budget, forecast, variance
Budgets, forecasts, and the analysis behind them. Scoped to whatever you actually need, from a single board-ready plan to standing up the function outright.
The Basics
Financial planning and analysis, or FP&A, is the work of building a budget, maintaining a forecast, and explaining the gap between what you planned and what actually happened. It's forward-looking by definition, which is what separates it from accounting.
Accounting tells you what happened and makes sure it's recorded correctly. FP&A takes that record and asks what it means for the next twelve months. Most growing businesses reach a point where they need that second capability and can't yet justify hiring for it, so it lands on a founder at midnight or on a controller who was brought in to close the books rather than model the future. What that calls for varies more than people expect. Sometimes it's a single budget for a lender conversation, and sometimes it's a deep look at why performance has drifted. Other times it's building the tools and training the team who'll run them, or standing up the function from nothing. We scope the engagement to the need rather than to a package.
FP&A tends to become urgent at a specific moment rather than gradually.
Ways We Work
FP&A means different things depending on where a business is. These are the shapes engagements usually take, and they combine where it makes sense.
You don't have FP&A and you need one. We build the process from nothing: the planning calendar, the reporting rhythm, the templates, and the definition of who owns which input. What you're left with is a working function rather than a document describing one.
You need the work done for a set window, through a raise, a budget cycle, or a gap before a hire, without building it internally yet. We produce the forecast and the reporting pack each period while your team stays focused elsewhere. If the need turns out to be permanent, that's where Fractional Finance fits better.
A specific question that needs a real answer. Why margin has drifted, which products or service lines actually earn their keep, what changed between last year and this one. We rebuild the picture from your data and come back with findings rather than a dashboard.
A three-statement or driver-based model your team owns and maintains. It's built around the things that actually move your business and connected to your accounting data, with assumptions that stay visible and editable rather than buried in formulas only the builder understands.
Sometimes the need is singular: a budget for a lender, a plan for the board, a model behind a launch or a raise. We build the one thing to the standard it needs to meet, without wrapping it in an engagement you didn't ask for.
You have the people and they need the equipment. We build the reporting tools, variance templates, and forecast files your team will use, then train them until they're running it without us in the room.
A common outcome of FP&A consulting is a beautiful model nobody can maintain. The consultant leaves, an assumption changes, and within two quarters the file has been abandoned. We build for the opposite. Whatever we hand over is documented, the assumptions stay visible and editable, and we train whoever will own it before the engagement closes. If your accounting data isn't structured well enough to feed a forecast reliably, we'll tell you that first, because no model survives bad inputs.
How It Works
Project work should be predictable. You know the scope, the cost, and the deliverable before anything starts.
We talk through what you're trying to answer or build, and look at what you already have: the current budget, existing reporting, and how your accounting data is structured. If that data isn't ready to support what you're asking for, it becomes the first conversation rather than a surprise three weeks in.
No costYou get a written scope with deliverables, a timeline, and a fixed fee that carries a buffer for the normal surprises. Whether that's a single budget or standing up the whole function, you know what you're getting before anything begins.
Agreed upfrontWe build, analyze, or stand up whatever the scope calls for, and we stay in contact while we do it. You see the thinking develop rather than receiving a finished file with conclusions you had no hand in reaching.
Two weeks to three monthsWe walk whoever owns the work through it until they're comfortable without us. If you'd rather we kept running it long term, that's a Fractional Finance conversation and a separate engagement.
Your team runs itFrequently Asked Questions
FP&A stands for financial planning and analysis. It covers building a budget, maintaining a forecast, and explaining the variance between what was planned and what actually happened. Unlike accounting, which records and reports the past, FP&A is forward-looking. Its purpose is to give leadership a defensible view of where the business is heading and what will change it.
Accounting produces an accurate, structured record of what has already happened. FP&A takes that record and projects forward, modeling what the next period looks like under a given set of assumptions. The two depend on each other, because a forecast built on poorly structured accounting data will be wrong in ways nobody can trace.
Yes. Plenty of engagements are singular: a budget a lender has asked for, a model behind a capital raise, a plan the board needs before a decision. We build the one thing to the standard it has to meet and hand it over. There's no requirement to turn it into something ongoing.
FP&A is a defined capability: the model, the forecast cadence, and the variance reporting. A fractional CFO owns the broader finance function, including banking relationships, capital strategy, and accounting oversight, with FP&A as one part of that. If you have a specific planning or forecasting gap, an FP&A engagement fills it. If the gap is financial leadership generally, or you need FP&A run for you on a permanent basis, that's a Fractional Finance conversation.
FP&A engagements are scoped at a fixed fee agreed before work begins, starting at $6,000, with a buffer built in for the normal course of a project. If the work runs beyond that buffer, additional hours are billed, and we raise it with you before that point rather than after.
