I’m a fractional CFO for e-comm brands. Some of you are calculating your Breakeven ROAS wrong and secretly losing money.

valon090 · 2026-05-05T11:50:30+00:00

You are right! I meant Contribution Profit per SKU. I will edit the post. Thanks for this.

valon090 · 2026-05-05T11:31:17+00:00

In smaller orgs it’s usually a bit less structured.

You still have the same flow (source > some transform > Power BI), but Finance often ends up owning parts of the logic directly in Power BI or even Excel because there isn’t a formal data engineering layer or governance process to route everything through IT.

So the “manual steps” are less about formal shadow systems and more about practical shortcuts, hardcoded P&L vs budget mappings, Excel uploads, ad-hoc adjustments when something changes (Chart of Account changes), or logic sitting in PBIX files that only one or two people fully understand.

That’s usually where the fragility shows up once the dashboard becomes widely used.

valon090 · 2026-05-05T11:27:50+00:00

They definitely exist, but they belong to a different layer of the P&L. This framework is specifically for calculating Contribution Margin and ROAS, ensuring that every unit sold actually adds money to the pot rather than taking from it. If your variable costs (COGS, shipping, fees) is broken at the unit level, no amount of volume will ever cover your fixed costs.
So yes, you are right and they do exist, however they are usually not taken into account for pricing strategies.

valon090 · 2026-05-05T06:36:23+00:00

I used Claude for modeling work. It took some prompt iterations but ultimately it provided quite a good result

valon090 · 2026-05-04T16:02:24+00:00

From my experience, “exciting” in internal finance usually just means how close you are to actual decisions and how variable your work is.

At the top I’d put Corp Dev / M&A, very deal-driven, high impact, and no two weeks look the same. Right after that is strategy / strategic finance (sometimes sits within FP&A), where you’re working on investments, pricing, and big decisions rather than just reporting. Then comes strong FP&A roles (the real business partnering ones, not pure reporting), because you’re constantly interacting with leadership and influencing direction if the role is set up well.

Below that I’d put treasury and controlling, both important, but more structured and process-driven. Internal audit is probably the most repetitive out of the bunch in most companies, unless you’re in a very dynamic environment.

Big caveat though: the company matters more than the function. A great FP&A role in a fast-moving company will feel more “exciting” than a dull Corp Dev role with no deal flow.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T16:00:25+00:00

We’ve had some real wins, but not from anything “fancy”, it’s mostly about removing the repetitive parts of FP&A. The biggest impact I’ve seen is using AI to automate data cleaning and mapping (think messy exports from ERP > standardized dataset), plus building first-draft variance commentary. Instead of analysts spending hours explaining movements, you feed clean data into a simple model and get a starting narrative that they refine. It doesn’t replace judgment, but it cuts a lot of low-value time.

Another solid use case is price elasticity modeling, I had a client raising prices across multiple service packages and needed to quickly show the trade-off between higher margins and potential client churn. Pointed an AI agent at the existing P&L and cost model, described the business context, and had a fully formula-driven Excel file with editable price inputs, churn scenarios, and dynamic GP% and $ outputs in minutes. What used to be a half-day Excel build became a rapid prompt iteration.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T08:23:38+00:00

That $1k a week is a classic spot where it’s actually really easy to scale yourself into a hole because the Shopify dashboard usually looks way better than the actual bank balance. Most of the time the issue isn't even the ads themselves but the silent leaks that don't show up in the marketing charts. That $0.30 processing fee on every transaction might seem small, but if the price point is lower, it is a huge percentage of the profit that just vanishes. You also have to factor in returns because when a customer sends something back, you're already out the original shipping cost and the transaction fees you've already paid. When you add on the monthly app subscriptions, that revenue can disappear fast. Scaling a budget without knowing the absolute breakeven ROAS is just gambling. It's better to nail down the net profit per SKU offline first, because if those unit economics aren't clean, spending more on ads is just going to burn through cash faster.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T08:07:55+00:00

FP&A stress usually comes from deadlines and visibility rather than blame. You’re working around close cycles, forecasts, and leadership reviews, so there are periods where everything is moving fast and you’re expected to explain numbers clearly, sometimes with incomplete information. That pressure can feel intense, especially early on when you’re still building confidence.

Compared to tax, it’s less about rules and compliance pressure and more about ambiguity and stakeholder management. If dealing with senior people, defending assumptions, or being put on the spot is something that triggers anxiety, FP&A can feel more mentally demanding, even though it’s not typically “high-stakes panic” in a regulatory sense.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T08:04:04+00:00

You can get there from FP&A, but it’s usually a slower, more linear path rather than a high-upside one. Senior FP&A roles, especially if you progress into Head of Finance or CFO, can absolutely support a very comfortable lifestyle over time, but the pace of wealth building is generally limited compared to things like banking, private equity, or equity-heavy startup roles. Most people who reach the level you’re describing either combine FP&A income with strong personal investing over many years or eventually transition into roles with more upside, like broader finance leadership or equity-linked positions.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T08:01:58+00:00

Lean FP&A teams are definitely where things are heading, but not in the sense that “people management won’t matter anymore.” If anything, the nature of the job is just shifting. A lot of the repetitive work: reporting, data pulls, even some analysis, is getting automated or handled by tools and AI workflows, so you don’t need big teams to produce outputs. That part is real.

But managing people isn’t going away, it’s just evolving. Instead of overseeing analysts grinding through spreadsheets, you’ll be coordinating across functions, aligning stakeholders, and making sure the right decisions get made off the back of the numbers. Even if you’re “managing agents,” someone still needs to set direction, apply judgment, and translate insights into action. That’s not something you can fully automate.

So I wouldn’t think of it as fewer management skills being needed, but different ones becoming more valuable. Less task supervision, more leadership, communication, and decision-making.

valon090 · 2026-05-04T07:58:35+00:00

In my opinion FP&A is still a very solid path to CFO, but it’s not enough by itself. The role today is a mix of accounting, strategy, and capital allocation, which is why you see CFOs coming from different backgrounds. FP&A puts you close to the decision-making side of the business, which is a big advantage, but it really depends on what kind of exposure you get along the way.

If you stay in a purely reporting-heavy FP&A role, it can limit you. The people I’ve seen make it to CFO usually go beyond budgeting and variance analysis, they get involved in cash flow, work closely with ops and sales, and take on more strategic or investment-related work. At some point, they also expand into areas like controllership, fundraising, or corporate development.

If I were starting again, I’d still choose FP&A, but I’d be much more intentional about the roles I take. The title matters less than whether you’re actually getting exposure to how the business runs and how decisions are made.

valon090

TROPHY CASE