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    FP&A Operations

    FP&A operations is running a company's monthly financial planning cycle as a service: the close, the variance review, the forecast update and the board pack, every month, by a team that works inside yours.

    Capability

    Part of the FP&A practice

    How we help with FP&A Operations

    Most companies do not need another report. They need the month to end with a decision.

    1. Close the month on a date, every month

      A close calendar with owners and a hard date, so the conversation about performance happens while there is still time to change the outcome.

    2. Explain the variance, not just report it

      Each material gap to plan traced to a cause and an owner. A variance report without an explanation is a list of numbers that have already happened.

    3. Keep the forecast live

      A rolling forecast updated with what the close just taught us, so the number the board is holding is the number the business currently believes.

    4. Produce a board pack people read

      One document carrying the story of the month, the decisions needed and the risks, rather than forty slides of appendix.

    Most companies do not need another report. They need the month to end with a decision.

    What FP&A Operations delivers

    • The monthly cadence

      Close, review and variance on a calendar everyone knows, so the month ends the same way every month.

      • Books closed on a fixed date, and reviewed within the week
      • Each gap from the plan explained, with one person owning each line
      • One report, one version, sent to the people who act on it

    • Forecast and reforecast

      The plan kept live. A forecast that was right in April and never touched since is a historical document.

      • The forecast updated every month, when the books close
      • Other outcomes tested before you decide, not after
      • Cash and months of runway updated with profit and loss, not separately

    • The board and lender pack

      The reporting your investors, board or bank actually asked for, produced from the same numbers the team runs on.

      • A board report written for the people reading it, not to a template
      • Lender reports and loan-condition checks, on time every period
      • Questions answered from the report, without a fresh study each time

    • The team inside your team

      Analysts and a reviewer who join your calls, learn your business and hand the cadence back when it holds without us.

      • One named analyst and one named reviewer, not whoever is free
      • Your tools, your calendar, your definitions
      • Written down, so the monthly routine carries on after we hand over

    How the engagement runs

    FP&A operations is a retained function rather than a project. It usually begins after the consulting has fixed what is being planned, reported and priced, and it can also start cold where the base is already sound.

    1. 01

      Take on

      Your books, your definitions and your calendar, learned rather than replaced. Nothing is rebuilt that already works.

    2. 02

      Stabilise

      The close lands on date and the review happens. Two or three cycles is what it takes for that to stop being an effort.

    3. 03

      Run

      Close, review, variance, forecast and pack, every month, with the analyst on the calls where the numbers get used.

    4. 04

      Hand over

      The cadence documented and run by your team, with us on the calls that matter, for as long as that is useful.

    Why SRF for FP&A Operations

    • A function, not a report: the cadence is what is being bought
    • The same team runs the FP&A consulting practice, so what gets installed is what gets operated
    • Named people who join your calls rather than a shared inbox
    • Built to hand back, and documented so it survives when it is handed back

    FAQ

    Questions founders ask about FP&A Operations

    What does FP&A stand for?

    Financial planning and analysis. It covers turning a business plan into a forecast, a forecast into a budget, and then into the monthly conversation about what actually happened and why.

    How is FP&A operations different from FP&A consulting?

    Operations is the monthly cadence run as a service: close, review, variance, forecast and board pack, every month, by a team that sits inside yours. Consulting fixes how the company plans, reports and prices so that the operations have something worth running.

    When does a company need FP&A?

    Usually when the founder can no longer hold the whole picture, or when a board starts asking for a forecast that has to be defended. Before then a monthly review and a simple model is genuinely enough.

    Can our accountant do this?

    Accounting produces the numbers and FP&A decides what they mean for the next quarter. The skills overlap only partially, and asking one person to do both usually means the close wins and the planning does not happen.

    What our research says about FP&A Operations

    A close landing on the eighteenth pushes the review into the last week of the next month, so a decision about October gets taken in late November, when most of its value has gone.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in What is FP&A?

    A useful question to ask after your next finance review: did this meeting change a single decision? If the answer is no, what happened was budgeting. Not FP&A.

    Karthik Beknal, in Budgeting Is Not FP&A

    What a board actually wants is decision-quality information: something they can absorb in about thirty minutes and debate in ten.

    Sriram Chidambaram, in Board reporting and investor reporting are not the same thing

    Guides and downloads on FP&A Operations

    E-books and masterclass material from the SRF library, free to download.

    The people behind FP&A Operations

    FP&A Operations is run by the studio team: one multidisciplinary team whose pods work in tandem, matched to the sector and the stage the company is in.

    Karthik Beknal

    Financial Planning & Analysis pod

    Led by Karthik Beknal

    Lead - Strategy Consulting & FP&A. Plans, forecasts and tracks performance.

    See the pod structure
    Studio TeamThe operators, investors and builders who run engagements end to end.Meet them

    Where we apply FP&A Operations: the industries this capability serves

    What usually runs alongside this