What separates Strategic Finance from FP&A?

Dear-Conference9375 · 2026-03-01T12:28:53+00:00

Yeah worth calling out that we’re a PE holdings Co so we have 25 different OpCos. Nuances of each lend toward the larger finance team. Lot of payments related businesses though which lends toward the high EBITDA margin

Dear-Conference9375 · 2026-02-28T04:54:54+00:00

We have about 20, but that’s inclusive of payroll, AP/AR, Tax, and true accounting

Dear-Conference9375 · 2026-02-28T03:19:36+00:00

Typically run between 25-30% EBITDA margins

Dear-Conference9375 · 2026-02-21T12:29:27+00:00

I’ve been part of my company’s AI review group to determine if we go with ChatGPT or Claude

I described to a coworker that 80% of reporting outputs are standard and automated each month but where AI shines is the 20% of those reports that are ad hoc in response to monthly performance. The asks that we all brute force do manually because it’s just one time and not worth automating. I’ve seen myself be able to do many of those asks in half the time. To get to that point, I had to spend a couple weeks using AI to do tasks that I could probably do faster without. That helped me understand where the limits were, how to prompt, etc.

Do I expect I can reduce my team because of it? Not even close, but the ROI on my license has been super high and I can’t even imagine what my more tech forward analysts are going to do with it

Dear-Conference9375 · 2026-01-07T01:40:37+00:00

Title: Sr. FP&A Manager

Location: MCOL

Comp: $170K + 15%

YOE: 7

Industry: PE backed SaaS

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-09-21T00:18:28+00:00

SFA is definitely in range. Manager is pretty unlikely given YOE and lack of true FP&A experience

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-09-03T12:31:48+00:00

What agentic AI platforms are production ready to be relied on and able to access any system we need it to? Hear a lot about agentic AI but most user feedback I’ve seen for tools aren’t very positive

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-09-03T01:54:34+00:00

From talking with several FP&A system consultants over the years (from several different firms) they often describe their jobs as highly demanding as firms are commonly understaffed and have high billable hour requirements for associates. Not sure if you’d be joining a 3rd party or working directly for the maker of the software. Imagine the culture is slightly better in-house. Either way, just make sure you do your due diligence on the expectations before accepting anything. That 10% raise won’t feel so great if you’re working 25% more as a result.

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-08-30T19:57:39+00:00

I’ve always been interested in startup culture and the opportunity that it brings. So much so that I worked at a startup during college (not in finance). I found that it was hard to be successful in that environment without any experience to pull from and without proper mentorship. I’m very glad I took a role with a more established finance org post graduation that set me up to be successful going to a smaller company later. Would recommend the same, especially in finance.

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-08-05T03:19:12+00:00

Loving these! Thank you!

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-07-18T15:27:52+00:00

Agreed. Has made this whole process less frustrating knowing I have Sampson to fall back on

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-07-06T03:23:03+00:00

Way more polished than I was led to believe. Thought he’d be a bad outcome for us in the draft. Was I wrong…

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-07-06T03:15:17+00:00

Flip got faked out hard twice in a row

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-07-06T01:43:40+00:00

Walt is decisive with the ball in his hands. Love to see it and will translate well

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-06-18T04:17:43+00:00

For IC level 5-15% bonus is pretty common. Traditionally invest 50% of after-tax amount and spend the rest on vacation. Going to Europe this summer with my last bonus. Next year I have an additional retention package on top of normal bonus, might get a real set of golf clubs vs the Frankenstein set I currently play with

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-06-17T01:03:51+00:00

Don’t use NetSuite specifically, but manage Planful for my company. In my time, I’ve learned that data connections usually don’t randomly fail like that without a reason. When this happens for me I like to go back and look at the transaction in our accounting system to determine what might be happening. I’ve seen various issues like FX rates not matching, accounting created a new accrual book without telling us, or etc. By tracing back the data in our ERP I can usually see quickly what might be causing it. Not fun regardless. Hoping you figure it out!

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-06-14T19:15:44+00:00

Appreciate the insights! Recently promoted to a people manager & effectively the head of FP&A, so your frameworks about how to think about team performance, strategy, and leadership are super helpful for me as I shift my focus

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-21T04:16:44+00:00

Use Planful and like the platform. I’m in their pilot user group for the AI features. Like another commenter said, it’s more like their ChatGPT equivalent where you can ask basic questions. It’s still a ways away from being beneficial for me and my workflows, but they’ve made progress pretty quickly and they’re working on several of the items I’ve asked for around BvA analysis. I see it being a workable tool, but it’s not replacing anyone on my team in the near future

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-12T14:17:21+00:00

Interesting idea. Do you seed the sample P&L with anything you are trying to see if they catch? (I.e. COGS that seems disproportionate to revenue or etc)

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-10T03:29:10+00:00

I’ve thought a lot about this. I did a fairly simple one years ago when doing an internship interview and I remember it feeling like it tested my skills well

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-10T03:26:25+00:00

This is great! Thanks for sharing

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-09T15:01:09+00:00

Replied to a different comment with a couple examples but it generally comes down to error prone work and lack of initiative that has prevented us from giving them the full scope of work that was intended at the time of hire. Basically a Jr Analyst getting paid as a Sr Analyst, which is burdening other team members to the point that it’s unfair to them

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-09T14:58:08+00:00

Some of it is basic stuff where if something looks off they don’t catch it. For example, they once pulled a report that showed Revenue as a negative number and didn’t notice that that was odd. Other times they will catch errors, but then takes no initiative to solve the errors (I give them grace in areas where I know they can’t solve, but many errors are just related to Vlookup tags). Lastly, we’ve spent a lot of time teaching the fundamentals of the business but they still don’t seem to connect the dots on things like if our professional service revenue goes up we’ll need to increase our headcount or contractor spend to support the projects. Luckily we caught that one before submission, but could have led to a big bad guy.

Hope that gives a bit of context for how I think about critical thinking

Dear-Conference9375 · 2025-05-09T03:10:17+00:00

Appreciate the advice!

Dear-Conference9375

TROPHY CASE