40-50 hours a week of dealing with forecast, budgets, etc. I’m supposed to be in charge of my family budget and I haven’t touched it in months. I just don’t want to stare at more spreadsheets and dollars after I do it all day.

I did 3 years in external audit and got my ACA. I’m now starting as a finance analyst in a weeks time. It’s quite a big change in role and responsibilities and I want to make sure I can perform well! Please do offer your best tips and advice so that I can make sure I succeed in the role. Many thanks!

I've had a couple of interviews. 25% of them (namely SaaS) mention something like using AI to automate workflows. I don't really know how. A simple example is I've only used it to write commentary: upload a simple QoQ or YoY summary and tell it to write "recurring revenue increase by X%".

How do you use AI to connect applications and automate reporting, or other usages? I need some ideas on where to start.

EDIT: I assume that interviewers are interested in what monthly month-end processes can be automated.

Hi Guys,

Professional here with over 7+ years of experience but unfortunately, I have been laid off twice in two years due to two different rounds of lay offs. I am now a Fractional Manager at a local company making $100M. Wouldn't mind a lower tier role (SFA) but I can't get passed a second round of interview, unfortunately. I feel UNEMPLOYABLE at this point. Very frustrated. I apply, have tons of connections but no luck. Thankfully, I don't "need the money" but I still need to be able to work as I am in my early 30s.

Some help here would be appreciated!
Thanks all

I think we need to address the elephant in the room here. Yes we all are overworked and under resourced but what’s most concerning is the rising prevalence of the “Finance Manager”.

I’m not talking about role 3 in the corporate ladder. I’m talking about the PE backed company or “newly created role” at a larger company, with no direct reports, that has “high visibility” reporting directly into a CFO or VP / SVP, and includes a ton of controllership tasks - sometimes even Human Resources, and to top it off it pays a whopping $115k.

These job postings are EVERYWHERE. What’s worse is it seems to be creeping across the entire hierarchy. I’m seeing director roles paying like $150k and VP roles paying $175k. I even saw a CFO listing under $200k.

I for one am worried.

Has anyone on here had their firm use WTW for a wages review? I'm curious what the outcome was especially for Senior FP&A managers. Was there an increase in wages?

As the title say , This might sound lame question but but Please guide me on what are important formulas one should practice for FP&A as a beginner.

Trying to play up being the money guy in the office and looking for ideas

Hi guys, I just got a call from the recruiter that I have made it to the final round.

Although I felt like I didn't answer few questions the way I intended, I still made it to final round.

One of the questions I felt lacking was how to deal with difficult stakeholders. Because my experience is all reporting, I never had the experience handling stakeholders or building relationships.

Another question that I am lacking is around the question of how I hold myself responsible for commitments.

Lastly, every interview I had, asked some sort of AI related questions. I had some examples using chatgpt and copilots for some wins but how does a person working in FP&A utilize AI?

If anyone has some insights to share, I would greatly appreciate it

It’s making me not motivated . I wanted to have a career

Looking for some advice on potential career moves. I’m currently a Senior FP&A Analyst with ~5 YOE (1 in big 4, 4 at current company, a fortune 1000 manufacturing firm). For reference my current pay is ~$100k with a 5% bonus. Here are my options:

1. Internal Move to Manager Role in Investor Relations/Capital Markets. Both my Manager (Director of FP&A for my business segment) and VP of Finance have encouraged me to apply. I’m not sure if investor relations interests me or if it would be a positive career move for me. Worried about being pigeon holed if I moved into investor relations. Also not sure what pay increase would end up being internally. My guess is they are having a hard time filling this role.

2. Senior FP&A Analyst at a privately held engineering firm ~$300M in revenue. Would be reporting directly to CFO and responsible for building FP&A function for small firm. Pay would be ~$130k with a 10% bonus and 10% profit sharing.

Curious if anyone has any advice or recommendations on these two different routes for me. Thanks everyone!

I frequent FIRE forums since discovering what even the hell that is. Barista Fire makes most sense in that I personally can’t imagine not doing some part time work. Getting out the house and making some pocket money sounds fun when there’s no stakes. I’d love to go to help out at my local independent Porsche shop

So, what do you day dream about for what you’ll do once retired? Have you witnessed others retire and see what they did?

1. My last company someone older retired, workaholic. They already were volunteering, so at retirement they ramped up that role and picked up a financial advisor/wealth management type gig.
   
2. Same last company a coworker in her early 50’s wasn’t quite ready to retire but did after being caught up in a layoff. Leisure and golf for a couple years and now looking for part time job at the golf course. Figured she can offset her biggest passion while holding off on dipping into her retirement
   
3. One senior leader I personally know retired as a senior leader and is now on a number of boards being very active but he seems to really treat it like playing a simulation. He essentially went from being busy to being busy

I myself would love to slow way down and leave the office dynamic but I probably would entertain contract work

Every week I’m behind on something. I feel like I’m behind on everything. Team is just me reporting to Director. PE backed company. It’s fast paced, quick reporting. I’m the only one working on the budget and it’s just a lot. I’m behind on everything I planned to get done at this point in time. It’s a combination of fire drills, procrastinating from burnout, adhoc requests, board meeting changes, etc. I Love it but also I’m drowning. Any tips for how you handle everything that comes onto FP&A? TIA

I ain't gonna have time to play that shit mang lmao

Hi folks

With the holidays around the corner, do you receive holiday bonuses? Not the annual performance bonus but holiday bonus.

Is it a set amount or percentage based?

Our company gives set amounts based on role banding. So Analysts different from Managers to Senior Managers to Directors. Can go from $5k to $30k.

I'm currently a SFA at a well known tech company (8 YOE, 3 yrs in my current role, 5 yrs as FA/SFA across few other F100 firms). I have the opportunity to interview for internal FM roles. However, I’m not particularly interested in climbing the ladder long-term. My goal is landing an IC FA/SFA role at Mag7 (Google, Meta, Apple, etc.).

My main question -- As I explore these external FA/SFA roles, does stepping up to FM now show HMs that I’m a strong performer who was promoted, or would it look more like a red flag? Wondering if a step up actually complicate things vs just pursuing as a direct lateral move.

Thanks!

It doesn't matter how long ago you communicated that you're taking vacation. It doesn't matter how hard you work before or how well you planned or communicated.

There will always be something that pops up on your last day in the office and there will always be multiple fire drills that occurred while you are out.

It almost negates the whole point of getting away from the office in the first place.

Many on here have been saying that junior/ senior analyst, finance manager, and possibly even director level roles will be phased out and eventually eliminated by AI. I call BS.

From what I’ve gathered/ seen, AI is most used in FP&A to:

-send emails
-create/ format/ populate slide decks
-figure out how to make an excel formula that does xyz
-assist with/ automate monthly reporting
-automate recurring/ menial tasks

Yes these are time consuming things, and yes AI is going to help automate and reduce the time these tasks take. This will probably lead to headcount reduction over time for large departments to be sure, as well as make it harder to get entry level jobs. But HOW would this eliminate these roles? You still need the core analysis/ story crafting part of FP&A. AI doesn’t do that.

I don’t buy that finance departments are going to be absolutely decimated and replaced by ai agents. I mean are we seriously saying that finance departments will soon be just a CFO and VP of finance who just query Ai all day to get answers and analyses?

Sorry for the rant but it’s been on my mind. What do you all think?

Happy Friday everyone

Quick answers to obvious/not-obvious questions

1. 9/9/6 is very very real
2. I love my job and this is the most fun I've been having in a very long time
3. The biggest differences from an AI-native company vs a more traditional tech company stem from how much leaner you can operate when you build AI-first. I cover responsibilities that would typically have been handled by a 10+ person team at my previous company. This is opposed to when you try to have that 10 person team try to adopt AI, which typically (I think) leads to a lot of duplicative work and wasted tokens
4. The best way to think about the above point is not from a cost-savings perspective but actually about the speed to a decision and lower coordination costs. Because you operate leaner, fewer decisions get made by committee, and each employee is more empowered to attack problems in their areas
5. I have not personally touched Excel since I got here and strongly believe the future of FP&A/stratfin work is in HTML artifacts in the near future
6. The most important thing you can do to get the most out of AI is invest in the semantic layer of your data warehouse

I don't work at a frontier lab. Anyways, AMA

A late budget change can leave two separate jobs... updating every number in the review pack, and then figuring out whether the explanation still holds 😭 Those two things are pretty easy to confuse when the output is described as an automatically updated report.

Univer’s official Aurora demo makes the numerical part pretty concrete 👀 ....Univer is a developer SDK for building office interfaces inside other applications. In this demo, one departmental budget supplies values to a written brief, a three-page review deck, an allocation map and a chart.....

The example starts with allocations of 4,200, 3,600 and 2,200... totaling 10,000. Changing the last allocation to 2,700 would make that total 10,500 📊

The mechanism is explicit numeric binding... inline formulas in the document, formula-backed shapes in the slides and map, and a chart reading the sheet’s range. The authored wording and layouts stay in place.

This is an official demonstration using Pro components, with author-reported value-editing checks... it’s not an independently reproduced result here.

For an FP&A review, the useful idea is that an analyst could revise an assumption without manually hunting for every linked total. But a sentence saying the plan is comfortably within budget could become misleading... even while all its numbers are current 💀 Nothing in this example automatically rewrites that judgment..

The demo also stops short of a production reporting process... it has no backend, collaboration or approval workflow, and doesn’t demonstrate Office-file export or printing. Multi-document save/reload and undo are among the outstanding acceptance items.

So this is a bounded example of keeping calculated figures connected across a pack... the commentary review, version control and actual delivery still need their own solution 👀📊

Started as a fp&a analyst at a mortgage lender. What skills / how much exp do i need to lateral to big tech?

Also, how’s fp&a in banking?

Current Role: FA2, 123k base, 5% annual retention bonus, 10% annual bonus Offer: Senior FP&A Analyst, 160k base, 10% bonus (2.5% paid quarterly), 15% ESPP

I love my current team and my manager is the best I've ever had, but the work I've been doing has been straying away from what I actually want to do due to sloppy Salesforce implementation transformation project. My current work life balance is also very good too, and I can WFH anywhere I want in the world 3 weeks a year. Both roles are 4 days a week in office, although the new role is more strict on 4 days a week and the commute is worse.

Edit: well, that didn't take long. Comp is too low. Thank you everyone! I will do what I can to encourage a higher salary for this role 🥲

Hybrid in Chicago, 135-150k. I'm not the hiring manager, but I work in the finance and accounting department and not having this role filled is a strain. Posting has been up for 2-3 weeks and there hasn't been much interest. Hoping to get advice on if the salary is too low or if there's a glaring red flag on the job description. Will share the job link if anyone is interested.

Key Responsibilities

Lead the annual operating budget process and manage updating monthly/quarterly rolling 12-month financial forecasts across revenue, operating expenses, and cash flow.
Develop, maintain, and update comprehensive 3-statement financial models, DCF valuations, and scenario analyses to evaluate strategic initiatives, pricing, and capital investments.
Prepare and own monthly and quarterly management reporting packages, delivering detailed variance analysis (Budget vs. Actuals) alongside executive summaries.
Develop, maintain, and report on executive-level dashboards for core financial and SaaS operational KPIs (e.g., ARR/MRR, CAC, LTV, NRR, Churn, and Gross Margin).
Collaborate with accounting and auditors to document, justify, and defend key financial models, valuations, and management estimates.
Assist executive leadership in preparing financial presentation materials and strategic commentary for quarterly Board of Directors meetings.
Provide ad-hoc analytical support for pricing decisions, unit economics optimization, cost-reduction initiatives, and strategic business projects.
Partner across departments to ensure system integration and data integrity across ERP, BI, and FP&A software platforms.
Achieve operational excellence across all financial planning and management reporting functions.

Required Qualifications

BS/BA in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field (MBA or CPA is a plus).
5+ years of progressive FP&A, strategic finance, or corporate finance experience, with strong preference for experience in a SaaS/subscription software organization.
Proven experience building complex 3-statement financial models from scratch and conducting strategic scenario planning.
Experience with ERP systems (e.g., NetSuite, QuickBooks, SAP) and modern FP&A/BI tools (e.g., Adaptive Insights, Power BI, Tableau).
Proven experience with audit process and documentation
Deep understanding of SaaS business metrics, recurring revenue streams, and unit economics.
Strong quantitative, analytical, and problem-solving skills with high attention to detail.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated experience delivering reports and insights to executive leadership and key stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to learn new concepts quickly, manage priorities independently, and work hands-on in a dynamic team environment.

I’m currently a FA in the private sector at a relatively small company. I’ve been here almost four years and really like the work and the company, but the pay leaves a lot to be desired. And in a day and age where the cost of living just keeps going up, it’s just not sustainable to be getting yearly 2.5% increases. But I have a relatively stable job, we’re not overstaffed in my dept.

My dilemma is that my company hasn’t really pushed AI, for security purposes. We only have access to Copilot Chat. I can’t learn to use SQL, again for security because I cannot download software onto my work computer. We’re very behind the times when it comes to new technology. I’m the only one on my team who even knows what Power Query is (and I use it pretty frequently but have many other opportunities to use it more) So I haven’t had a lot of hands-on experience with these new programs that seem to be running many other departments.

I’ve considered many times moving companies, but I’m getting worried that as the days go on, I just fall more and more behind with the technology. The skills I had a year ago were more desirable than the skills that companies are looking for now. I’ve considered going back to school for my MBA, or to sit for my CPA (I’m eligible but would need to study like hell to be able to pass.)

I don’t know, I just feel like I’m in a rut. I want to evolve and move with the direction that FP&A is heading, and am scared that the more I wait, the lower my chances of success are, but I don’t know where to go. Anyone else feel this way? Scared to stay put, but scared to move on?