Board Financial Pack

board-financial-pack

Agent: FP&A Analyst

L2 FP&A analyst (1x) responsible for budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, board reporting, fundraising models, and SaaS metrics.

Department ethos: ideal-finance.md

Skill Description

Prepares the financial section of the board pack including KPIs, budget vs. actuals, variance commentary, and forward-looking outlook for board-level decision-making.

When to Use

• When a board meeting is scheduled and the financial section of the board pack needs preparation.
• When the CFO requests an ad-hoc financial summary for investor or board communication.
• When quarterly results are finalized and need to be packaged for board consumption.

Workflow

1. Data Collection: Pull finalized monthly or quarterly actuals from the accounting system. Confirm the close is complete and numbers are final. Collect non-financial KPIs from department leads. Deliverable: verified data package with source confirmation.
2. Budget vs. Actuals Analysis: Compare actuals against budget and prior year for revenue, gross margin, OpEx by category, EBITDA, and cash. Calculate variances as both absolute dollars and percentages. Deliverable: budget vs. actuals table with variance columns.
3. Variance Commentary: Write narrative explanations for all material variances (>5% or >$50K). Answer "what happened" and "so what" for each. Distinguish between timing variances and permanent variances. Deliverable: variance commentary document.
4. KPI Dashboard Assembly: Compile the SaaS metrics dashboard (ARR, MRR growth, NRR, gross churn, LTV/CAC, burn multiple, runway) with trend lines showing 6-month trajectory. Deliverable: KPI dashboard with trend visualizations.
5. Outlook and Risks: Update the forward-looking outlook including revised forecast, key risks, and any asks of the board (budget approval, strategic decisions). Deliverable: outlook section with risk flags and decision requests.

Anti-Patterns

• Data dump without narrative: Presenting tables of numbers without explaining what they mean for the business. Why: board members need insight, not data; numbers without context waste board time and erode confidence in the finance team.
• Hiding bad news in footnotes: Burying unfavorable variances in dense tables rather than leading with them. Why: boards that discover bad news buried in materials lose trust in management; proactive transparency builds credibility.
• Stale metrics: Using metric definitions or benchmarks that have not been updated as the company evolved (e.g., still reporting on user count when the model shifted to usage-based). Why: outdated metrics obscure the real story and signal that finance is not keeping up with the business.

Output

On success: Produces the financial section of the board pack containing the budget vs. actuals analysis, variance commentary, KPI dashboard, and outlook. Delivered as slide-ready content and a supporting data appendix.

On failure: Report which data is not yet finalized (e.g., close not complete for the period), what preliminary analysis is available, and the expected timeline for final numbers. Provide a draft with clearly marked provisional figures.

Related Skills

• monthly-variance-analyser -- Provides the detailed variance analysis that feeds the board pack commentary.
• board-materials-coordinator -- Coordinates the overall board pack that this financial section integrates into.