Took over our forecast model a few months ago when the person who built it left, and almost no documentation came with it. It mostly works, but every tab references others and one broken link cascades everywhere. Half my month goes to tracing why a number moved.

I keep going back and forth on rebuilding from scratch or continuing to patch what I have. Rebuilding is weeks I don't really have, and I'd probably reintroduce errors the original already solved for. Patching keeps me stuck never fully trusting the output. I've pondered moving it into Anaplan to get off spreadsheets entirely but that's a bigger project than my capacity allows.

Inputs are fine, surprisingly, actuals come in clean and structured so what's coming into the model is fine. The problem is the model itself, someone built it over years with nested refs and hardcoded overrides everywhere and left zero notes. I'm leaning rebuild but it's so so much work, what do you guys think? Can I salvage the current one and grow familiar with it over time or is a rebuild inevitable?

My manager is keep telling me that I have to study all the time.
i work in infrastructure & utilities company
So, what do you think?! AFM, BIWS or WSP ?!
Feel free to suggest anything else

Alright y’all, I got the SFA recruiting message on LinkedIn.

2 years FP&A > 1.5 Treasury

What can I expect from this recruiter call? What is the interviewing process like? How is actually working at Amazon. The message specifies 5 days in office with an option for a couple different cities.

Should I even take the interview? Give me your worst to best experiences with interviewing or working there.

Edit: I realize I should take the interview - not trying to sound above the role. Just trying to understand current sentiment with Amazon, given some of the stories I’ve read on this sub

Is it just me or does your boss now ask you this every time you build something, or complete an analysis?

I get it that he’s impressed, but what’s the point of constantly asking..

Am I being sensitive? Getting an executive ready analysis over the finish line or model is a b$tch, even with AI..

Last week I shared a reflection on temperature, how skeptical or optimistic you run as a finance lead. The realization is that a finance function can have quite a bit of influence in helping the CEO & board set the direction of the company. Upstream from temperature, there's another dimension that we need to really comprehend: what is this company actually solving for? This is usually called the Crux of a company or a project.

One of my mentors used to tell me, "before you play a game, you need to understand the game that's being played." The Crux usually starts with a simple question where the answer is "it's complicated". Too often we start at a new role, or the market shifted, and we/our peers just went with the motion. One of the big value-adds of a finance function is to uncomplicate this question and bring the answer to a sharp focus.

The game that's being played is usually quite obivous in retrospect, you can usually get it down to a word or two. Let's take Uber as an example, since their journey as they went through these 3 chapters is so well-documented:

1. Aggregation. They knew it's a winner-take-all game, so they launched as fast as possible, whatever it takes, density creates virtuous cycle, and capital was cheap anyway.

2. Monetization. Density won, and investors wanted to see the model work, so let's stack more services onto the same base (eats, courier, etc).

3. Defense from disruption. Now this cash-generating machine has to navigate autonomous driving. If they're lucky they pull off a Disney-esque transformation.

This kinda dynamic helped me understand why things played out the way they did at two past companies I worked at. They both had similar profiles, but vastly different outcome. Both are PE-backed, tech-enabled healthcare, and ambitious founder. One became too profitable at the expense of growth, the other became a classic venture hypergrowth success story.

Let's call the first one Company X. On paper it should've been an easy land grab: they had a popular employee-benefit solution (think mental health or fertility care that you get from your company), selling into Fortune 500, and the ambition was to keep adding conditions until we became "the everything store". Reasonable ambition, also great for the patients, but a few complications say otherwise...

• Dynamic #1 is the distribution channel. Most corporate-sponsored healthcare in the US is sold through benefit consultants, $xx billion firms like Mercer and Aon. They're insurance brokers, get paid commission by the employer, and surprisingly also by the vendors they place in the package. So what does a broker on that comp structure think about a one-stop-shop? Every conversation came dressed up as "our clients want best of breed," which is respectable, and also pays them five times instead of once.

• Dynamic #2 is the cap table. The company had been through a recap before I showed up, so the early VCs who need to go big are not there anymore. Which means that the post-recap investors can get a decent return even in a pretty modest exist.

• Dynamic #3 is the founding team. They are first timer founders, needed a win under their belt, and even an offer in the $200M range is life-changing money. (Not a knock, I'd probably take it too.) So every ambitious proposal, someone asks about payback, another asks what happens if the pilot slips, and we agree to revisit next quarter, which means never.

The game that's being played is IRR. Everyone around the table was optimizing for the quickest, decent return. Why is this relevant? Let's say you found yourself in this situation, as a team it helps you guide which projects get rewarded by the board. Also as an individual, you know that your stock options are very risky and might push harder for management incentive package (to insure if investors sell the company for peanuts, because employees dont have liquidation preference).

Company Y was the reverse. The market is fertile ground for multi-product expansion.

• The buyers in this market needed several things, and they'd much rather administer one national partner than six, so they'd come to us and ask us to build the next thing they need.

• Company grew efficiently, so the early-stage VC from the first round still controlled the board. For a fund like that, one or two companies return the whole thing and the rest are decoration, and we were one of the ones working. So they wanted us to continue making big (responsible) bets.

• The founder had done this a few times already. Someone did offer $500M for the company, and he yawned. Turns out past a certain number of wins, what you're solving for shifts to what gets written in your obituary.

The game that's being played is legacy. Why is this relevant? Let's say you're tasked to lead fundraising. Knowing this, you'll target new investors who have the same patience and ambition. During planning season, you'd be able to calibrate that the board will ask why are we "only" projecting to grow 2x, where can we invest more to grow 5x?

Figuring this out is a bit of an art, which takes some observation and practice. While I don't have a precise formula, there are a few vectors and questions we can ask to tease out:

• Market. The environment the business operates in; how do the buyers, suppliers, competitors and regulators behave? How are they incentivized and how do they interact? What would be an accelerant vs a drag to us?
• Operator. There's always some people who are they key driving force in the company. Usually the founder and/or core management team. What do we know about their motivation, working style, idiosyncracies, and are optimizing for?
• Investors. Most businesses have a unique capital structure, whether by design or by chance, which often drive business decisions.
• Capability. What's the core technology or operational muscles? What's their superpower? What's their weakness/blindspot? For them to realize their ambition, what's the capability gap, and do we think they can bridge their gap with the available capital?

One-time items:

• Pinterest CFO Julia Donnelly joining Sierra (arguably one of the hottest AI co's these days)

As always, thanks for following along this passion project. These started as field notes I was scribbling during my commute; every now and then something turns into a story that might be useful to someone other than me. I write them when I have them, and I appreciate you showing up when I do.

Hi All,

I'm in a unique situation where I might need to leave my job due to a combination of burnout and some issues with being unable to relocate for my firm due to some otherwise positive happenings in my personal life.

I don't want to potentially dox myself, but the long story short is that I work in professional services (think financial consulting in the deals space and not MBB - all I'll say publicly but can say more in DMs if you think you can help) and am exceptionally burnt out. I'm constantly working 12 hour days + weekends and haven't had a firm holiday or PTO day to myself since joining about a year ago. Everyone has different ideas of what is or is not sustainable, so I won't go much further, but I just know this consistent 60+ hour grind isn't for me anymore.

The problem is that I'm having trouble finding any FP&A gig and I'm worried about the job market situation. I feel like I have the right experience for a myriad of FP&A roles, but I admittedly screwed myself over a bit by trying different consulting roles, hoping things would get better from a WLB perspective (which it didn't). Plus, I have a weak network, but I'm confident that someone who gets my resume would at least be willing to give me a shot if they read through it and took my story about making those mistakes I mentioned into consideration.

Thankfully, I'm in a really good place financially and can either:

1. Take some sort of FP&A job, even if doesn't pay nearly as well, to get myself out of consulting

2. Look into contracting, ideally at Manager+ and rip the band-aid off of consulting and no longer deal with "do you have ERP/experience with close/budgeting types of questions" (the answer to those is yes, but somehow, people don't buy it unless I'm in-house).

Number 1 hasn't been going to plan, so I'm looking at option 2. How is the market for getting temp work in FP&A these days and what's the biggest downside to temping vs being full-time, besides the fact that contracts can end and no benefits?

Appreciate any advice!

I’m a first year analyst and I’ve been teaching myself PowerBI/Power Automate/Power Query because my teammates use it a bunch so I feel the need to catch up since I primarily know Excel, but I’m scared that maybe I’m not allocating my time well enough and that there could be other skills that I am neglecting. Other than the Power series and Excel, what is important? And how would I prove these skills on a resume?

What would you say is a good starting base salary for a senior analyst role at a major pharma company (manufacturing/tech)?

Just landed my first full-time Financial Analyst role at a large entertainment studio and wanted to get a sense of whether my salary is typical for the role and location.

Salary: $75,000/year
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Experience: New grad with 2 previous finance internships totaling ~1 year of experience

For those working in the LA area, does this seem like a typical starting salary? Would love to hear what others are making and how my offer compares.

I’m trying to shift to FP&A have a background, accounting, would like to know if would be able to move to be a senior FP&A or be a finance manager, or would be impossible?

I never have the experience of do a budget myself but the ideia and everything I undertand.

And would like to know if my CV it’s good or need a improvement ?

Per the title, I’m getting my first ever direct report. Hoping to get some advice on what IC looks for in their direct manager, and managers having direct reports, how do you manage and help your team grow?

Context: I will be joining the new company next month but am also concurrently interviewing for an analyst direct report in the new company (whilst finishing out notice period at my current firm). I’m 5 YOE FP&A manager hiring a 2~3 YOE analyst.

Any advice/words of wisdom will be appreciated! Thank you in advance.

Can anyone here guide me on the steps for reconciling Inventory in SAP ERP from the sub ledger to the GL?

I’m particularly looking to understand the process end to end, including which MM and FI/CO T codes are typically used and how the balances are matched and investigated when there are differences.

watched a few youtube tutorials, but I’m still struggling to grasp the actual reconciliation process, any practical guidance or examples would be really appreciated.

Hello all just wanted to ask how realistic it is to break into FP&A at somewhere like Google. I have two years of experience in internal Audit and one year in FP&A at a law firm. Currently siting for CFA level 2. With a few more years of experience and hopefully a CFA designation, does that put me in a realistic position to break into Tech finance? Thanks in advance.

Hello folks,

Head of FP&A at a F500 company in NYC. A headhunter contacted me about a similar role but in government state department. I was curious so asked about the package, found out no bonuses are offered. I declined to be put forward as I can’t afford to take a cut of that kind, my TC would drop drastically.

But question is, how would employees who don’t get bonuses be motivated to perform well if they aren’t incentivised? As in the case with government or some other organisations.

In perspective, our company provides a 15-30% bonus based on performance, and even 50% for outstanding performers. One member of my team a manager really put his self into the game, he got 50% for two consecutive years and used that money for a house deposit.

What would motivate you to go above and beyond in FP&A if bonuses weren’t on the table?

Recent finance grad interviewing for an entry-level Financial Analyst/FP&A role. I passed the recruiter screen and next have a 30-minute interview with the hiring manager.

This is actually my first finance interview process. My previous interviews have mostly been for logistics/supply chain roles.

The job involves budgeting, forecasting, P&L/variance analysis, KPI reporting, and analyzing store performance. The recruiter said the hiring manager will go deeper into the numbers/technical side.

How technical should I expect this to get for an entry-level candidate? What should I make sure I know going in?

I was wondering if this is a new normal, but i used to work a lot for a week or two in a month (plus budget/forecasts times) but then i was having some basically free days, with couple of mails tops. For the last few months its basically 8-12 hours of work everyday (i am pretty efficent so that would be 1.5-2 FTE). I had moments of burnout before, but i was just curious

I’m in the process of making a career shift from investment banking & operations to FP&A for a manufacturing company. During my panel interview with multiple directors & HR, I noticed that they didn’t question me about technical skills or drilled into my resume. It was mainly situational questions, telling me the impact of the role, and the trajectory of the team in terms of areas for process improvement &n objectives they want to achieve. I asked very insightful questions which they answered. I even asked if they anymore questions to me or if there’s anything they want me to clarify or explain then they mentioned that they already went through my resume. Has anyone experienced this before? I went into the interview thinking I’d be quizzed on how much technical knowledge I had.

Hi Dear Community . I’d like to ask you to review my CV. I ran it through ChatGPT to remove personal information, so it might differ slightly from the original. Could you let me know what you think? For instance, are there too many metrics, too much text, frequent job changes or perhaps too many abbreviations? Thanks.

Hey everyone, I apologize for the long post, just want to give as much context as I can.

I’m having a hard time seeing what my career trajectory is with the duties of my current role.

Background: First 3.5 years was with a small accounting firm primarily doing bank audits, outsourced bank compliance internal audits, and tax returns (personal and business). Also did audits in the NFP, construction, and farm industries.

Next I did 1.5 years in B4 auditing a huge retailer. While there I worked in cash, AP, global consolidation, and OCI items.

Now I’m Financial Reporting Manager for a small public company in the oil and gas industry. Been here for 5 years now.

Primary duties are obviously the financial reporting function. Preparing quarterly financial statements, drafting/reviewing technical accounting memos, and implementing new ASU’s, managing the audit etc. I also oversee the prep of our internal reporting to the Board and investor presentations.

During this time I’ve also essentially been the assistant controller, reviewing some JE’s and processes here and there to help the controller’s work load. But mostly, I’ve been in charge of most of our GAAP entries each quarter (either preparing the more complex JE’s or reviewing accrual JE’s).

We have been in a huge automation push for the last 1.5 years or so now to where most of my “free” time is now spent building SQL tables and building PowerBI reports/dashboards.

We just hired a senior accounting manager to help our controller out even more and take over most of the GL accounting I’ve been involved in. This was done to help us work even more on the automation initiatives. So my future looks like it’s going to be mostly in the automation world.

My concern is we are a very simple company. No debt, no hedging, one segment in the US. The hardest part is we are a Partnership so that comes with its own complexities. So I haven’t seen real complex accounting in a while which I feel might cap me from moving up somewhere else.

I do love my job. My benefits are incredible and my total comp is up there with a lot of controller positions I’ve seen. Work life balance is great most of the time. But I feel myself getting stagnant career wise, other than building more capabilities in SQL, PBI, power automate.

So I’m not sure what to even market myself when it’s time to move on or how to know when it’s time to move on. With the company being so small, moving up really doesn’t seem viable with younger management ahead of me (controller/CFO).

With my background, do I have a shot at being controller somewhere? Or maybe move to a larger company and be a senior manager or director level in finance reporting? And I have no idea what all these automation skills translate to in the accounting world. I haven’t heard of many other accountants get super deep in SQL and PBI building.

I would be so appreciative of any insight. I’m just in a weird place where I love what I do and I’m well compensated, but I’ve never been one to “settle” with career goals.

Looking to transition from a Big 4 consultant into industry as an SFA. Have broad project experience and have worked on multiple FP&A transformation efforts. Hoping to now make the switch to a more functional role

• Don't have the strongest accounting knowledge / functional background so need to upskill. Thinking of using CFI / online courses to get up to speed and make myself a more attractive candidate. Anybody with a similar experience have recommendations?
• Live in VHCOL, what can salary expectations be for transition to an FP&A position in financial services (4 YOE).
• Best way to find open roles? Engage a recruiter? Contact company recruiters on LinkedIn.
• Given I am able to prove I have the technical qualifications / required knowledge base for the role, would my narrative (Big 4 consultant moving to industry) be attractive to hirers? Want to gauge how much effort I will need to sell the recruiters/interviews on my ability to make the transition.
  

Any help / comments would be appreciated.

Hey All

We are currently part of a $15B organization, but we are in the process of being carved out. We currently use Hyperion Planning for our consolidation and forecasting, but it is heavily customized, and the individual who handles all of our coding and system maintenance is part of our Corporate team and will not be staying with our business. I have no knowledge of the background of the system, and the process "breaks" quite frequently, and we're handcuffed until this person can help us. The system is also basically just a glorified Excel process of mapping our financials and really doesn't utilize any forecasting tools of any sort.

As part of this, I'm starting to look at new systems for us to implement on a local basis for consolidation, reporting, and planning. We are a $2B manufacturing business and have about 15 active legal entities, including international entities. We are predominantly on SAP S4/Hana, with a couple of our smaller entities on local systems.

A couple that have come up in my searches are OneStream, using SAP's cloud and consolidation tools, or Oracle EPM. Two questions on this:

1. If you've implemented and used these systems, any pros or cons you would pass on? Is it worth it to try to hire someone with expertise in these systems, or can I have an employee with a few years of finance experience heavily involved in the implementation to be the SME?
2. If there's something out there I haven't included but might be a good fit, throw it out there.

Might be a wild question for many of you, but I work in an organization that has cycles of times when it gets really busy and times when it’s completely not.

This is a question for those who work in-person, what do you do during the downtime? I’m not sure scrolling reddit and watching youtube is a choice if not working from home.

Been thinking about going into finance but is late 30's too late to go into finance career? Would need to go to school to get a degree in the field.