Practical guides on financial modeling for PE-backed CFOs and M&A analysts.
Latest · ai for fractional cfos
How fractional CFOs use AI across clients: what to hand to the model, what to keep under your signature, and how to stop rebuilding the setup each time.
· 15 min read
Read article →month end close multiple clients
A month-end close playbook for fractional CFOs with several clients: staggered calendar, acceptance checks, logged adjustments, and where AI fits.
· 12 min read
github for finance
How to set up GitHub for a finance team: two repos, what goes where, the review loop, the paid-plan detail most guides skip, and the Excel file git cannot read.
· 12 min read
github for fractional cfo
How a fractional CFO sets up GitHub across clients: one private method repo, one repo per client owned by the client, review when alone, and a clean exit.
· 8 min read
financial projections pre-revenue startup
Benchmarks say what share of revenue to spend on marketing. At zero revenue that gives nothing. How to build defensible assumptions for a pre-revenue model.
· 9 min read
SaaS financial model benchmarks
Five ratios to compute from your own SaaS model, the benchmark ranges to hold them against, and the four mistakes that make the comparison meaningless.
· 9 min read
questions to ask AI finance software vendor
Every finance tool now has AI in it. Ten questions that separate the ones you can defend in front of an auditor, and what a good answer sounds like.
· 11 min read
take over a client's financial model
A new client hands you a budget you did not build and the board meets next week. Five steps: map it, find the hardcodes, tie it to actuals, decide what to keep.
· 11 min read
fractional cfo financial model template
Four clients, four copies of the same 13-week cash template, each fixed differently. What to standardise, what to keep per client, and when copying is fine.
· 11 min read
fractional cfo tech stack
A fractional CFO tech stack built by layer: ledger, bank, close, model, board pack, AI and MCP. What you carry between clients, and what stays with each client.
· 10 min read
quickbooks ai inventory forecasting
QuickBooks knows what you sold, not what you could have sold. Which exports to give Claude, what they hide, and the reorder math that turns them into cash.
· 10 min read
analyze quickbooks data with ai
QuickBooks holds the history. Getting real analysis out of it with Claude takes the right exports, a fixed account mapping, and a home for the answer.
· 6 min read
budget 2027 planning
The 2027 budget locks in multi-year commitments that used to be variable costs. Five practices that matter, and the one thing none of them work without.
· 6 min read
semantic layer finance
Finance AI has converged on the semantic layer: metric definitions, lineage, permissions. It answers what a number means, not what it will become.
· 7 min read
build vs buy AI finance tool
Claude Code can build the finance tool you were about to buy. The honest version of when DIY wins, and the three questions that actually decide it.
· 12 min read
AI hardcoding financial model
Hardcoded values are the most common way an AI-built model fails, and the hardest to see. Seven checks that catch them, and why prompting harder does not work.
· 11 min read
e-invoicing transaction data
France's e-invoicing mandate is live. It standardises the invoice, not your access to it, and that decides whether you can forecast from primary data.
· 11 min read
AI financial model generator
Four kinds of AI financial model generator, what the 2026 benchmarks say they get wrong, and the three questions that tell you if the output is usable.
· 9 min read
AI financial model verification
Close to 13 hours a week go into validating AI outputs, and 71% of finance leaders would reject a 99% accurate tool that cannot explain itself.
· 11 min read
how to model inventory in a financial model
Percent of COGS, days, unit build, ageing from flows. The four methods agree in year 1, land 865k apart by year 5, and the P&L never shows it.
· 13 min read
persistent memory financial model
An AI agent forgets your model between sessions. Six things have to persist for the next session to start where the last one stopped, plus how to test each.
· 9 min read
client contract prohibits AI
Client contracts increasingly ban AI on confidential financials. What those clauses forbid, what providers do with your data, and four workflows that comply.
· 13 min read
finance engineer job description
We read every finance engineer posting we could verify. They ask one person to own version control, an API surface and audit trails for a financial model.
· 12 min read
finance.md standard
Code has CLAUDE.md. Design has tokens. Finance still runs on institutional memory. FINANCE.md is one versioned file telling any agent how to read your numbers.
· 8 min read
open finance software
Planning software never had a free tier or an open format. Developer tools had both for years. Here's why AI is forcing finance to converge.
· 10 min read
how to use ai with datev
DATEV holds your books but hands you a posting batch, not a model. Here's how to get real analysis out of it with Claude, and why you need no connector.
· 9 min read
how to use ai with quickbooks
Plenty of AI runs on QuickBooks, and almost all of it automates bookkeeping. Here's how to use Claude for the job none of it does: a financial forecast.
· 8 min read
how to use ai with xero
Xero gives you clean data and hundreds of apps, and still leaves you rebuilding your forecast in a spreadsheet. Here's how to use Claude on your numbers.
· 7 min read
where to start with AI in finance
A practical map of where AI pays off across the finance function, where it stays supervised, and the one starting point that compounds every month.
· 9 min read
how to use ai with pennylane
Hand your Pennylane ledger to Claude and get real financial analysis. Here's the workflow that works, where it breaks, and how to make it last next month.
· 6 min read
how to use ai with qonto
Hand your Qonto transactions to Claude and get real analysis. Here's the workflow that works, where it breaks, and how to make the output survive next month.
· 6 min read
how to use ai with stripe
Hand your Stripe data to Claude and get real revenue analysis. Here's the workflow that works, where it breaks, and how to make the output last.
· 6 min read
trust AI-generated financial model
63 of the world's leading financial modellers were asked if they'd trust an AI model without review. Zero said yes. What that means for how you build.
· 8 min read
AI monthly financial close
A practical, stage-by-stage guide to using AI in the monthly financial close: where it saves time, where it creates risk, and where a human has to sign off.
· 9 min read
Claude for financial modeling
Claude is a superb reasoning engine but a poor calculator. Here's the boundary between what the LLM should do and what a model layer should hold.
· 8 min read
AI token efficiency finance
The biggest AI cost in finance isn't the answer, it's everything the model re-reads first. Eight habits to cut token cost, and the one that beats them all.
· 6 min read
Claude Code finance
Finance teams are using Claude Code to build and edit financial models. What works, where it breaks on raw spreadsheets, and the setup that makes it reliable.
· 8 min read
auditable financial model
An auditable model answers 'where does this number come from?' in seconds. Here's how to build one with AI, with full dependency traceability both ways.
· 6 min read
AI financial model drift
AI does 80% of the modeling work, then drifts on the 20% that matters. Here's why models drift under AI, and how to keep the logic intact through edits.
· 6 min read
save tokens AI financial model
Claude re-reads your whole model on every edit, which is why tokens vanish in ten prompts. Here's how to build financial models with AI without burning budget.
· 5 min read
generate financial model with AI
AI generates a financial model in seconds. Most outputs drift, forget, and break. Here's the difference between generating a model and keeping one.
· 7 min read
will AI replace CFO
Anthropic puts business and finance at 94.3% AI coverage. But the CFO role isn't disappearing, it's splitting into two layers. Here's the framework.
· 8 min read
finance AI agent model layer
Connecting an AI agent to a spreadsheet gives it cells. A model layer gives structure, types, dependencies, and persistence. Here's why the difference matters.
· 8 min read
AI confidential financial data security
Using AI on confidential financial data? Here is what actually happens to your numbers, and why the tool architecture determines your real exposure.
· 6 min read
budget vs actuals financial modeling
Budget vs. actuals shouldn't take two days every month. Here's the structural root cause, and how finance teams eliminate the monthly reporting grind.
· 10 min read
financial model audit trails
A financial model audit trail must show where each number comes from, what changed, who changed it, and why. Here is what passes a PE board review.
· 9 min read
shadow IT AI financial modeling
Shadow IT in finance is everywhere. Here are the 4 variables to map before using AI on client data, and what real AI governance actually looks like.
· 9 min read
understand inherited financial model
Inherited a 200-tab model with a 2-day deadline? This framework helps M&A analysts map structure, flag red flags, and write a defensible review, fast.
· 11 min read
M&A financial model reusability
Every M&A deal rebuilt from scratch costs your PE-backed finance team days. Learn why separating model structure from data is the fix, and how to start.
· 9 min read