How to Improve Finance Operations

FP&A can get ahead of 99% of their colleagues. 7 overlooked but powerful secrets you can use: 1. Master data storytelling Numbers alone don’t drive decisions. Link business outcomes to financial metrics and focus on impact. Present solutions, not just problems. Start meetings with "The main story in this month's numbers is..." to hook your audience first. 2. Own your tech stack Become an expert in modern FP&A tools like Aimplan and Power BI. Learn SQL basics and automate routine tasks to free up time for analysis. Dedicate 30 minutes each Friday to automate one task. Build your automation library over time. 3. Build a business partner mindset Understand each department’s KPIs and pain points. Offer solutions proactively and drive value, not just report on it. Schedule monthly coffee chats with key business leaders to discuss their challenges. 4. Master scenario planning Create flexible models with multiple future scenarios. Test assumptions and plan for best/worst cases. Focus on actionable insights. Design models with clear input sections so partners can test assumptions themselves. 5. Get good at pattern detection Train yourself to spot trends and anomalies quickly. Understand what "normal" looks like and question outliers. Keep a "smell test" checklist for numbers that seem off at first glance to calibrate your instincts. 6. Focus on cash impacts Cash is king. Understand how operational decisions affect cash flow and help teams see the cash implications of their choices. Convert major decisions into "cash in, cash out, timing" and share this framework with non-finance teams. 7. Build trust through accuracy Double-check your work, document assumptions, and own your mistakes. Trust takes years to build and seconds to lose. Keep a "lessons learned" document and review it monthly to prevent repeat errors. The secret is to be the bridge between finance and operations. Each skill builds on the others to make you a true business partner, not just another analyst.

I asked a CFO last month: "How long does month-end close take?" She said: "About 10-8 days. That's just how it is." I've heard this at least 50 times in the last 5-10 years A lot of CFOs think 8-day close is normal. It's not. And they know it's costing them, but it’s the new normal Listen I am not a CFO but hear me out because I have wored with a ton of amazing ones Let's say your finance team is 5 people. During close, they're working 60-hour weeks. That's 300 hours of overtime per month. 3,600 hours per year. At $75/hour, that's $270,000 per year just for close. But the real cost isn't the overtime. It's the decisions you can't make. While Finance is buried in close, you're flying blind Are we on track to hit our Q4 number? Which product lines are actually profitable? Can we afford to hire three more people? By the time you get the numbers, they're two weeks old. Problem 1: Manual data entry Your AP team is keying in invoices from PDFs. Your AR team is matching payments in Excel. Your warehouse is emailing inventory adjustments that someone enters by hand. Every step adds time. Every step creates errors. Problem 2: Waiting for other departments Finance can't close until: Operations confirms inventory counts Sales confirms which deals closed Purchasing confirms which POs need accruals Those departments are doing their own manual process. So Finance sits around waiting. We didn't tell her to work faster. We fixed the process. Fix 1: Automated data entry AP invoices? OCR + auto-matching in SAP AR payments? Auto-applied based on customer and invoice Inventory adjustments? Entered in real-time by warehouse on mobile Result: Eliminated 90% of manual data entry. Fix 2: Real-time visibility Operations saw inventory variances daily and fixed them before month-end Sales saw pipeline and closed deals in real-time Purchasing flagged accruals as they happened Result: Finance stopped waiting for data. It was already in the system. First month after go-live: 7 days. Second month: 5 days. Third month: 3 days. Same team. Same transactions. Same complexity. The CFO emailed me: "I didn't realize how much time we were wasting until we stopped wasting it." If your month-end close takes more than 5 days, you don't have a finance problem. You have a process problem. A lot of CFOs don't know it's fixable. They've been doing 8-day closes so long, they think that's normal. It's not. You're not stuck with slow close. You're stuck with processes designed for a different era.

CFO “luxuries” aren’t yachts. They’re quiet, boring, dependable systems. When finance runs clean, strategy gets sharp. When it doesn’t, the whole company argues with the spreadsheet instead of the market. 💡 What great CFOs actually want looks like this: ↳ Clean, reconciled data they can trust at 8 AM ↳ Budgets that hold up under stress, not just board day ↳ Time to think, not chase fires ↳ A monthly close that runs on autopilot ↳ A team that thinks before asking ↳ Reports that need no translation ↳ Real accountability across teams ↳ Meetings with decisions and owners, not status recaps ↳ Systems that talk to each other without duct tape ↳ Partners who understand that numbers drive strategy The pattern is simple: remove noise, compress cycle times, and make the next decision obvious. Here’s a pragmatic operating playbook to earn these “luxuries”: ↳ Define the single source of truth. One data model, one chart of accounts, one KPI glossary. ↳ Lock decision rights. Who decides, by when, with what inputs. Publish it. ↳ Standardize artifacts. Close checklist, budget template, metric dictionary, decision log. ↳ Instrument handoffs. Sales → RevOps → Finance, Purchasing → Inventory → AP, Payroll → HRIS → GL. ↳ Shorten loops. Weekly cash, weekly pipeline-to-cash, weekly unit economics. ↳ Automate the boring. Imports, allocations, variance flags, and distribution of the scorecard. ↳ Make meetings do work. Agenda = decisions, owners, deadlines. No readouts. ↳ Train for judgment. Teach the “why” behind metrics, not just the math. ↳ Socialize the scoreboard. Same view for executives, managers, and frontline. ↳ Tie it to strategy. KPIs mirror how the company wins, not what the system can export. Start Here: ✅ Start a KPI glossary today: define 12 metrics, owner, formula, cadence. ✅ Replace next week’s finance meeting with a decision review: three decisions, three owners, dates. ✅ Automate one step in the close that steals the most time. ♻️Repost & follow John Brewton for content that helps. ✅ Do. Fail. Learn. Grow. Win. ✅ Repeat. Forever. ⸻ 📬Subscribe to Operating by John Brewton for deep dives on the history and future of operating companies (🔗in profile).

Our finance team nearly killed our growth until we stopped hiring. We were scaling fast - new clients, bigger deals, more complexity. The natural instinct? Hire more finance people. But here's what actually happened: More headcount = more chaos. Reconciliations took weeks. Month-end close stretched to 20 days. We couldn't forecast beyond 30 days. The real problem wasn't capacity. It was SYSTEMS. No integrated ERP. Manual invoicing. Excel hell for cash flow tracking. Every new hire inherited broken processes and made them worse. So we paused hiring. Invested in proper financial infrastructure instead - automated reconciliation, real-time dashboards, standardized workflows. Within 90 days: → Month-end close down to 5 days → Cash flow visibility extended to 6 months → Finance became a strategic partner, not a bottleneck Most service companies between ₹10–100 Cr face this exact trap. They throw people at structural problems. The shift? Treat your finance function like product infrastructure - build it to scale BEFORE you scale. What's your biggest finance ops challenge right now?

Most beginners in accounting don’t realize this: - They think if the numbers add up, they’re doing great. - They think if invoices are paid, they’re in control. - They think if taxes are filed, they’re safe. But then comes the financial crisis they never saw coming. And it’s not just beginners. Even growing businesses often misalign finance talent with business needs. They assume one-size-fits-all roles can handle evolving complexity. One of my clients learned this the hard way.   A $1.3M operational inefficiency had been silently draining their growth for over a year. Because they built their finance department around generalists, Not specialists who understood their industry’s cost structure, pricing sensitivity, and compliance risks. Their team diligently produced basic financial statements and managed payroll without issues. But while routine tasks were covered, they lacked strategic insights, industry-specific expertise, and forward-looking analysis capabilities. Then we helped them, here's how:  - Created specialized role definitions across 15 finance functions  - Realigned talent to match business complexity requirements  - Implemented targeted upskilling for existing team members The results came quickly:  → Identified $870K in overlooked tax advantages  → Accelerated financial close process by 64%  → Improved forecast accuracy from 65% to 91% Generalists keep the lights on whereas specialists drive business transformation. Failing to strategically structure your finance team doesn't just create inefficiency, it prevents your business from converting financial insights into competitive advantage. #accountingroles  #finance  #businessandaccounting

I track one metric religiously. Not revenue. Not burn. Not runway. Every week, I log it: Monthly close. Reconciliations. Paying invoices. Expense reports. Last month: 47% of my time. That’s time not spent on pricing strategy, cohort economics, or helping the team make better decisions. We all know that the value isn’t in maintaining the books, but in driving insights. But most finance teams get it backwards: 80% maintenance. 20% strategy. Then they wonder why they’re not in board meetings. My rule: keep repetitive work under 40%. Here’s my approach: → Weeks 1–4: Learn + set goals + build roadmap → Weeks 5-8: Implement + track processes → Weeks 9–12: Automate + templatize → Weeks 13–16: Train or delegate → Weeks 17+: Review and refine Real examples: • Close: 20 days → dynamic checklist, automated schedules → 7 days • Rev rec: 12 hours → rebuilt workflow, standardized categories → 90 minutes (80% fewer errors) • Reforecasting: 6 hours → simplified model, power queries → 30 minutes Every hour trapped in Excel reconciliations is an hour not identifying why your best customers churn. Every day in the close is a day not analyzing unit economics. The uncomfortable truth: If you're spending most of your time on routine tasks, you're not a finance leader. You're an expensive bookkeeper. Your CEO knows it. Track this metric. When it creeps above 40%, improve your systems. Your value isn't in perfect books. It's in perfect insights. The books just need to be trusted. Not worshipped.

Finance leaders are under pressure to deliver precision, speed, and compliance while keeping costs in check. Manual reconciliation, reporting, and transaction processing consume up to 60% of analysts’ time and increase the risk of financial errors. AI automation is changing that reality. With AI, enterprises can automate up to 80% of repetitive finance workflows while maintaining 99.99% accuracy across reconciliation, validation, and reporting cycles. The outcome is consistent, transparent, and real-time financial control. Global enterprises adopting AI-led finance automation have reported measurable results: • 45% faster month-end closure • 35% lower compliance risk exposure • Up to 50% reduction in financial operation costs • ROI within 90 days A no-code platform enables finance teams to deploy intelligent agents without technical complexity. It integrates with more than 1,000 ERP, CRM, and API endpoints, ensuring seamless adoption across SAP, Oracle, and cloud ecosystems. This shift is redefining the finance function. CFO offices are moving from transaction execution to data-driven advisory. Finance professionals now have more time for forecasting, scenario planning, and strategic decision-making that drive growth. AI amplifies human judgment by uniting accuracy, compliance, and agility to help finance teams scale with confidence. If you are exploring how AI can modernise your finance operations and deliver measurable value in 90 days, DM to start the conversation. . . . #AI #FinanceAutomation #DigitalTransformation #EnterpriseFinance #FinTech #AIAutomation #FutureOfFinance #OperationalExcellence #DataAccuracy #FinanceLeadership #AIAdoption #BusinessTransformation #IntelligentAutomation #CFOLeadership

I’ve sat in 100s of executive meetings where everyone nods at the dashboard and no one actually knows what to do next. Most CROs and CMOs struggle to speak Finance’s language. And Finance struggles to connect with sales and marketing. At Pavilion, we believe the best CROs and CMOs don’t just work with Finance—they sit on the same side of the table. Easy to say. Hard as hell to do. And here’s the trap I see over and over: As executives, we confuse visibility with control. We’ve got dashboards for everything. We’re tracking every possible number. We’re updating it every week and driving our teams crazy But: the more we measure, the less we focus. Visibility ≠ Control. Control comes from knowing the drivers of your business—and pushing on them relentlessly. That requires prioritization: choosing the few metrics that matter most and accepting that others will take a back seat. And understanding that the back seat means — certain numbers will move in the WRONG direction. That’s OK. If you’ve prioritized correctly. But prioritization only matters if it changes how you run the business. The next step is making sure those critical metrics are embedded in your operations and decisions. Here’s how to start: 5 Practical Ways to Improve Financial Performance: 1. Shrink your dashboard to 5-10 key metrics—split into leading and lagging indicators. I’ve seen zealots advocate for as few as 3-5 key metrics. If your dashboard has 10+, you know you’re swimming in data but probably don’t know where to focus. 2. Cascade each metric to an owner so every team member knows how they’re moving the number. The goal is to have everyone in the company understand how they’re contributing to the success of the company. 3. Build a monthly cashflow forecast to anticipate inflows and outflows. Your monthly forecast helps you understand the RHYTHM of the company. I’ve met CEOs that don’t have any cash forecast at all — not sure what to say there but hoping those people have an amazing balance sheet. 4. Track profitability by business unit so you know where the money is actually being made. This means allocating expenses by revenue stream and business line so you can look at everything individually AND holistically. 5. Use A/P spend thresholds to align cash outflows with inflows. I once worked with a CFO that pushed $500K+ of A/P out in the middle of a slow season without any oversight or CEO approval. I don’t work with that person anymore. BOTTOM LINE: Control isn’t about seeing everything. It’s about steering the few things that actually move the business forward. When you focus on the right drivers, align your team around them, and build systems to track and act on them, financial performance stops being a mystery. It becomes a habit. Over the next few months, I’ll be partnering with BILL to share strategies like these—from 25 years of building companies—so CROs, CMOs, CFOs, and CEOs can align around what truly drives enterprise value. #BILLPartner

Flying Blind: The Risk of Scaling Without Financial Oversight If you’ve worked with me, you know one thing: I demand that every organization I work with has a budget and an annual plan. Why? Because trying to run a business without financial visibility is like driving a car without a map. Sure, you might be moving forward—but where are you actually going? And at what cost? Yet, I see this happen all the time with emerging and early mid-market DSOs that scale too quickly: 🚩 No clear operating plan. 🚩 No structured budget. 🚩 No financial guardrails to ensure profitability. At first, it doesn’t seem like a problem. More locations, more revenue, more patients—it feels like success. But beneath the surface, financial inefficiencies creep in. Overhead climbs. Payroll outpaces collections. The cost to support growth outstrips profitability. And then, the panic sets in: Why are margins shrinking? Where is the cash going? Why This Happens When DSOs scale quickly, financial discipline often takes a back seat to growth. Some common pitfalls: 🔹 No real-time financial reporting – Leaders don’t have a clear, up-to-date view of profitability across locations. Decisions are made based on gut feeling, not data. 🔹 Over-reliance on top-line revenue – More locations don’t automatically mean more profit. If you aren’t optimizing operational efficiency, you’re just expanding inefficiencies. 🔹 Inconsistent cost controls – Without a centralized financial plan, every location operates differently. Expenses fluctuate wildly, making it impossible to predict margins. 🔹 Lack of alignment between finance and operations – Operators drive decisions without understanding financial impact. If finance is reactive instead of proactive, the business suffers. What’s the Fix? Scaling successfully requires balancing growth with financial oversight. Here’s how to stay on track: ✅ Create a financial roadmap. Every DSO needs an annual operating plan that defines growth goals, funding strategies, and financial targets. ✅ Build a rolling budget. A static annual budget won’t cut it. Update projections quarterly to reflect real-time business performance. ✅ Standardize financial reporting. Leaders need to see location-level profitability, key cost drivers, and benchmarks in real-time. No more guessing. ✅ Align finance with operations. Operators and financial leaders must collaborate—every major business decision should be informed by financial data. ✅ Prioritize profitability over expansion. A smaller, highly profitable group is always better than a larger, unprofitable one. Growth without financial discipline isn’t success—it’s a ticking time bomb. If you’re leading a growing DSO, ask yourself: Are you scaling with financial clarity, or are you flying blind? Let’s talk—how are you ensuring financial oversight in your organization? 👇

I've talked with hundreds of finance leaders since starting Abacum. Many feel like they aren't given the chance to live up to their strategic potential–and they're usually right. But they often overlook the key to breaking out. So I tell them all the same thing: If you want to get out of that back-office function, you have to add value. And it might sound impossible if you're currently getting shut down the minute you suggest something beyond the spreadsheets, but anyone can do it with the right approach. Here's how the most powerful finance leaders get their team on their side: → Stop asking why and start asking what if Go beyond what happened and try to architect opportunities. So don't go to the team and ask, "Why did you overspend?" Instead, start looking for ways to reallocate resources to maximize ROI. → Stop reporting on last quarter's P&L Instead, model how today's decisions will impact next year's valuation. This positions you as the strategic leader that you are instead of the budget police. The team doesn't need you to repeat what they can find in a spreadsheet. They need someone to look into the future and see how current decisions can shape the future of the organization. → Stop policing budgets Focus on creating value instead of controlling costs. This way, you'll help your team hit their goals, you'll answer questions execs haven't even asked yet, and your team will become the engine of growth. It begins with you mapping competitors' allocation strategies to identify gaps in your own, automating variance analysis so you can spend less time on reporting and more time on scenario planning, and bridging the gap by translating operational KPIs into CFO-ready financial narratives. There's no magic wand you can wave to make this transformation happen, but it starts with the big question: How can I add value here? By doing this, you can move beyond the formal empowerment that comes with a fancy title or a mandate from leadership and actually win the authority of the people in the room.