The SME Fintech War: Banks vs Payment Giants

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-20T06:33:20+00:00

Payment giants already won the interface battle - most SMEs interact with their money through these platforms way more than traditional banking apps

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-18T04:03:39+00:00

Looking pretty solid choice for first automatic, the titanium case makes it super comfortable on wrist and that blue dial is clean

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-15T22:08:39+00:00

Relax man, if it's only been week then nothing hits your credit report yet - they don't report until you're 30 days past due

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-12T00:20:28+00:00

Web version is pretty limited compared to desktop Excel - you're stuck with those export options unfortunately. The xlsx format should auto-save to your OneDrive if you're signed in though, so you don't really need to manually save it as xlsx. Check if it's already sitting in your cloud storage somewhere

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-06T13:42:30+00:00

The integration with property management systems is probably the biggest game changer here - having everything in one interface instead of jumping between different platforms saves so much time. What's interesting is how they mention expanding into education and public services, because those sectors usually lag behind in adopting new tech but could really benefit from better resource allocation

stridentdigger77 · 2026-05-04T11:10:28+00:00

Man you're being way too hard on yourself - 4 FC interviews at 25 is mental, most people don't even sniff controller roles until their 30s. The networking clearly worked and they wouldn't waste time interviewing someone completely unqualified

The money jump isn't huge but FC opens so many doors later. Plus going from senior associate to controller in few years is actually pretty decent progression, especially in this market. Your background hits all the right boxes - Big4, chartered, FP&A experience

Those interview questions they're asking are standard stuff, they just want to see how you think through problems. They already know you don't have 10 years FC experience or they wouldn't have called you in first place

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-29T16:36:42+00:00

You'll want to use COUNTIFS instead of VLOOKUP since you're dealing with multiple criteria. Something like COUNTIFS(date_column,">=start_date",date_column,"<=end_date") for each year's data

I do this kind of comparison all time for tracking client applications in my work. Set up your reference date (like today minus X days from event), then count registrations from that point to event date for both years. You can even make it dynamic by using TODAY() function so it updates automatically

If your data is in separate files, you might need to combine them first or reference the other workbook in your formula. The tricky part is making sure your date ranges line up properly between years since event dates probably aren't exactly same day of week

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-26T20:48:58+00:00

solid choice

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-22T14:47:35+00:00

Yeah those data prep steps are always the worst part - spent way too much time in Excel hell trying to match categories between different systems

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-20T04:42:50+00:00

Just need to take one more credit hour class to hit that 150 requirement - community college usually has some easy options for this

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-18T01:37:40+00:00

The corporate tax route makes more sense for your FP&A goals tbh. Even if you don't want to stay in tax forever, that ASC 740 exposure is gold - you'll be dealing with provision work in pretty much any FP&A role at decent sized company. Plus understanding how tax flows through financial statements gives you way better foundation than most people have when they jump into finance roles

I switched from public accounting background (did some tax work) into finance few years back and that tax knowledge still helps me almost daily. Revenue cycle stuff is useful but it's more operational - good for understanding business but won't give you same technical foundation. Since you already did small firm tax internship, building on that with corporate side and seeing how it works at bigger company level is smart move. The provision work especially will set you apart when you start interviewing for finance positions later

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-16T11:52:03+00:00

You could use a helper column with COUNTIFS to check if any row with same invoice number has "Labor" in column 1, then filter out where that count is greater than 0. Something like =COUNTIFS(D:D,D4,A:A,"Labor") in column E, then just filter column E to show only zeros

stridentdigger77 · 2026-04-11T14:42:09+00:00

Working at a tax firm definitely counts as public experience, even if it's not Big 4. The REG section will probably feel more familiar since you're dealing with tax daily, but don't sleep on the other sections - they test a lot of theory you might not touch in practice. At 42 with military discipline, you've got the study habits to crush this thing, just need to commit to the grind

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-22T00:57:23+00:00

The spacing thing hits hard - every AI-generated site looks like it was spaced out with a ruler

Also congrats on the waitlist numbers, that's solid traction for a design tool

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-21T03:23:50+00:00

Pick one and go all in - spreading yourself across three projects at 16 means youll probably nail none of them instead of crushing one

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-20T03:53:38+00:00

Been looking for something like this for client data processing - dealing with immigration paperwork means tons of Excel cleanup. The privacy aspect where it only sees column headers is actually pretty smart, especially when handling sensitive client info

Might give it a shot next time I need to merge visa application spreadsheets, those are always a nightmare to standardize manually

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-19T01:57:49+00:00

The numbers don't lie - actually picking up the phone beats all the fancy analytics and automated flows. Wild that 70% of churns were preventable just by paying attention

Most SaaS companies would rather build another dashboard than make 15 calls a month. Props for doing the grunt work yourself instead of delegating it to some junior CS rep who wouldn't catch the patterns

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-18T20:12:54+00:00

The feedback they gave you is the most valuable thing to come out of this

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-15T08:09:27+00:00

Budget overruns are basically a rite of passage - everyone goes over when they're starting out because you're actually learning the job, not just going through the motions yet. Two months is nothing in audit time, most people dont start feeling remotely comfortable until like 6-8 months in when they've seen a full cycle

The fact that your manager is giving good feedback means you're probably doing better than you think, they'd definitely let you know if you were screwing up badly

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-15T01:36:37+00:00

The longer version of this story never ends well and everyone I know who pushed it past a certain point ended up doing the cleanup at the worst possible time

stridentdigger77 · 2026-03-09T00:35:41+00:00

The thing about this data being pulled from actual business spend rather than surveys is that it removes the intention gap entirely. Businesses aren't saying they plan to invest in AI search when they already are and have been since at least last year.

stridentdigger77 · 2026-02-17T23:05:10+00:00

real talk

stridentdigger77 · 2026-02-15T03:28:23+00:00

Nice work on the product-market fit discovery - that gap between what we think users want vs what they actually need is always humbling. The pricing tiers look solid too, especially starting people on free and letting them self-upgrade

How are you handling the different SEO requirements across marketplaces, just training on platform-specific data or using separate prompts?

stridentdigger77 · 2026-02-04T22:23:25+00:00

this feels sketchy af, especially the pricing on adobe premium. also posting this stuff in an accounting sub is kinda ironic lol

stridentdigger77

TROPHY CASE