stuck in their ways. I used to believe that too. Until a friend of mine who works at a 120-year-old manufacturing company told me how they completely transformed their […]
Here’s the truth no one wants to admit: most 13-week cash flow forecasts are just glorified guesswork. We treat them like gospel because they’re standard. Safe. Palatable. But if you’ve ever had to explain a sudden shortfall to your CEO or board, you already know: Thirteen weeks is not a crystal ball. It’s a snapshot. […]
Let’s start with a blunt truth most leaders don’t want to admit: You’re not going to predict the future. Not with that pristine forecast. Not with that 50-tab spreadsheet. Not even with your new AI-powered tool that’s supposed to “learn” the business. And that’s okay. Because scenario planning isn’t about guessing right. It’s about being […]
Let me be honest: budgets are broken. At least, the traditional kind. You know the one: twelve-months-in-advance, set-it-and-forget-it, rooted in last year’s numbers, built to please the board rather than steer the business. I’ve built those. I’ve torn them apart, too. Rolling forecasts, when done right, aren’t just a better planning tool—they’re a better way […]
I used to think we could scale our finance team with grit, hustle, and spreadsheets. And for a while, we did. Forecasts were living documents (in five tabs). We tracked cash burn on whiteboards. The budget was something I explained out loud more than I ever wrote down. Eventually, I realized that if we were […]
I remember the moment I realized our FP&A team had become a reporting machine. It was a Tuesday. 7:43 p.m. I was still in the office. Someone from ops had just Slacked me asking for a version of the Q2 forecast that accounted for a 5% shift in headcount timing. I was on version 17 […]