FP&A productivity statistics

Where FP&A Time Actually Goes: Productivity Statistics (2026)

Where FP&A Time Actually Goes

Last updated: July 2026

Financial planning runs on human time: gathering data, building the model, cutting new versions, chasing inputs. How much of that time reaches actual analysis, and what stops the rest from getting there, is measured in recurring industry surveys. Below is what the research says, with the primary source for every figure.

For how long the budget itself takes, how fast teams reforecast, and how often the forecast lands, see Financial Forecast Accuracy and Budget Cycle Statistics, which covers those figures with fuller sourcing.

Where FP&A time actually goes

25% of FP&A time is spent on value-added analysis; the other 75% goes to gathering data (42%) and administering processes (33%). From a joint AFP and APQC study of more than 430 FP&A practitioners. It is the original source of the widely repeated "three-quarters of the time is not analysis" figure. (AFP & APQC, "Preparing for the Next Level of Financial Planning and Analysis")

35% of FP&A professionals' time is spent on high-value tasks like generating insights. A more recent read from the FP&A Trends Survey 2024, based on 383 finance practitioners worldwide. The majority of the working day still goes to lower-value data and process work. (FP&A Trends Group, 2024 FP&A Trends Survey)

Why the time goes where it goes

5 versions of the budget, at the median, before it is finalized. From APQC's Open Standards Benchmarking dataset: much of the cycle time comes not from calculation but from waiting on inputs and back-and-forth negotiation across those versions. (APQC, via CFO.com)

61% and 60%: the top barriers FP&A teams cite are the reliability of their data (61%) and its accessibility (60%). From AFP's 2025 FP&A Benchmarking Survey on technology and data (362 practitioners, surveyed autumn 2024). Before a model can be analyzed, the numbers have to be found and trusted, which is where much of the time goes. (Association for Financial Professionals, 2025 FP&A Benchmarking Survey)

Sources

Changelog

  • 2026-07 (revision): Narrowed to time allocation. The budget-cycle, reforecasting-speed, forecast-accuracy and rolling-forecast figures moved to Financial Forecast Accuracy and Budget Cycle Statistics, which sources them more fully (sample sizes, fielding dates, excluded figures). Keeping both pages on the same figures would have put two of our own pages on the same queries. Title and keywords realigned on what this page is now alone in covering. URL unchanged.
  • 2026-07: Initial version. Twelve figures across time allocation, budget cycle length, reforecasting speed, forecast accuracy, and data barriers. A widely repeated "22% forecast to ±5% over three years" figure was excluded (no traceable primary source), and vendor "still using Excel" figures were excluded as out of scope (covered under spreadsheet statistics).

Further reading

Compiled by Layerz.

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