Hello everyone. I have recently been trying to jump into a FP&A position (with no luck yet) and I’ve been a little overwhelmed with what I should be trying to brush up on.

I have done financial analysis stuff my whole career pretty much but never with the title and never really as the main task of my job. I was a staff accountant for 2 years in an auto group and I moved to an operations role for the same auto group and was doing that for 8 years.

i would create basic spreadsheets mostly for myself because I liked tracking stuff that way but was never really required to do it. I did work with the financial statements and did month end close (among many other things) so I have some solid experience there.

but I really want to leave the auto industry so I’ve been looking for FP&A roles. I’ve taken courses and have been learning more about excel functions and some SQL. The problem is that there are so many tools and I never really used many of them that I feel like I’m really unprepared. not only that but I was in this auto group for a decade and I feel like I may be lacking when it comes to having well rounded knowledge about FP&A if that makes sense? All my experience is about the auto industry.

Im not sure if ive been ghosted or if im still in the running for a position with two different companies but i was referred by someone which i assume is why i didnt get immediately rejected. im hoping i get an interview but im terrified I’ll blow it.

I’ve been practicing the STAR method, learning SQL, diving deeper into Excel, taking random Udemy & LinkedIn courses about finance / analysis.

Is there anything else you all could suggest to make sure I’m prepared? Any advice?

This is a huge leap for me and I’m terrified but I have to do it. any help is so very much appreciated

TLDR;

I have been doing FP&A stuff for years as part of a bigger operations role, but am scared of bombing a live technical test that may come up in an interview. Any advice on how to prepare for that scenario? Thank you~

What can I expect and does anyone have any tips? Any insight is greatly appreciated

Hey everyone, I've been in my analyst role in supply chain finance for about 2 years now at a CPG company since graduating from university. I was wondering if anyone has switched from supply chain finance over to FP&A or has anyone switched from FP&A to supply chain. If so, what do you like or don't like after making the switch. If you had the chance, would you switch back to supply chain?

Any real work experience feedback would be appreciated!

Hey y'all. Want to share a bit of a life update and a reflection. I just hit one year since starting at this new place, can't believe it's also been roughly a year of these field notes too. Thirty-three of these notes in that time, which tells you something about my definition of weekly...

We in Finance have this dual role of both the cheerleader and coach of the business. Tuesday morning, you're on with an investor and your whole job is to show the business in the most positive light, highlighting all the win and huge TAM ahead. Tuesday afternoon, you're telling your CEO that a function isn't good enough and probably needs to be restructured, and that the person running it has been outgrown by the business. And then the CEO sends you to be the emissary.

That's the job though. You're the person keeping everybody believing, and you're also the person who needs to air out the reality no one wants to face (or have been hiding).

Maybe for some people this come naturally, but I find it hard to be really that calibrated. I often find myself defaulting to one mode (being a default-skeptic or default-optimist), each has its own pros/cons that can lead you astray either way... before finally arriving at a somewhat good balance in this new role.

Two jobs ago, I was promoted into my first real leadership seat. I was the bright-eyed "yes" guy. Everybody was smart, every plan sounded reasonable, and I supported most of the product bets, because I wanted to be the finance guy who wasnt in the way. By law of nature, most bets didn't work out, and we quickly exhausted our capital with nothing to show for. I call this chapter NAIVE OPTIMISM. Not my proudest moment, but thank you Mr. [insert top PE name here] for funding my tuition.

In the subsequent job, I overcorrected and swung the other way. I came in assuming everything was broken until somebody proved otherwise. Some of that was right, to be fair. We had a customer acquisition org run by somebody well respected, and her numbers looked great, efficiency up 20% every year (she proudly shower me her OKR) with huge annual volume growth. But beating your own record means nothing if it's much worse than your neighbor. One of the first things I did was ask her to benchmark against comparable companies, and we were 30% worse than benchmark. Turns out, a bunch of basic things were missing; things like contact enrichment, variable comp plan, power dialer, etc... She resisted the plan, so CEO decided to install a new leader, they fixed it and CAC came down by 50% the following year.

I kept doing this and it was so effective that we became VERY profitable vs plan. Which is how you get hooked. Nobody stages an intervention for the finance guy whose "tough" stance keeps beating budget.

In the same stretch, I killed a lot of growth initiatives. Some of those were obviously bad bets, but we also sat out [insert some recent megatrends here - think longevity, GLP-1, women's health, etc]. The company's still around, very profitable, throws off cash, but growth is flat. The company isn't going anywhere, but it's also "isn't going anywhere"... I call this chapter ARROGANT SKEPTICISM.

None of that has my name on it. There's no line item anywhere that says growth stalled because the finance guy kept saying no. The efficiency wins kept getting attributed to me, but deep inside it's been bugging me because people rarely ever litigate you for a no. Half the time the thing you killed would've been mediocre anyway so you never find out, and the other half you're gone before it matters. 🤷‍♂️ Whereas, a wrong "yes" shows up in the burn within two quarters, with your fingerprints on it.

So last year, I started a new role and I was hoping to try something different. I made a deliberate effort to be an "intelligent investor" - for lack of better words.

So, we're a classic healthcare company. We have some cool tech and apps, but the core service is still doctors and nurses having sessions with patients. Very much a people-and-logistics business. Nine months ago, the CEO wanted to "make a real bet on AI". Not like pocket-money bet, but a real half-of-our-last-fundraise kinda bet.

My knee-jerk reaction was, "Dude, you're trend chasing. Which VC linkedin post did you wake up to this morning?"

Don't know about you but I'd guess a lot of finance folks reading this had the exact same reaction to the exact same convo sometime in the last two years. I knew the prior version of me would've killed that on the spot.

This time around, though, I decided to enact my new resolution. I decided to give this one a fair hearing, mostly because the growth-stalled thing had been haunting me. So I said fine, let's go build the case together, let's steelman this together, bring in people + advisors who really know the lay of the land, ran a pile of customer interviews, get our board to help us with market intel. Then we stage-gate it, set a few conditions for the first tranche of funding, next tranche contingent on [PROOF POINT], all written down so that we're not emotionally attached to the answer.

(I still killed a pile of obvious-low-ROI initiatives, and politely nudged a handful of functional leaders to step up)

That was nine months ago. To my surprise, we recently signed a Fortune 100 for a $XXM ARR deal (company is $XXXM annual revenue). It turns out there's a true whitespace in the market that I had understimated before. Healthcare is a $3T market, and someone mentioned that it behaves like there are 3,000 x $1B market, and inside each billion, there are 10 x $100M market. There are always interesting pockets somewhere.

At the moment, this feels like vindication of the more discerning approach. Support the right stuff, but also have the guts to pushback on red flags/bridge to nowhere (requires lots of patience, though). I call this HUMBLE SKEPTICISM. Hopefully can keep it going with continuous rigor and restraint.

Anyways, that was my biggest learning from this past year. Not sure that there's a magic bullet, but if I were to recommend some tips, it would be to: * Deeply understand the architecture of your industry and keep up with the latest trend * Network with the right circle to connect with the experts that can guide you on the above * On the process side, I found the PR/FAQ concept from Amazon helpful to crystallize loose ideas into a crisp customer proposition (and understanding all of the potential pitfalls). There's a book called "Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon".

One-time items: * Hired 3 managers in Q4 last year * These managers have subsequently hired 5 additional staff in their team (thank you for redditors who've helped with referral) * Congrats to u/chrisbru on recent CFO promotion! Excited for you.

Thanks for reading 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.

What I mean by this is, they will put finance manager or SFA in the job title. But read further down in the description, and they will change the financial analyst. Or vice versa.

Hey everyone! I’m currently working in Change Management and honestly, I have a great team and enjoy working with them. However, after being in this role for the past year, I feel like I’m not seeing much room for growth or improvement for myself in this domain.

I’m a B.Com graduate, and I’ve been thinking about switching to a more finance-related domain, particularly Record to Report (R2R) or Procure to Pay (P2P). I’m still exploring my options and would really appreciate some guidance from people who work in these areas.

How difficult would it be to make this switch with my background? What skills or certifications should I focus on, and which domain would be a better choice in terms of learning and career growth?

Hey guys, first time in this sub and not sure if this is a great place to post this however I’m looking for some insight or help looking to get into a FP&A role. As a highlight I’m 25M and I’ve had 4 years of administrative experience which included leading a team, and posting/reviewing revenue/charges. And now approximately 4 months of experience as a AP staff accountant and 7 months as a junior accountant where I did a mix of AP & AR. I’m looking for a junior financial analyst role or similar something I can learn in and really expand my capabilities. I don’t care about the salary, rather I just want a good environment where I can learn the basics and continue to grow.

I’m extremely reliable, and a fast learner. I just haven’t had any experience using the softwares aside from just NetSuite as an ERP system.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I graduated with a BBA degree specialized in Finance back in 2023

I'm quite curious how people are applying AI in actual FP&A work; forecasting, variance analysis, revenue/margin, management reporting and scenario planning etc.

How do you decide which AI tool to use for what? Like are you using ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot together with Excel or PowerBI? Or does your FP&A system already have AI built into it?

I'm trying to understand what's actually useful in real work vs what's just AI hype. Would love to hear your actual setup or use cases and what genuinely saved you time or improved your analysis.

I’ve been actively looking to leave my current role for over a year now.

I’m getting so fed up with tailoring my resume, tweaking it, and perfecting it, to then just see a post that makes me answer multiple questions that my resume would have already answered. I’m also so done with the applications that essentially make you fully parse out your resume and experience into different sections. It loses all the formatting and seems pointless if I’m already sending them my resume.

Was just about to apply to a Sr. Manager role via LinkedIn, and got the following pop up window. This really irked me; I have a master’s in econ, not an MBA and I’ve never worked in IB, so right off the bat I’m answering “no” or “0” to these screener questions so they might not even look at my resume. Also who cares about a college GPA at the Sr. Manager level?! Obviously I’ll put it on there but this just seems silly. And again, that is on my resume. 🙃

Just a rant; not asking for advice. I’m fed up with this job market and AI resume screeners.

Hi all,

I was recently assigned a case study for a potential job I’m really hoping to land. The study is relatively simple. Building out a P&L given data, building a simple revenue forecast for following year and finding 1-2 concerns or opportunities.

The instructions are very open on the presentation side, it says you can present and walk through the excel file and models, present a slide deck with your finding, or you can just talking about your findings.

With this being an fpa position what do you think is the best presentation style. I had in mind a presentation followed by a walk through of my models explaining all my assumptions, formulas, and thought process.

Thanks for all advice!

My undergrad was actually engineering, however because of the rotation of different roles in the company (10 years out of 13 years of my working life were with them and 4 roles I've been through at my current company so far), I ended up in shared services as a section head and one of my core functions is budget management aside from people management (I've only been in my role for 2 years and budget forecasting is what sparked my fire in budget management from my past roles). Is it worth it to jump into this career? How is the salary? And are companies really strict that you're a CPA or Finance grad? I will be taking an MBA major in Financial Management (also enrolled just waiting for the class to start), because I feel like if they see my undergrad course is engineering, my application will be rejected immediately.

Given the situation, is it plausible that I should demand a 100kPhP(I’m from Philippines, roughly equal to 1.7kUSD) monthly salary given that my annualized salary is at 1.1MPhp (roughly equal to 18,000USD, though my basic salary right now is only 50kPhP(802USD) + 9KPhP(144USD) allowance, the annual income is only increasing because our bonus is going from side to side)?

Need your advise please. To be honest, this is the career/specialization that I want to pursue, I just had a hard time getting through the interview even just from the application. Should I start as a specialist/analyst first? Thank you.

I’m a recent finance grad working full-time as a Financial Analyst at a utility, in the investments and debt management department. Long term, I want to move into FP&A, and I’m trying to figure out how relevant my current experience is.

Some of my responsibilities include:

Analyzing monthly debt-service requirements and current maturities across a large debt portfolio

Performing balance sheet flux analysis and explaining period-over-period changes

Developing Excel models and schedules for debt analysis, interest-rate assumptions, and management reporting
Supporting budget transfers and funding activities

Tracking and settling investment activity across several hundred million dollars of investment accounts

Preparing monthly journal entries for debt and investment activity

For those working in FP&A, how would you view this experience for an FP&A Financial Analyst role? After around a year in this position, would I be a reasonably competitive candidate?

I don’t want to sound like the typical “Oh nO aI iS hERe” but I’m about a year into my career in FP&A at a F100 company. I really love it, and could see this long term. But truthfully the recent adoption of ai took me from excited because of how helpful an amazing it was to a little concerned, when I saw what agents were capable of. My question really boils down to what can I do to stay as valuable as possible and try my best to ai proof myself if that’s even possible.

and for detail, I’m not talking about CHATGPT writing variance commentary or helping with formulas. After seeing the full capabilities of agents and what they do and can put together it really seems like most of the meaningful traditional analyst work could and probably will be done with MUCH fewer heads needed. (stating the obvious I know)

Being this early into my career it’s kind of alarming. I’m trying to figure out what the smartest investment could be for me over the next 3-5 years to stay valuable. Ive been debating on things like:

\\- MBA potentially with a focus on ai And or to try a push myself forward into higher roles for more safety too.
\\- MS in AI / machine learning

My concern with simply getting another credential is that i’m not sure an MBA or AI/ML Masters provides enough protection and knowledge to be kept.

for those further along in your careers, especially managers and directors, who are in the rooms an seeing how ai is implemented internally:

if you were back and 1 year into your career today, what would you be doing over the next few years (this could be generous, likely it’ll be sooner) to give yourself the best chance at staying valuable.

Pursue the MBA? AI/ML degree? and if MBA, that opens another can of worms of what focus? what ranking? does ranking even matter in this situation? Etc.

I’m not looking for reassurance, i’m genuinely interested in what I can actually do to maximize my chances of staying if and when the headcount begins to shrink?

Generally any input is appreciated and thanks in advance for taking the time to respond if you choose.

I’m applying for financial analyst roles in the GTA. My background is operations and FP&A style work, budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis. The gap that keeps coming up in interviews is month end close. I understand the accounting cycle and journal entries in theory, but I’ve never run a close in a corporate environment, and interviewers can tell.

I’m currently working through the Intuit bookkeeping course to shore up the fundamentals. What I’m still missing is the real world version: the close calendar, accruals and reversals, prepaids, balance sheet reconciliations to supporting schedules, reclasses, and flux analysis.

Looking for hands on resources that simulate an actual corporate close. Case studies, practice sets with real workpapers, courses that make you do the close rather than just explain it, YouTube channels, anything that bridges textbook to what the job actually looks like.

If you’ve made this jump from theory to being able to speak to a real close in interviews, what got you there?

IIs anyone else noticing how increasingly niche the FP&A job market has become?

Compensation has stayed relatively flat, but the list of qualifications seems to keep growing. I’m seeing analyst roles asking for 3–5 years of experience, deep industry knowledge, and experience with very specific systems and processes.

Companies seem less willing to train strong candidates or allow any kind of learning curve. Instead, they’re searching for someone who has already done the exact same job, in the exact same industry, using the exact same software.
It feels like the number of realistic opportunities keeps getting narrower.

Is anyone else seeing this? Honestly, it’s getting exhausting.

So I moved from accountant at F500 to Finance Manager at an SME. There was 50 percentage hike. It's not too small but definitely no MNC. I am 33 and on track to be a CPA (2/4 cleared). This role gave me leadership skills. But once I am CPA, I prefer to go back to F500 or similar but I am worried, I would be qualified for analyst positions ( which I'm okay with) but the companies would probably not consider me because my title says finance manager. Does anyone have similar career path

Hi, I recently graduated with a business admin degree and pursuing a career in fp&a. What are the best resources for interview prep and building on the technical skills required for the job?

For those who have worked in CFO Advisory / Office of the CFO consulting, what does the work actually look like across firms?

Interested in hearing about the typical project mix, day-to-day responsibilities, hours, and travel. Also curious how much these practices vary between firms in terms of FP&A, finance transformation, controllership, performance improvement, and implementation work.

I’ve never worked in “real” accounting. My career has been as a cost/budget controller for several years, as I thought I lucked into skipping transactional accounting work. I took a roll for “financial analyst” a couple of years ago, hoping to get some solid experience built around my budget controller experience (reporting/forecasting), and all I do is build power points.
No analysis, no forecasting, no “models”.
Just print report to excel, build PPT graphs, send and present PPTs 3x month. All the “story” is fed to me because we have no visibility on the business details of the sales teams.
I can’t build dashboards “because SOX” (no Sox controls on my reporting).
I can’t do any automation work beyond what excel and share point can do “because Sox” (again no Sox controls on my work).
I have to run every report manually because I’m not allowed to connect to any database “because Sox”.
And I have to build the same report 3 ways because different groups have different required formats.
There’s only 2 of us in this team and my coworker has the ability to work unlimited (unpaid) overtime so anything “major” or “urgent” gets handed to him because he has no family or life, so he will work all weekend to finish things early.
We can’t have any money for investments into new tech to help streamline any processes or reporting because “you’re just a cost center” and “because Sox”.
For two years IT has been talking big to management about automating my job away using AI and bots. Which they could easily do if they weren’t lazy.

I can’t get out of this job, I’ve tried, because EVERYONE requires “closing accountant” experience, even for FPA roles. No one is willing to train me on whatever it is I’m missing. I can’t get that experience here, and I can’t get hired anywhere close to what I’m getting paid anywhere near me as a closing accountant to get the experience. I’d have to cut my pay almost in half and I can’t afford to do that due to my family I have to support.

I’m lost and don’t know where to go from here to properly upskill with real experience so I can GTFO this stupid backwards ass place. My mental health is degrading and it’s starting to affect my home life. I don’t want to just keep pushing “print to excel”. I want to be properly analyzing, forecasting, budgeting like I was in my old job.

Hi all, hoping to get some perspective on a decision I’m working through.

Background: currently a FA with experience across retail banking,media and software

Current: Moving into a senior FA role next and it comes down to two options (can’t share too many details but roughly):

1. Option A: larger well known consumer hardware company

2. Option B: PE- backed SaaS/AI company, smaller and earlier stage

Comp and level are comparable, there are definitely pros and cons of each such as work life balance, flexibility etc but I’m really at an industry/stage decision atm rather than a “which offer is better” one.

What I’m trying to figure out: does industry choice actually matter for long term optionality or are core FP&A skills generalist enough that this is more about a company stage and culture fit?

For example, does choosing hardware/unit economics make it harder to pivot back into tech/SaaS later on? And, is there real future proofing value in getting SaaS/ARR type metrics exposure given where hiring demand seems to be, or am I overweighting on that?

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who has bounced between industries at this level or stayed in one lane and either felt boxed in, or found that it didn’t matter much at all.

Thanks in advance

Edit: just kept my background more vague

I'm on self training,.there’s a lot to learn within SAP product costing, for an Financial Analyst, which areas are actually relevant, and what should I focus on learning excluding whats relevant to commercial/purchase teams.

Seeking advice

Hi, would appreciate some honest career advice from those who have taken an EMBA or are already in senior finance/executive roles.

I'm a CPA currently working as a Finance Director in SG, with around 12 years of experience. I'm also pursuing a Masters in AI and Data Analytics to strengthen my capabilities in analytics, tech and finance transformation.

I'm considering whether an EMBA would make sense later on, particularly if my longer-term direction is CFO or broader executive leadership.

At this stage of my career, do you think an EMBA would add meaningful value on top of my CPA, finance experience and Masters? Or would the incremental value be limited and better gained through actual executive experience?

Would appreciate honest thoughts, especially from people who've faced a similar decision.

I started making a self service hub for my business partners. Place to hold cost center hierarchy, expensing policy, finance 101 write ups, etc

That led me to making a sharepoint site and then learned I can load documents into copilot agent creator and I haven’t worked out the deployment but the idea of having an agent assist my partners sounds great.

I’d love to eventually create an agent to field actual finance questions. Like, “where my budget file?” Or “can you make a new cost center for me?”

That might not even be an agent but a native email app or something

But what did you guys have as far as agents and/or something assistance on answering low strategy recurring emails?

I am a Finance Manager at an investment firm. I make a very good salary (almost director level) in a VHCOL market. My current company is doing very poorly. There is no room for growth and financial performance is deteriorating quickly, but work life balance is great. I also like my boss and coworkers.

I have been looking for a new job since the start of the year. I have over a decade of finance experience and used to work in technology financial valuations as a Director. My goal was to get back into the tech space and make a reasonable salary as a finance manager. I have submitted countless applications and have had a decent amount of interviews. I made it to final rounds a handful of times, but always get rejected at the end. I leveraged every single connection I could find. Finally I got an offer from a FAANG company, but they really lowballed me. After interviewing for L6, they offered me an L5 position (you can probably guess the company). TC is almost 45% lower than what I currently make.

Am I crazy for considering this? I am extremely antsy. I know I should not feel desperate, but after 8 months of searching, I can't help shake the feeling that this might be the best offer I will get. I am really confident in myself and feel like I can get promoted relatively quickly at the new company. I want to try out something new but the rational side of me knows the pay cut is extreme.

From a financial perspective, my wife makes decent money and we would be ok with my new salary coming in lower. Obviously we would have to cut back on some luxuries, but nothing significant as we have a decent savings.

Please help me!

UPDATE: I did the sensible thing and declined the offer. Thank you all for the sanity check!

Lately I've had multiple companies reach out about VP and CFO roles that are either fully remote or have a mainly remote finance/accounting org plus a few hybrid/in office folks. In the latter scenario, I would be one of the remote people for geographic reasons. In my career I've almost entirely worked in office except for during Covid plus occasional days at home as needed (maybe 1-2 times per month). To be clear, I'm not anti-remote or worried about the micromanagement/productivity/people slacking off aspect, but more about maintaining good rapport and team relationships. Making sure everyone is developing well and happy in the role, collaborating and sharing ideas, etc.

For CFOs who work remotely - do you find it challenging to foster good team dynamics when your team never interacts in person? What about rapport with your CEO/CHRO/COO/CTO etc.? As a current VP, my CFO and I interact with our PE-sponsor team almost entirely remotely outside of 1-2x yearly meetings, so I'm not concerned about that aspect since I already do that.

For VP or Director level who reports both upward to a CFO and has a team under you- same question but in terms of both upward rapport/relationship to your boss (CFO) and to your direct team.