By role
For the FP&A lead
Your numbers are ready the day the ledger closes. The rest of the week goes on moving them into the shape the business thinks in.
| The numbers | Finished on day one |
|---|---|
| The pack | Finished on day five |
| In between | Rearranging, not deciding |
| The first reply | One more cut of the same data |
FINK cuts the pack by your own dimensions, runs your allocation rules, and answers the follow-up question on the day it’s asked.
The week nobody counts
After the close, the figures get moved into the divisions the board thinks in, onto the allocation basis agreed two quarters ago, against a budget in a different file, and into a format nobody documented. Then the pack goes out, and the first reply asks for one more cut of the same data.
That’s rearranging, twelve times a year, by the person on your team best placed to do something harder.
What changes
- Your dimensions. Plant, division, product, customer, region, project: whatever is already in your ledger is what the reporting cuts by. It reads the structure you defined.
- Allocation rules, written down. The basis agreed once is recorded and runs itself, so nobody has to remember it next year.
- Budget, actual and forecast together, on the same structure, so a variance is a fact you can read straight off.
- Follow-up questions answered the same day. The pack stops being a one-off event.
Where it stops
If a period’s data hasn’t been loaded, FINK says so and won’t estimate. And it never posts an entry into your books. It only reads.
Where to start
What FINK does, in full · what moves the price · what IT will ask
Reading for someone else? Try the group controller or the CFO.
Questions
Commonly asked
Is this the same numbers as the statutory reporting?
It reads the same mapped data. The MIS chart of accounts is separate from the statutory chart and mapped to it, so management reporting can have its own structure and still reconcile.
Do we have to rebuild our existing pack?
No. Your current format is reproduced and refreshed, because people already know how to read it.
What happens when someone asks a question the pack does not answer?
That's what this is for. A question about any dimension gets a computed answer the same day, and it reconciles to the pack.