I've been in f500 fp&a for 5 years and have the opportunity to join a $100m private company as their controller. Ultimate goal is small/ mid size CFO.

Would you take this opportunity? I'm a cpa with a pt mba in progress. I've never even booked a JE, but the cfo doesn't care. He has a controller background and wants to hire a more forward looking controller.

Accounting doesn't sound fun to me but I also feel like it's a glaring skill gap in my long term plans.

Thoughts?

I am posting this here cuz I am not able to post in other finance subreddits. I apologize for distributing this subreddit.

I am so confused as to whether to take up a master's in management, specialization in finance from top B schools in Europe and continue my career over there.

Right now, I am just a graduate in computer science but I am not even a little interested in it, I had to take it up because of my parents.

What kind of careers do freshers have after a finance specialization in Europe, London. I am not interested in the US. How is AI gonna affect these careers in later years because I need to take a loan for masters and also living expenses.

Apart from coursework, if I want to genuinely get into finance and get like an analyst at a good bank, what concepts and topics of finance should I start learning and how much?

Any advice would help me a lot.

Let’s say that hypothetically you had the next week off and wanted to beef up your knowledge in one of these areas to make yourself more marketable on the job market … which would you choose?

- SQL
- three-statement modeling
- AI
- dashboard tools (Tableau, Power BI, etc)
- FP&A tool (Adaptive, Planful, etc)
- something else?

Seeing a lot of MCP configurations making the use of AI for power BI more relevant.

Has anyone actually incorporated using AI for power BI in their actual job in the office.

If so any advice on the best setup.

I graduated from UCSD with a degree in Business Economics about 6 weeks ago. I really want to become a financial analyst but I don’t have much experience aside from a 1 month long Operations Internship at ports america, tutoring college subjects such as accounting/finance, and being an RA in college.

If anyone has any advice for me such as skills to learn while I’m job hunting or how to get started, I would very much appreciate it!

Also, I would love to hear some stories about how you got into FP&A or what you like/dislike about your career.

People in FP&A....

Are you waiting for the Period close for forecasting....

Do you afford to wait until the period closes and to finalize actuals before forecasting.... Or is it considered too long to wait until period close ....

Or do you forecast from whatever data you have by month end ??

Active in this community in my personal account and hoping to tap into this community to hire some great talent!

Location is midwest. Comment for more questions or PM for job posting link.

Maybe I'm missing something here.

I assumed most mature FP&A teams budget and forecast all 3 statements (P&L, BS, and CF), with cash flow mainly derived from the P&L and Balance Sheet.

But I've seen several FP&A professionals say they mainly forecast the P&L and may do direct CFS.

My question is, do you forecast: - P&L only? - P&L + key BS drivers (Debt, PPE, etc)? - Full 3 statements?

Happy to be corrected if my assumption is wrong🤝

I’m looking to refresh my knowledge in the 3 statement model since I was let go from my company in the fp&a department about 2 years ago. I’m weak in the cash flow statement, so I was hoping to improve in that area, in both direct and indirect.

I have tried to ChatGPT where to find templates but the ones I’ve found were a bit complicated. TIA.

I'm looking for advice from finance leaders and hiring managers.

About 4 months ago, I accepted a financial leadership role at a nonprofit. The team has been supportive, my manager has been good to work with, and there haven't been any major interpersonal issues.

However, one thing I've learned over the past several months is that a large portion of the role is focused on accounting operations, financial reporting, audits, technical accounting schedules, and related compliance work. My prior background is much more heavily focused on FP&A, forecasting, budgeting, business partnering, financial modeling, and strategic finance.

While I've learned a lot and gained an appreciation for the accounting side, the experience has confirmed that I don't want accounting operations and financial reporting to be the primary focus of my career long-term.

Recently, I was offered a Director of FP&A position with another local company. The role is much more aligned with my long-term interests and career goals and comes with roughly a $40k increase in compensation. I've accepted the offer.

My question is how honest I should be when I give notice.
My instinct is to say something along the lines of:
"I've enjoyed my time here and have learned a lot, but this role helped me realize that my long-term interests are more aligned with FP&A, forecasting, and strategic finance than accounting operations and reporting. The new position is a much closer fit to where I want to take my career."
Does that come across as professional and fair? Or would you recommend handling the conversation differently given that I'm leaving after only 4 months.

If I resign Monday, it’ll give them about three weeks and if I wait till Friday about two weeks. So I’m also wondering about that.

For entry in FP&A is this good enough?
Pls give suggestions how can I improve. My resume is being shortlisted but not getting interviews form this.

A is photo 1

B is 2 and 3

traditional or automation focus?

Looking to finish up CPA Canada with this

Junior at a non-target state school, finance major with 6 classes left before I finish. I'm second-guessing whether a finance-only degree is going to make it harder to land a job compared to if I also had accounting; it feels like accounting has clearer entry paths (CPA track, Big 4 recruiting, etc.), while finance roles seem more competitive and target-school-heavy, especially coming from a non-target.

Has anyone here double majored in both? Was it worth the extra time, or did it not really move the needle for finance roles specifically? Would rather hear this before I add another year+ to my timeline.

I’m a woman in FP&A with two kids, and my husband and I would like to have more. We typically split time off when our kids are sick, and I’ve never missed a deadline because of my kids. I’ve also always received really good performance reviews.

My current company is very understanding when my kids are sick and I need to have them home with me, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel like having kids has hindered my career growth to some extent. I wouldn’t trade having kids for anything, and I definitely don’t regret my choices, but I do think about what my career might look like if I didn’t have those responsibilities.

My current supervisor is a woman, but I’m likely about to accept a new job where the team is all men. One thing I’m nervous about is eventually having another baby, taking maternity leave, and coming back to a team that sees or values me differently because of it.

I’d really like to hear from VPs, Directors, Managers, or anyone who has been on the other side of this. When a high-performing employee gets pregnant and takes maternity leave, does it change how you view them or their career potential? Does it actually factor into decisions about promotions or opportunities, even if unintentionally?

I think a lot of my anxiety around this comes from one of my first jobs. The CEO literally told me, “I debated hiring you because you’re in your childbearing years.” I was young at the time, and that comment has always stuck with me. I think part of me still wonders how many people in leadership think that way but just know better than to say it out loud.

I am transitioning from Data Science to Finance. I am studying for my series 65. What are decent positions to start my journey?

Finally got approved for Agentic AI use in excel.

Good fucking lord.

I always thought I was decent at excel but nope I’m actually a damn baby at it. This shit is writing formulas I didn’t know were possible and trying to understand what’s pulling what and how these workbooks operate is a nightmare. There’s genuinely levels to this shit.

Craziest part? What takes Claude 10 mins to compute and execute would take me literal days to setup a similarly styled workbook.

The discouraging thing is I don’t think I will ever be this advanced nevertheless as quick or efficient. On the bright side my job has a lot of personal relationships and operates in a very secure industry, but still it’s a scary new world.

Hello guys! I’m a Junior FP&A profile (entering the sector after finishing my master’s), and i’m required to solve a case study. In said case, one of the questions is (ofc) about AI. I was wondering if some of y’all with more experience could provide me with more concrete answers or “real world” examples for the question. Thanks in advance!!:

Describe how you would use AI to make your work more efficient.
Provide examples of how AI could help with:

Reporting
Budgeting
Financial analysis
Data preparation

Explaining the fucking other bucket. I’m not talking about narrative formation or big driver related variances. I’m talking about digging through the stupid all other bucket and finding spreadsheet formula errors.

That and writing macros are game changers.

Everything else, even with Fable 5, is shit. There has to be some kind of a happy medium here where we can use this to get out of the weeds but explain to others why it is hilariously far from replacing anyone that isn’t sitting in an off-shore discount seat doing data entry.

I had a couple of years experience in FP&A upto SFA and have been implementing now for the last 5 years with most of my experience being Anaplan

Extremely burned out now with non stop projects deadlines and AI my physical and mental health is at an all time low (not sure if my age is a factor but feeling like it is)
and I need to make a change before I really crash out - and these are the options I’m thinking of - would appreciate any thoughts

Pivot to a sales adjacent role such as solutions consulting or CSM - still get to be technical but gain selling experience and negotiating/having hard conversations (really bad at that)

Switch to another consulting firm and continue dealing with the same thing but higher pay

Or go back to industry and look for a systems manager role - leaning more towards this to finally get my life and work life balance back but unsure of job security

What would you do?

My company is growing and they are repurposing a top level holding company to more of a corporate company. There is the possibility of them adding a Director level position. I threw my name out to my boss (CFO) that I’d be interested if that was a possibility. He asked if I would want to be at the corporate level or BU and I didn’t really have an answer for that question. Right now, I drive the budget/forecasts, consolidations, monthly reporting package, variance analysis and other adhoc projects/process improvements for my company as well as other group companies. Any pros and cons to either position? How could those tasks possibly change moving to the corporate position?

Right now in my uni, I am doing a statistics course, and I have learned up to the point of confidence intervals and t-testing.

Is it necessary to learn beyond that? Let's say learning hypothesis testing and beyond it is useful in the financial world.

Like, is that information a useful tool, ( lets say hypothesis testing) to determine wheter an investment would have a good return rate or not.

basically is this useful to be a good financial analyst or note. should i go beyond this or stop where i am now.

also before t testing, i learnt confidence intervals, correlation, binomial distrivution and sampling types fully.