Financial planning & analysis
Every month the actuals land, the variances get explained, the forecast gets reforecast, and the board deck assembles itself from the source systems instead of from an analyst's weekend. The first ten days of the month stop disappearing into assembly work.
Overview
FP&A is where the best analysts go to do the worst work. The function exists to tell the business where it's headed and what to do about it. Instead it spends the back half of every month stitching exports from the ERP, the CRM, and nine tabs of someone's spreadsheet into a board deck, then re-keying the same numbers into next quarter's forecast. The analysis, the part that was supposed to be the job, gets whatever hours are left. Usually none.
This agent runs the assembly line so the analyst runs the analysis. It pulls actuals from the ERP and the data warehouse the moment the period closes, builds the budget-versus-actual variance bridge, drafts the variance commentary in plain language, refreshes the rolling forecast against the latest run-rate, and assembles the recurring management and board reporting against your existing template. Every number traces back to its source. Nothing gets published until a human reviews and signs off. The analyst stops being a data-entry clerk with a CFA and goes back to telling the business something it didn't already know.
Capabilities
- Pulls actuals from the ERP, data warehouse, billing, and payroll the moment the period closes, reconciling them against the budget and prior forecast before any reporting runs
- Builds the budget-versus-actual variance bridge by line, segment, and cost center, isolating the drivers instead of just flagging the deltas
- Drafts variance commentary in plain language, explaining why the number moved and not just that it moved, with every figure traceable to its source
- Refreshes the rolling forecast against the latest run-rate, pipeline, and headcount data, and surfaces where the new view diverges from the plan
- Assembles recurring management reporting and board decks against your existing template, populated from live data rather than re-keyed by hand
- Routes every output through human review before publication, with a full audit trail of what changed, when, and from which source
Example Output
Month-end variance pack, May close
Trigger: Period locked in NetSuite at 6:02pm, June 2. Agent run completed by 6:40pm the same evening.
Consolidated P&L variance (May actual vs. plan):
- Revenue: $4.18M actual vs. $4.40M plan. Unfavorable $220K (5.0%).
- Gross margin: 71.2% actual vs. 69.5% plan. Favorable 170bps.
- Operating expense: $2.91M actual vs. $2.74M plan. Unfavorable $170K (6.2%).
- Operating income: $86K actual vs. $312K plan. Unfavorable $226K.
Drafted commentary (top three drivers, ranked by variance magnitude):
- Revenue miss ($220K unfavorable). Two enterprise deals forecast to close in May ($310K combined ARR) slipped to June, partially offset by stronger-than-planned self-serve expansion (+$90K). Pipeline coverage for June remains 3.1x, so the slip is timing, not demand. Source: Salesforce close-date changes, May 12 to May 28.
- Opex overrun ($170K unfavorable). $140K of the overage is a contractor invoice for the data-migration project that plan had phased to Q3; the work pulled forward. The genuinely incremental piece is roughly $30K in recruiting fees against the two engineering hires that closed in May. Source: Bill.com, Ramp.
- Margin beat (+170bps). Hosting costs came in under plan after the April commitment-tier renegotiation. This is structural, not one-time, and should carry into the forward forecast. Source: AWS billing, Ramp.
Forecast impact: Rolling forecast updated. The two slipped deals, re-dated to June, raise the June revenue forecast to $4.71M. The structural hosting savings carry forward at roughly $25K per month. Net full-year operating income forecast moves from $1.84M to $1.79M, driven almost entirely by the contractor pull-forward, which is timing within the year.
Status: Variance pack and updated forecast staged for review. Flagged for VP Finance sign-off before distribution to the exec team. No figures published.
Agent Workflow
Detect the period-close signal
The agent triggers the moment the period locks in the ERP or the close software, whichever your team treats as the canonical signal that the books are ready to read.
Pull and reconcile actuals
The agent fetches actuals from the ERP, data warehouse, billing system, and payroll, then reconciles them back to the general ledger before anything downstream runs. Reporting built on unreconciled numbers is worse than no reporting.
Build the variance bridge
The agent constructs the budget-versus-actual bridge by line, segment, and cost center, decomposing each variance into its drivers rather than stopping at the delta.
Draft the commentary
The agent writes the variance narrative in plain language: what moved, by how much, and why. Every figure links to the source transaction or schedule behind it, so review is verification, not archaeology.
Refresh the rolling forecast
The agent updates the rolling forecast against the latest run-rate, pipeline, and headcount, and explicitly surfaces where the new view diverges from the plan and what changed to cause it.
Assemble the reporting
The agent populates the management report and the board deck against your existing template from live data. The template is yours; the typing is the agent's.
Route for human review
The agent flags the pack for sign-off and posts nothing on its own. The reviewer sees a clean diff of what changed and an audit trail of every source. Judgment stays with the people accountable for the numbers.
Distribute and archive
On approval, the agent delivers the pack to where finance works (board portal, shared drive, email digest) and archives a versioned, source-linked copy so any number can be traced back six months later.