Hoping to get some insights on what to expect paywise for internal move from and IC SFA to a Manager 2-3 direct reports.

Current base $105k with TC around $110k comp structure in this company is only base + bonus no equity Medium to High cost of living area

If people have used these types of applications (Adaptive, Anaplan, Cube, Pigment, etc.), I'm very curious what your experience has been with them. From what I have seen/experienced, they seem to take a long time to implement, require constant care, and tend to not fully address the issues an FP&A team faces.

Here's my hunch: these tools assume FP&A teams need help modeling, building analytics, and reporting. FP&A teams are very good at these tasks. FP&A teams have problems more upstream, post-data extraction, and before completing these tasks. After extracting data, it needs to be properly processed and organized to be fed into reporting, analytical, and forecasting models. These can be processes such as:

• Adjusting Data Aggregating and Rollup (think of creating groups, reclassifying data items etc.)
• Allocating certain data lines
• Renaming data lines to make sense for other users
• Adjusting/Normalizing data for certain events
• Metric calculation
• Refreshing data throughout reports
• Creating views of data for different audiences

Throughout my career, I've had success creating automated processes for these in Excel. And never really felt the need to use another solution like an Anaplan because it was easy to manage downstream processes. This was regardless of whether I was at a F100 or Series C startup.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel like these solutions miss the mark?

All,

Long story short, there has been quite a bit of turmoil at my current (mid-sized private energy) company and my VP of finance told me in our 1-on-1 yesterday that he just gave his notice.

A little bit of background, I have 3 YOE in accounting and 4 YOE in corp fin/fp&a as well as a CPA and I've been gunning for a raise/promotion to either lead finance analyst or finance manager for some time (currently SFA). I know I may be light on experience by a year or so, but honestly I feel very confident in my abilities, and I've gotten nothing but good reviews by my direct manager, VP, and business partners. I've been with the company for 18 months.

I am scheduled to meet with the CFO tomorrow (who is relatively new, previous CFO was fired Nov of last year) to discuss transitioning responsibilities. I'm planning to go into the meeting and basically tell him that I want as many new responsibilities as possible, but I also want to make it clear that I'm looking for career progression.

I don't know him very well yet, but he seems insightful, and I think he'd be able to read the tea leaves without me coming in with a quid-pro-quo. However, I would obviously hate for my workload to double without an increase in pay or title.

How can I approach this conversation in such a way that I don't come across as twisting his arm and leveraging a vacancy for self-serving reasons?

What’s up yall, I just got a new job starting next Monday as a Sr. Manager in charge of a business unit (international retail stores).

I’ll be responsible for the full P&L of this BU.

I’m coming from a “Strategic Finance” role where I was only in charge of sales, inventory, capex, and debt.

Any tips on what kind of frameworks to build or get familiar with as I look through the full P&L? Any tips on managing a business unit like this? Any tips on being a senior manager? The team (both my analysts and counterparts) have excellent backgrounds so I don’t want to be the laggard in the group.

Hey fellow PandA's wanted to give a quarterly business update. hope everyone is getting through their 2025 Annual Planning with minimal late nights, weekends and plugs. one can hope.

We've crossed 35,000 members. i remember it at 35. amazing growth.

Wish our founder BlechleyPark were here to see it. unfortunately he's retired from reddit completely and deleted his account. i'm connected with him on LinkedIn. Everything is fine for him in his real life.

To that end, i haven't been very present for the past year. my work has been a bit of a turmoil, so have been distracted there.

Thanks to all of you who basically self govern this place and make moderation easy. y'all are quick to catch the fiverr resume spam. Reddit is attempting at getting better with automod, but its lacking. Apologies if your posts got lost in the abyss over the past month. have dialed it in a bit to let more new accounts post and such.

thanks for your continued support and contributions to this sub. onward to 40k.

I am graduating in December 2024 with a degree in Finance and have experience in:

I have been applying but not getting any luck

Relevant Experience:**

1. ** Public Engagement**
   Outreach Specialist
   May 2023 – Present (ongoing)

2. Day and Night Deli Grocery
   Retail Store Manager
   Sep 2016 – Aug 2020 (4 years)

Clubs:

1. Baruch Private Equity Club
   Mentorship Program Member

2. Baruch Real Estate and Finance Club
   Group Member

3. Zicklin Undergrad Tax Society
   Group Member

I’ve been tasked to build a model for our IR team using only the materials released in the call. They want this because they kind of want to be prepared for what questions might be asked by the analysts on the call.

I have no idea what model to build or even to start. Any ideas?

Hi,

My organization has listed a new Finance business partner role and it got my interest, however I've never had a finance role before as I've only had jobs managing operations and delivery. They'll be looking at hiring in the next 2 months and don't expect a full qualification, although they want someone who is undergoing studies such as cima or equivalent and eventually finish them.

If I were to give a lot of my free time towards studying as much as I need to in order to get myself in a "I'm undergoing my studies" position in the next few weeks with a bare minimum understanding of what is expected of the role, and a position to have some knowledge of how to do the job in the next 6 months, what would be the best course I can take?

After reading a bit, Cima seems like a good option, would I be able to get cert ba in 6 months? Is there a better "fast track" alternative to get myself in the ideal position in the next few months and what should I learn/develop after?

It might be a big ask, but if anyone wants to share some thoughts or guidance, I would be grateful, thanks.

Hi Guys, I need your help for applying to an opening in Diageo If anyone of you is working or know someone who could help with a referral, please DM me. Thanks in advance

Hi Group member, I am planning to study Us Cma on my own and targeting next year (2025) for the exams. Is there anyone who is into self study and discuss /clear doubts on Us Cma topics based out of Bengaluru? Just in case anybody is interested in meeting in person instead of online.

I am interviewing for my first FP&A position at the analyst level. As part of the interview process I’ve been given a case study and I’ve never actually built a model or forecast before, so I could really use some guidance.

The task is to build a variance model first and use that to forecast expenses for the 2nd half of the year. Ive been given 6 months actual data, which includes a list of vendors and the spend each month. Then I have the similar forecasted data for six months. I’ve also been given metrics like revenue/headcount/active users/payroll.

First I’m thinking I should build the spreadsheet looking at the % change month over month for all of the vendors and also look at the % change month over month for the revenue and other metrics. I’ll calculate all of the variances and also analyze whether there is any correlation between revenue etc. and the vendor spend. Then I’ll use the variances and correlation analysis to forecast the second have of the year?

Am I on the right track?

My company is thinking about going from SAP BPC to Onestream, what should I be aware of ?

I’m an FP&A Manager in US Defense and my boss wanted me to do a training sometime over the next year as a development objective. He brought up taking the Dale Carnegie leadership course but that seems so broad to me - has anyone taken it? Are there any other Finance/FP&A or leadership courses people recommend?

My company is experiencing a runaway cost train of all the 3rd party software costs we integrate into our platform. We signed up for these contracts and built it into our product without figuring out how to monetize those features. Would love to pick people's brains on how to solve for that (and maybe other problems vSaaS companies face)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/pizza-hut-printing-resumes-onto-pizza-boxes.html?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Instagram%7Cmakeit

Hi all,

I'm struggling with what I want from my career and I am looking for advice (23 years old).

To give some background about me, I graduated from a target school with a BBA in Finance and a 3.91 GPA. I had 3 internships before graduation, one consulting, then two financial analyst roles. After graduation, I took a full-time role at a SaaS firm on the Strategic Finance team. Our company is PE-backed and I have worked closely with the PE firm, one of the largest in the enterprise software space, on LRP modeling, CF, and other key growth projects. I believe it has been a great introduction to the industry for only about 1.5 YOE out of college and have honed many skills. My pay is 70K base right now (no variable comp & MCOL), and believe I can achieve SFA within a year by our next promotion cycle with a bump to around 90K TC.

Our company is facing some market headwinds, as well as legal, and although I enjoy my WLB (nearly fully remote) and the VP of my team is a beast, the prior CFO of a company we acquired for $300M, I still feel like it's a sinking ship (especially after our LRP projections vs the BU's first roll-up of 25'. I don't want to get into BU finance since I truly don't think I would enjoy the repetition of close and budget, but not sure where I want to go from here. I am having trouble finding other strategic roles (I love the ad-hoc nature of my work), but my end game is to break into PE. I don't want to go the IB route and would rather go get my MBA at ideally Booth or Kellogg, but don't know if PE is a realistic expectation. I have a very strong network, but regardless.

I know I am very early in my career, but I don't want to get stuck in a cycle of trying to climb a corporate ladder at a sub-par company to manager, director, and so on. Re-reading this, I sound like a douchebag, but I know I can achieve more, and just looking for advice from people with more experience and more knowledge in the industry. I appreciate you reading my rant.

Cheers,

I am currently the youngest person in the entire finance team working for one of our subsidiaries, located in the service center in Europe. I have made significant progress in our firm since I landed my current role as last role 2.5 years ago. Since then, I completed my ACCA diploma, graduated with honors from Economic University (Marketing and Business Management), and was recognized by our US team as one of the top 14 performers worldwide in the recent project where we implemented SAP S/4HANA, replacing our old legacy systems. This achievement was also acknowledged by our global US CEO, who personally thanked all 14 of us for our work on his personal visit in my home country. Additionally, I have excelled in my role, receiving “exceeds” ratings from my manager across all my development areas.

For almost 1.5 years, my manager has informed me that my CFO (Director) wants me in his direct team. However, during the recent reorganization, I was only given a Budget Coordinator role instead of the promised Client Unit CFO or Manager role. Our CFO let go of three managers during the reorganization but kept the remaining direct team unchanged. I also discovered that, as part of the reorganization, every manager and client unit CFO was supposed to assess their team members and categorize them into three groups: Essential, Good to Have, and To Be Let Go. I learned that I was initially placed in the “Good to Have” group and only moved to the “Essential” group after our CFO Director intervened.

When I asked my manager why I am not moving up, he mentioned that my director is always citing reasons such as needing to improve soft skills or demonstrating readiness to handle certain cases. Despite providing examples where I have solved those cases, my manager agrees that I would have already received the role if it were up to him. Additionally, there have been comments from our CFO before his calls with the US Senior VP, including a backhanded remark about me potentially doing the talking part and enjoying a “10 minutes of star fame” if he hadn’t shown up. Nevertheless, I believe he remains my biggest supporter.

Recently, I was nominated by our Global Senior Vice President and his team of directors to be one of four people from the countries selected for the SAP SAC project over the next nine months. Initially, my director was hesitant to approve this due to the reorganization and limited availability of team members. However, after pressure from his superiors in the US, he agreed to include me. When this was announced by my manager on a stand-up call in front of the entire direct team of client unit CFOs and managers, some team members displayed sour faces, and I’ve sensed a negative vibe from them for the past few months already.

All of my mentors and trusted colleagues suggest that my youth (I’m 29 and already in the same salary band as people in their 40s) might be causing jealousy. They also advise considering positions outside of our subsidiary, as it seems my director might be unable to promote me without impacting his direct team. Despite my director’s claims of me being a top performer, there seems to be inconsistency in how this is reflected in my career progression.

I have a call with our Director (CFO) on Friday about my Career Growth. What are my options? What should be my questions? How should i take this? I need your help, dear, fellow redditors.

Company: IT, 90K plus people working accross all countries and departments.

´

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some advice. I graduated with a finance degree last month, and while I’ve gotten a few interviews, I haven’t been able to secure a financial or billing position yet. To give some context, I ran my own home service business for about 1.5 years during college to help pay for school. While it was a great learning experience, looking back, I definitely regret not getting an internship in the finance field during that time. The lack of direct finance experience is hurting me now.

On top of that, it feels like a lot of companies have a hiring freeze until at least the start of 2025, which has only added to the difficulty. I really want to break into the FP&A space and start building relevant experience.

My question is – would it be dumb to start reaching out to CFOs or senior financial analysts at startups and offer to work as an unpaid intern for 4 months? For context, I’m currently living with my parents in a different state from where I went to school, and I have little to no expenses, so I can afford to do something unpaid short-term if it helps me get my foot in the door.

Everyone in this sub seems incredibly insightful, thank you for any advice in advance

Currently an sfa at a saas start up owning all top line, opex, and cash. My manager left when I started. Didn’t feel I had the leverage to ask for a promo given my work performance is average. We are bringing in my former managers backfill next month and during that time I was able to secure an outside offer.

I’ve only been in my current role for half a year and due to the org structure I can see myself getting promoted to mgr within a year or 2.

Offer is for sfa reporting to a mgr. With same YOE and I feel it limits my potential to get promoted unless he moves from mgr to sr mgr and so on.

I plan to use this to leverage a promo in my current role to test the waters.

Current: 125k 6% bonus hybrid

Pros: I can see promotion to mgr role within next 2 years.

Cons: pay sucks and hybrid

Offer: 140k 10% bonus

Pros: higher comp and fully remote

Cons: new finance executive is bad. Really bad, once this person started a lot of turn over has happened

Is the comp increase worth it given, it can limit my ability to get to a mgr level? I’ve been a sfa since for 3 years at my previous company.

Hey all, I am a fourth-year accounting student at a small state school, and I am looking into the finance side of things. Through my internships, I have a lot of experience within the public accounting space and have a Big Four Tax internship lined up for after graduation. The thing is, I am currently undergoing a financial modeling program which has severely switched my "set-in-stone" path with the Big Four, and am now interested in the more analytical side of things.

I understand that I have no experience within the FP&A realm, but now that it has piqued my interest, will be working on financial modeling, budgeting, and forecasting programs/certificates to help me break in. Looking to apply to a lot of places this week/next week with this resume - what do you guys think I should do?

https://preview.redd.it/2fwyi55g5fpd1.png?width=703&format=png&auto=webp&s=536e94d61b7e3c82fe0edc02d22242235af4bfbd

I have a final round interview 1.5 hours in person for an SFA position with the CFO and hiring manager. Any idea what I should expect? Had three rounds so far which have mostly been about experience, background and behaviourals.

I have an interview scheduled for a Finance Manager role at Amazon this week. However, with the recent news about RTO 5 days a week, I’m a bit turned off from the role. 4 days? I could do. But 5 seems a bit excessive since hybrid has become the norm.

TC is about $180k as well; any idea how that translates in terms of base + RSU + bonus (if any)?

I plan to still go through with the interviews as an experience and see how it all goes but what’re your thoughts?

Info: I am currently doing my MS in Finance and set to graduate in December. Company 1 is an externship I am doing right now (no conversion to full-time). Worked in Company 2 when I was deciding whether to take up a job or do my masters and didn't want to waste my time, worked only for 8 months. Company 3 was a remote internship I did for almost 2 years during COVID-19, I worked remotely from India and the company was based in the UK.
Looking for roles in finance such as Financial Analyst, and FP&A Analyst.
Thanks in advance for the review

https://preview.redd.it/yadfjiev1dpd1.png?width=686&format=png&auto=webp&s=052718d2b43aa322567e1d74b3dbb3b1c3285250

What are the pros and cons for the following types of roles, especially 1 vs 2.

1. pure FP&A (budgeting, forecasting, financial analysis)
2. hybrid of financial reporting and FP&A
3. combination of FP&A, M&A, DCM corporate finance

Hey everyone! I'm curious about how analytics is being used in the fields of accounting and corporate finance. I know the basics, like trend analysis and forecasting, but I’d love to hear some real-life examples or specific use cases where data analytics has made a big impact.

What does analytics mean for FP&A?

I have over 15 years of experience in FP&A, most recent experience of which was over 8 years as a Finance Manager with a top-tier tech company. Our company had massive, enterprise-wide layoffs a few months ago, and I was affected.

I started by applying for very interesting sounding roles, and then after about a month and a half of hearing nothing, began lowering my threshold little by little. I've now applied for over 140 roles in the past 3 months (yep, you're reading that correctly), and out of all 140 applications, I've had one single recruiter screen and zero interviews. I've had over a dozen separate sources in HR and Finance review/give feedback on my resume format/etc so I know it's polished well. It seems as if absolutely no one is hiring. I'm even now applying for roles a full level beneath where I used to be, and not even getting screened on those. I'm not very picky on salary, I just really like working in FP&A and I'm very good at it - I just literally can't even get a single call back, let alone an interview. I'm looking at remote jobs, hybrid jobs, and even now full time in person local jobs as well.

Anybody else having a hard time right now or is it just me? I honestly cannot believe how little I've heard back from any apps.

I am not a CFA charterholder. I am on the CPA side of the ledger.

The CFA subreddit prohibits threads pertaining to careers, even careers in Canada, so I am posting this here.

So, are there any CFA charterholders here who work in FP&A?

see title - been asked to give a 1 hour presentation on FP&A topics focused on data analysis etc.

our business is quite long term contract based so there is limited "FP&A" in the sense of doing complex modelling to predict e.g. customer growth or revenue mix / development etc. its more of a "we signed contract - this is length & revenue recognition". things like costs etc are usually steady. things miss actuals due to e.g. technical problems that you cant really forecast and / or phasing.

as such bit stuck on what to actually present. thinking of first talking about how I use the regional team input submissions for purposes of long term and short term forecast models and what sort of outputs / deliverables they drive.

then plan was to talk about funky cool excel functions I use and how and why they're good e.g. indirect, offset, index match, concatenate etc. and some of the plugins I use for data cleaning. this is the type of company where people update workbooks by manually relinking across tabs and peak excel use is vlookup.

what else could I talk about? anyone have any saved LinkedIn guides etc to port for beginners? i see them now and again but never paid attention to them since most of stuff I've learned over years in consulting grind and now its second nature....its almost like "how do you teach someone to walk" - hard to explain, you just know, its a mindset etc.

would really appreciate any tips! in past such sessions at other companies were easier since id be doing a roll out of e.g. a 3 statement model for opcos/divisions/BUs to use and they'd need teaching etc. here we don't do that. its mostly Full year P&L down to EBITDA reforecast and some high level cash forecasting. most of our issues are systems ERP related which arent easy fixes in a week....

many thanks to all who respond :)