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FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips.
Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A.
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models. Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A.
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models. Get in touch at www.datarails.com
199 Episodes
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Mikola is Finance Business Partner at Merlin Entertainments Merlin – offering some of the most popular attractions in the world including LEGOLAND Resorts, Thorpe Park and Alton Towers. Merlin welcomes more than 62 million guests annually to its diverse global estate in over 20 countries. Before Merlin, Mikola spent several years as a finance director at a fast-growing law firm, where the business tripled in size in just a few years.
In this episode:
Finance in a law firm - getting from technical finance to business partnering
Reducing risk as the Ukraine war started
The business of Merlin Entertainment - from forecasting to cost control
Working with procurement on validation of costs
key metrics including attendance, guest spends and promotion
The power of business partnering: consistency, curiosity and understanding your business
Adam Hibbs has pretty non-linear paths into finance:New Zealand telecom regulator, OfCom, Vodafone, Cable & Wireless, UK Ministry of Defense, and now Global Director of Commercial Strategy at AICPA & CIMA. Financial modeling, commercial contracts, cloud infrastructure, and leadership across blue-chip organizations was preparation for building Josie, that is AICPA & CIMA's generative AI tool for accounting and auditing.
In this episode:
What makes Josie genuinely different from ChatGPT or Claude for technical accounting work
Curated dataset of 40,000 pieces of proprietary IP, real-time updates to FASB, PCAOB, and auditing standards
Josie ($550 per subscriber) named after Josiah Wedgwood and a new form of cost accounting
CGMA vs CPA
Where AI and finance intersect in the next 12-24 months
Emily Feinstone is an accounting manager at Eventus Advisory Group and unusually tech-forward in how she works. Emily spends her days building better processes, automating repetitive finance workflows, and making high volume operational data usable. And instead of opting for a traditional CPA first route after 20 years of experience, she is pursuing a degree in data science: “ I want to be the one that teaches the AI and not the one that is replaced by AI. I want to be the one that knows how to use it the best to my advantage.”
Emily also talks about accounting vs FP&A: You don't even see overhead. It's allocated…but you don't know that it took me two, two and a half hours to prepare that entry and another two hours to key it in.”
In this episode:
Blurring of lines between data analysts and accountants
The future of the accounting profession in an AI era
Transforming an Excel based invoice and commission process
Keeping raceability and controls + automation
Why I wont trust AI to do my accounting journal entries
The history-making USA Hockey won golds (and millions of fans in the process) at Milan’s Olympic Games. But behind the on-ice glory is a $75 million organization with a finance function as disciplined as its players. Kelly Mahncke , CFO of USA Hockey, joins Glenn Hopper and FP&A Today to pull back the curtain on what it takes to fund the gold-winning national hockey program — with business interests from memberships and sponsorships to restaurants and insurance. Kelly traces her own journey from center ice to chasing the bottom line, explaining how a hockey career shaped her instincts as a finance leader. She walks us through four-year "quad budgets" and the typical annual cycle, and what it took to weather COVID's financial shock, from cash management to the logistical nightmare of paused travel programs. She also gets into the digital transformation underway at USA Hockey. And why she believes curiosity is the defining trait of great FP&A professionals. Catch this fascinating look at finance leadership — at the peak of Hockey USA's Olympic moment.
Sahil Kamani, is a Berlin-based senior finance leader and FP&A professional at Ellie (Volkswagen Group), Starting at a credit rating agency in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — inspired, fittingly, by a fascination with the documentary Inside Job — Sahil moved through regulation, capital markets, and an MBA before pivoting into operational finance
In this episode:
Being the person handing out credit ratings
Cash burn and the KPIs that matter most in a turnaround
What bankers and regulators instinctively look for
How the CFO you work influences your storytelling
Being CFO of Berlin's fastest-growing pickleball club.
Sahil R Kamani on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilrkamani/
John Glasgow, is the founder, CEO and CFO of Campfire AI native ERP with more than $100m in funding, built to help high growth companies close faster, get richer visibility from their accounting data, and scale. John brings his insights as an operator who has spent time in FP&A and strategic finance, including at Adobe and an executive at Invoice To Go, leading that finance company to a $625 million sale to bill.com. Campfire came out of firsthand frustration with legacy ERPs and a need to rebuild the general ledger for the AI era.
In this episode:
My years in FP&A and strategic finance at Adobe before becoming a founder
CFA Certification
Invoice to Go acquisition what I learned
The frustration and origin story of frustration and why Campfire was set up
Why building our own AI model makes sense
Key quote: “If you slap AI on top of an ERP with summarized revenue data, then you’re essentially gonna get no insights that are of any value.”
Marko Horvat has been a public accountant, Controller, head of FP&A and CFO, as well as VP in Gartner's research and advisory practice, specializing in topics most relevant to CFOs and finance transformation.
In this episode he talks:
Interplay IT and CISO and organizational politics (“if it runs on electricity, it’s ours”)
CFO skillsets gap
Real change in CFO’s Office with AI (audit pattern recognition to forecasting)
Last mile transformation in finance
Mindset, skillset, toolset transformation
Treating forecast as in perpetual beta
The power of the subtotal function
Recommended books:
There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Troy Anderson is CFO of Kelly Services, a staffing solutions provider to various industries, who has spent his career driving transformation across some of the most complex business environments. Before joining Kelly, he served as CFO at Universal Technical Institute, where he helped double revenue over five years through a mix of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Earlier in his career, he held senior finance leadership roles at Conduent, a $6billion player (bought by Xerox).
Conduent life cycle a $6b public company acquired by Xerox
Investor relations at Xerox as a game-changer for my career
Making finance a partner across the value chain
Business Process Outsourcing vs AI
The need for a deep understanding of your business
Catch the full transcript below
Stephen Hedlund is head of finance at Rillet, an AI-native ERP which has raised over $100million from Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. In Steven’s words Rillet is “building the modern NetSuite.”
In this episode:
How Isaac Asimov’s Foundation helped me discover finance
Experience from enterprise at Walmart to building startups
Go-to-market (marketing) to Head of Finance Gillet
The moat for leading ERPs and our strategy
Being the ICP and marketing voice for Rillet
“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Eddie Reynolds, CEO of UnionSquare Consulting, opens up about the often-fraught relationship between CFOs and CROs. Eddie shares insights from his unique journey—from banking and private equity to being an account executive at Salesforce which forecast within 5% accuracy despite 30%+ growth.
The conversation tackles the critical disconnect between finance and go-to-market teams: Why do CFOs struggle to trust CRM pipelines? What breaks when companies hit $50-100M in revenue?
In this episode:
How Salesforce was able to forecast with 5% accuracy,
The role of FP&A and CROs in go to market strategy and efficiency
The issues with LTV to CAC ratio in SaaS
Biggest challenges of the CFO/CRO relationship
Bottoms up annual planning working with finance
Bobby Bray brings his perspective from more than 20 years in banking and consulting with Capital One, Oliver Wyman, and Regions Bank. The retired Navy Captain with four commands talks about strategic decision-making under pressure, working with Fortune 150 C-Suite executives, and the rigor required in FP&A.
He says: “To use an aviation term you need to be able to follow the drop of gas through the engine and understand the different cogs in the engine that turns a drop of gas into thrust, but it also is what turns raw data into usable analytics on the back end.”
In this episode
A Truly Non-Traditional Path to Finance
Commercial banking as the most educational finance job
Discipline and rigor in FP&A
Cloud infrastructure changes in the past 7 years
The rigor of a capital market stress test
Explainability of AI in finance
Five-time CFO Rick Smith has led finance at companies including inVentiv Health Communications, Exos, Parchment, Solera Health before founding Bonfire advisory. He is also the author o fDemystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies, a no-nonsense approach to the topic. Reviews for the book include: “This book is a must-read if you want to understand how to scale a company as a CFO” and “Should be required reading for CEOs and PE people along with CFOs.”
In this episode Smith provides his take on being a CFO and his long background in FP&A, providing insights on:
The path from FP&A to CFO (without a CPA)
Why I like being CFO at SMBs (sub $50m)
Being a dreamer, artist and buildingFP&A
Audits vs QOEs
The unspoken challenges working with PE firms
FP&A and M&A – what you need to know
Link to the book: Demystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies
Preston Naegle started his career in private equity at Leavitt Equity Partners (founded by Michael Leavitt, the former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Negale then moved into the operating world and for more than 2 years has led strategic finance and FP&A at a PE-backed Midway Mechanical Services in the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) industry at the company which has completed 15 acquisitions (3 in 2025 alone) within the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing sector across the Western US region.
In this episode
An origin story in Private Equity
Learning from a “firehose” of business models
Bringing PE thinking to a head of finance role at Midway Mechanical
Bringing people with you as you create FP&A, budget and forecasting processes
Choosing an FP&A solution
Enhancing time to insights that bring long-term business partnering and profit growth
Glenn reconnects with Adam Shilton—who reveals the highs and lows of more than a decade selling to finance teams and what 134 deals in 36 months taught him about CFO challenges. The founder, writer, and speaker has now launched his own venture focused on helping entrepreneurs and solo business owners.
My Experience selling finance software including SAP
Bridging the Sales-Finance Divide: Why pipeline forecasts are inherently “fluffy”
The Deposit Game-Changer: Why commission should only be paid on receipt of deposit, not just signature
Finance coaching sales on overdue invoices
AI and AR automation
AI Agents workflows
What does it take to be the finance leader behind Hollywood stories? Diya Sagar, CFO of AWA Studios, which produces critically acclaimed, original stories for comics, TV, and movies, joins Glenn Hopper to reveal how she manages the money behind the magic—from funding graphic novels that may not pay off for years to navigating the unpredictable world of graphic novels, film and TV deals.
How a “creator-first” approach shows up in budgets
Building a Hits-Driven Portfolio
The Ultimate Model: From Page to Screen Economics
The 2-4 year timeline
What Boards Really Want in a creative industry
With more than 20 years of experience helping startups scale from seed to series B, Maria Azatyan has built architectures for companies across ai, robotics and the new space economy, translating complex technologies into numbers. This is coupled with her frank perspective as a single mother balancing finance leadership and advising startups.
Sci-fi Dreams Made Real: sharing experiences with Waymo
Setting up ArmGate, empowering entrepreneurs
One month to “two minutes” using AI to work with data
Case study: AI to Automate ERA Filings for Venture Funds
Role as ex-CFO at DocDoc.ru whose exit was ranked one of Russia’s top five IT & Digital M&A deals.
Problems with cash flow to 45% year-over-year revenue growth
Biggest startup challenges for finance teams
Joyce Li, CEO, and chief AI strategist at Averanda Partners, brings a rare combination: CFA charter holder, computer science graduate, MBA from Wharton, Board advisor on AI. She advises on multi-billion dollar investment strategies and works with boards and C-suites on AI strategy, governance, and adoption.
The power of Excel in an AI age
The ROI of AI and what boards want to see
15% as the magic AI productivity number
Agents and the future of finance
Rohini Jain leads finance strategy at BILL, which delivers strategic finance capabilities in one integrated platform including AP, AR, expenses and procurement. She has more than 20 years of experience shaping and leading finance, product, and operations teams at global fintech, payments, and e-commerce companies including at PayPal, eBay, Walmart and General Electric.
She spoke to us ahead of the earnings release for Bill.com (November 5) which revealed total revenue at $395.7 million, an increase of 10% year-over-year, and core revenue, (subscription and transaction fees) of $358.0 million, an increase of 14% year-over-year. Bill now serves 498,100 businesses as of the end of the first quarter.
In this episode:
Deciding to choose finance (and disappointing my mother)
The GE “magic” building the next gen of finance leaders
Building a diverse skill set in my finance team
Love for engaging small and medium-sized business
Challenges and stress of public CFO role
Building agentic capabilities and finance’s future
A surprising Excel revelation
The opening voice on a Lyft earnings call is that of Aurelien Nolf, VP, FP&A and Investor Relations at the ride-hailing firm. He holds a dual role managing the 60-person FP&A, finance analysts, and investor team with access to billions of data points looking at the mode, price,drivers, frequency and demand for current offerings– and much-anticipated future services – such as robotaxis. In August 2025, the company saw an 11% increase in revenue to $1.59 billion for the quarter ended June 30. Its profit climbed to $40.3 million from $5 million a year earlier, driven by a rise in ridership and bookings. In this episode Nolf opens the hood into the FP&A processes and opportunities at the San-Francisco-based iconic brand.
In this episode:
The metrics that matter with billions of data points
The logic of combining FP&A and investor relations
Finance hackathons, curiosity and the culture of Lyft
Operational vs financial metrics driving Lyft’s success
Using ML in our forecasting, variance analysis, and IR reports
The challenge of hiring for FP&A in the Bay Area
1Chikako Tyler is the Chief Operating Officer at California Bank & Trust (CB&T). She began her career at the leading California bank in 2010, starting as risk manager, progressing tos trategic planning and analysis (spanning seven revenue divisions and 150 units), before serving seven years as Chief Financial Officer revealing . Here she reveals the strategic leadership as the bank grew, from $9 billion to $15 billion in assets, and overcoming challenges from the post global financial crisis to COVID.
In this episode:
Math academic to commercial real estate
California Bank and Trust’s stress testing
Efficiency ratios and operating leverage
Differences in the path CFO to COO
Inclusion and leadership in banking
The most company specific fave Excel function answer
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