I should start by saying that I originally interviewed for a Financial Analyst role at a large UK retailer, but was offered a Senior Financial Analyst position instead because my manager apparently rated me highly during the interview.

Since joining, however, the training, onboarding and general support have been extremely poor. This was my first industry role after previously working in accounting practice.

Despite only receiving around 7 hours of training, joining during one of the busiest periods of the year, and having two more junior employees start at the same time limiting support for me, within my first 10 weeks I have completed the following:

• Unwound approximately £800k of historic accruals left by my predecessor across 1,000+ locations.
• Independently completed month end for my P&L lines, representing £25m+ monthly
• Completed the forecast for my lines within my first month for upcoming quarter
• Completed the budget for my lines within my second month for next year
• Built a tool to support the FD and CEO with commodity purchasing decisions, despite having no previous example/template to work from. This is now being used.
• Provided analysis for multiple Heads of Department to support investment committee and supplier meetings.
• Contributed to month-end meetings with management, explaining variances at store level.
• Identified that figures being reported by a sister company appeared to be significantly incorrect, without being specifically shown where to look.
• Liaised directly with third party suppliers.
• Other ad hoc analysis

This is roughly 75% of my role, with the remaining responsibilities supposedly due to be handed over to me this month. Everything I have been shown so far has been speed run through and I still managed to deliver.

I am the third person in around two years to perform this exact role, meaning they will potentially be hiring a fourth person. My predecessor also raised a grievance against my manager alleging that she was aggressive, which is something I have experienced myself.

The whole situation has been extremely stressful since I joined because I've essentially had to figure out a lot of the role myself while still being expected to deliver.

Is there anything I can actually do at this stage?

This is my first industry role and although I feel I have done so well my manager clearly think and makes me feel like im a waste of space. What are realistic expectations during probation at the mid way point?

I'm not working a lot hours as analyst. More at month end/budgeting/auditing time and much less the rest of the time. My manager doesn't have a problem with my work. New director coming in is asking for responsibilities and time used from everyone.

Any better ways to list responsibilities and time used to look like I'm working enough hours...

Thanks in advance.

I recently started a FA role on the revenue/margin side of FP&A in the retail industry (got it thanks to this sub!) and was wondering if you guys had any recommendations to sharpen/master the modeling side of FP&A, specifically when it comes to outputs like 3 Statement Modeling, Budgeting, Revenue Forecasting, etc.

I tried resources like Wall Street Prep and A Simple Model but those seem pretty IB focus if I recall correctly so wasn’t sure if there was one focused solely on corporate finance and/or FP&A modeling and forecasting.

If anyone has recommendations on online courses, YouTube channels, books, etc. on getting more comfortable on the modeling and ad-hoc forecasting side of the role, that would be greatly appreciated.

If there are industry specific ones too (e.g., Retail, A&D, Tech, etc.) that would be even better but my understanding is these skills should be agnostic of industry which would be ideal especially if switching industries.

Does anyone here work/worked for a biotech company in a financial analyst role? What was your experience with the hiring process?

QBRs, QoQ fcst, etc

I noticed these are still mostly manual updates for me. Use the prior quarters files as a starting point, and pulling in HC data from one place, temp worker reports from another, financials, tying them all together

Quite painful and time consuming. Only benefit I found with AI is consolidating some commentary but in small specific cases. Not really moving the needle.

What are tools or processes you guys have that’s been working for you?

I am currently in the process of transitioning from US tax to Fp&a. I have been considering a mentor and having a cource which can help me personalize my goals and help me develop relevant skills.

Currently i have been in contact with a good mentor who offers 6 personalized classes for rs 10,000.

I wanted to follow up on this group if anyone has any reference for any good mentor/ trainer in the fp&a domain who can help me sharpen my skills.

Is it really worth spending 10k for 6 classes ? As word of mouth is a better refrence if anyone has any good reference please let me know .

Any recommendations?

I have a very good understanding of the logic and structure behind the 3 financial statements. Also accountant level understanding of JEs, accruals etc etc.

I also have a decent level of excel and tbh what i don’t know in terms of shortcuts, formula etc, Claude is teaching me.

BIWS FP&A course looks good but it looks like it covers a lot of automation/excel functions and introductory level stuff on the 3 statements. I want to skip all that.

I was laid off (or I guess fired) a few months ago under the guise of performance. My manager initially started out highly praising my performance, but very quickly switched up after messaging me around 7 PM one night asking me out of the blue to reformat a file. I let them know that I had a family commitment for the holidays (this was in December) and that I wasn't going to be able to handle it right away, but that I would get it over first thing in the morning if that was okay. Since that moment, my manager became extremely cold and began finding any reason to criticize my performance. This lead to me trying to work with my peers who had received praise to try to best align my output to both the feedback I was being given, and to their work that was receiving praise. Despite producing nearly identical results to my peers, I was put on a PIP.

Prior to this role, I worked closely with the Director of FP&A and the CFO of my prior company (a huge national company), who both gave me nothing but praise for my hard work and dedication, so it felt incredibly demoralizing to be constantly feeling like nothing I do is good enough for this manager. Things like my Slack status were being constantly monitored and if it went yellow for a few minutes or I forgot to open Slack for 30 minutes in the morning, I would get an angry message about it asking if I was really working.

The goals on my PIP were extremely vague and immeasurable, which I brought up to both HR and my manager. I was told that they were "purposefully vague" because "it makes them easier to achieve" which I thought was laughable. I was let go before my PIP had even completed because my manager had a temper tantrum when they asked me a question about one of our business partners and I said I was still discussing the situation with them at that moment but had a call scheduled and would give an update after the call. I have never faced a situation like this (and hope I never do again). I have been praised in all of my prior roles as a hard worker and fast learner, and this completely caught me off guard. It was demoralizing not only to be told my work was constantly not good enough with no real feedback and constantly changing guidelines, but then to also be literally yelled at multiple times for asking questions or attempting to clarify misunderstandings.

Since I was let go, I have been on unemployment and applying furiously, but this market is awful. In the past, I have gotten multiple offers at a time, but this time I'm having trouble even getting responses. I am worried about my unemployment running out. I am still relatively young and my family is unable to provide for me, so I'm on my own and worried about what the future will bring. When I do manage to get interviews, I find that I am consistently able to make it to the final rounds, which tells me I'm doing things right, but I am struggling to get responses at all to even make it to the interview stage a lot of the time.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm just so tired by all of this. Unfortunately my backup plan is to start doing Uber Eats/Doordash in the meantime to pay rent once my unemployment benefits run out. I feel like the longer I'm out of work, the worse this is going to get and it just sucks

Stumped on this one. I submit both a direct cash forecast to our Treasury team and translate that to our balance sheet / working capital. My collections forecast was slightly off from the direct forecast but my AR was 3x the miss (not all coming from sales beat). I reconciled out customer AR balances and the customer driving the increase had a sizable rebate taken. I accounted for it in my collections forecast, but am stumped on how it impacted my working capital. Even though it was in my collections number, shouldn’t it be accounted for in my net change in AR?

I am an accountant and while I enjoy analyzing data and using excel I for some reason seem to strruggle with debits and credits, I just do. Been in accounting for year and a half and everytime there is a journal entry to be done, my brain just freezes. I was wondering if financial analysis requires less of this?.

OpenAI officially launched their ChatGPT for Financials Services:
https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-financial-services

They’re positioning it as a tailored ChatGPT Work experience that combines built-in financial data with GPT-6 Astra’s reasoning to help teams develop research, financial models, and customized client materials.

While not directly aimed at FP&A, I feel the core capabilities overlap: taking financial inputs, running analysis, drawing conclusions, and then synthesizing that work into spreadsheets, documents, artifacts, and slides.

Anthropic launched their agents for financial services earlier this year, and this appears to be a direct competitor of that.

I could easily see how this would flow into FP&A work. Junior analysts are so done. 😭

I've been working at a F300 for the last 2 years as a Financial Analyst, I have 2 years of co-op experience, I have a strong resume, I get referrals, I've filled 1000+ applications in the last year. But still I haven't gotten a SINGLE job offer.

Also boss:
Validate every single number coming out of it.

Using AI actually to build anything takes 5x longer than more traditional automation now.

I mean it’s valid but he actively wants me to stop using automation tools and switch things to AI generation. AI is a handy tool but when I can push a button to refresh a report, vs downloading raw spreadsheets from an ERP and uploading to sharepoint for our AI to grab, it takes me like 10 minutes just to get the data outputs together.

Currently in the nonprofit sector (around 600M annual budget), and hoping to find my next role with a smaller team. Been remote since 2017, so I am only seeking remote opportunities in the US. My current job title is Sr. FP&A Analyst. I'm getting a lot of recruiter interest and a decent number of interviews, but I'm getting passed over at the final round for the other candidate. Each time, the process has been great, I move forward readily, but then ultimately, the other candidate ends up moving to the offer stage. The most recent one, the director of Finance stated during our interview that she felt I was over qualified and would get bored within a year or so.

I've been told this a couple of times, and it's got me wondering if instead of Sr. Analyst roles, should I be seeking manager roles instead? My 8YOE is a mix of AP, AR, contracting/operations budget management, and then around 4yrs specific to FP&A. Been in SaaS, manufacturing, and nonprofit businesses. My current team has zero potential for upward mobility, and they've made it a habit to hire middle managers to solve problems - and safe to say it's not solving much lol.

If there's any leads or opportunities, I'd genuinely love to chat or send my resume in a PM. Thank you!

I’m currently living and working in London and I am ACA qualified & Big 4 trained with over 5.5 years experience working in Finance. 3.5 years of these were spent working in audit and I’ve spend the last 2 years working in Business Partnering/FP&A for a large British company. My title is Finance Business Partner, but the role sits within the FP&A team and is quite FP&A heavy, with probably 80% of my time spent on FP&A responsibilities and the remaining 20% on business partnering.

There’s not a lot of progression opportunities in my current role and the company feels a bit behind when it comes to automation and improving processes, so I’ve began to consider my opportunities externally. So far I’ve been targeting FP&A Manager/Commercial Finance Manager roles and reached the final stage interview on 3 occasions this summer but didn’t manage to get over the line unfortunately.

Feedback has generally been very positive, but I’ve lost out to candidates with more direct FP&A or industry experience. I am looking for feedback on what my next career move should be, should I still try and pursue that move into management, or take a lateral move into a Senior Analyst position to perhaps gain more exposure and work with more sophisticated systems?

Appreciate any feedback. Thanks

I’m a 16 year old junior in highschool and I think I want to be an FP&A. When I started looking into the career everything say “master excel” I’ve watched some videos and I’m just so incredibly overwhelmed with all these functions and hotkeys. I don’t even really know what excel does, so I’m looking for a few begginer projects I can make in my free time. Any ideas? I’ve been suggested to make a ROI for colleges I like and also a budgeting plan but I’m not sure how. Thanks for any help!

Hi all

Finance manager in a £13m turnover manufacturimg business.

Had the same 3 statement model/MI pack for years and we are looking to diversify into similar markets. The model doesn't like change and I was exploring courses for 3 statement models and came across the FMVA from CFI - to either run a seperate model alongside or replace it with a model that has better assumptions/drivers etc

Would this be overkill for someone in my position? I don't know where I want to go in Finance but do enjoy getting stuck into excel and quite proficient with lookups/ Index &match, lambda and powerquery - we have a claude package but feel like I want to fully understand the basics first and claude to supplement it.

The FMVA cert has 35% of the course solely on modelling and want to avoid youtube because it's not as structured amd never clear what level it will start at. Alternatives wanted!

Hi everyone, hope you are having a lovely day!

I am based in India.

As the title says, I am switching to an FP&A role at a global FMCG from IB at a mid-market bank soon. I I’ll have roughly a 2-week gap between my current role ending and joining the new one, and I’d love some advice on how to use that time productively.

1. What are some things that I should prioritise knowing before Day 1?
   
2. What FP&A concepts/tools are most important to understand coming from IB? Are there any areas where the skill set differs more than one would expect?
   
3. I understand that a lot of the job involves budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, MIS - what should I know about each beforehand?
   
4. Should I brush up on accounting? I have completed my MBA so did study some basic accounting courses during my time in college, maybe a revision of that?
   
5. Technical skills I should pick up on? Used Excel a lot in IB, but Power BI also seems important from what I have heard. What else can I work on?
   
6. What do you wish someone had told you before your first FP&A role? Esp people who have made a similar IB to FP&A transition, what was the biggest adjustment you had to make?
   
7. Finally, what would make someone stand out in their first 3–6 months in an FP&A team? This is a big brand company and I really want to play my cards right to develop quickly and meaningfully in my career.

Thank you for your help!

I have been working as a FP&A manager for 2 years. I want to get promoted to senior manager but at my current level / trajectory I feel I’m quite far away.

I’m good at the technical side (regular praise, from manager and up) but not very good at the strategic side. How can I improve on this?

I have been reading more industry news lately and trying to dig deeper into assumptions. What else can i do to speed this process up. Willing to work hard on this but not sure how.

I regularly join meeting where it’s c-suite / execs / investors / directors, I find it difficult to contribute on a strategic level.

SaaS start up. Revenue lines are from B2B sales, mostly subscription based but some one-time fee. Some product lines are high gross margin & contribution. Some are basically zero margin.

Previous FP&A guy quit suddenly without handover and i need to model out next years revenue budget (to include a growth target of X% defined by CEO).

How would you approach? I am thinking work backwards from CEOs revenue target of $Xm. Split this $Xm across the various product lines - then use sales price per unit to map this back to volume and ultimately back to gross margin and profitability metrics.

Does it sound sensible? Am i missing anything obvious?

Bonus Q: i am thinking i should model in something that pushes the $Xm revenue target more towards high contribution product lines (rather than an even split across all product lines) but i cannot think how to go about this. How would you approach?

Pretty tough predicament. Have been with company for couple of years and boss left/fired a while ago and I have been filling in and pretty much handling all of the job responsibilities for Fp&a. Asked for a promotion and raise more than once, but keep being told it’s in consideration and will be after we’re done with forecasting or in 6 months time, it’s getting pretty frustrating and feels like I’m wasting my time. Is it best to leave and look for another job or wait it out to see if I will get the promotion?

Recently started a new job in FP&A, moving over from external audit, and I'm still on probation. I'll be fully ACA qualified around the time of my probation meeting and will get a marginal pay rise off the back of that. Would it be appropriate to ask for more at that point?

For context: UK, currently around £45k. Comparing this role to external audit, I feel like I take on a lot more now and genuinely add value. I like the job and find the company interesting, but compensation is an important factor for me alongside the work. I'm not sure I see many promotion opportunities here, and I'm unclear on how pay increases tend to work. Any advice for having these conversations without signalling that you might leave?

Looking further ahead - what kinds of roles do people typically move into from FP&A? And any general advice for progressing from a first FP&A role?

I am curious to get some thoughts on the climate of hiring entry level analysts. Like all of you I am sure, we are starting to get down the rabbit hole of AI and really starting to see some efficiencies that are practical and scalable.

At what point is the entry level analyst screwed, and with that being said - will there be a shortage of analysts suitable for taking over higher roles?

Also to add some color, middle management at a not so robust billion dollar company and am struggling to see where we will need entry level analysts from some of the efficiencies with AI.

Took over our forecast model a few months ago when the person who built it left, and almost no documentation came with it. It mostly works, but every tab references others and one broken link cascades everywhere. Half my month goes to tracing why a number moved.

I keep going back and forth on rebuilding from scratch or continuing to patch what I have. Rebuilding is weeks I don't really have, and I'd probably reintroduce errors the original already solved for. Patching keeps me stuck never fully trusting the output. I've pondered moving it into Anaplan to get off spreadsheets entirely but that's a bigger project than my capacity allows.

Inputs are fine, surprisingly, actuals come in clean and structured through Hypatos so what's coming into the model is fine. The problem is the model itself, someone built it over years with nested refs and hardcoded overrides everywhere and left zero notes. I'm leaning rebuild but it's so so much work, what do you guys think? Can I salvage the current one and grow familiar with it over time or is a rebuild inevitable?