Episode 220

Big-company FP&A has valuable lessons - but its processes are often responses to problems your business may not have.

What should an FP&A team borrow from Google, Netflix, and Roku, and what should it leave behind? In this episode of FP&A Today, Sarah Schlott speaks with Eric Lin, former Head of FP&A for Roku TV, about the difference between copying big-tech finance processes and building the decision-making foundations your business actually needs.

Eric describes his career shift from analysis to influence to decision architecture: shared metrics, explicit assumptions, clear ownership, driver-based forecasts, and an operating cadence that helps leaders respond when circumstances change. He explains why finance professionals need to understand their business deeply, prioritize the questions that affect decisions, and make recurring reporting efficient enough to leave time for forward-looking analysis.

The conversation also explores three layers of AI use in FP&A, the risks of automating weak data and inconsistent metrics, and what Eric would rebuild first if every finance report disappeared. His warning to smaller teams is simple: enterprise processes are often scar tissue from past failures. Copy the foundations that matter, not the bureaucracy built around someone else's problems.

Key Moments

• FP&A should improve decisions, not only produce analysis. Eric traces the evolution from analytical rigor to influence and ultimately decision architecture.

• Give every important decision a foundation. Shared metric definitions, explicit assumptions, data ownership, decision rights, and operating cadence matter more than a sophisticated planning platform.

• Understand the business before diving into the model. Go deepest on the assumptions and analyses that could change a meaningful decision; delegate routine work to a capable team.

• Make recurring reporting efficient. Close, board preparation, and earnings reporting are necessary, but they should not consume the time needed to understand the next quarter.

• Use AI to support better judgment. Production and diagnostic work can become faster, but AI-driven decision support requires trusted data, governance, and human ownership of trade-offs.

• Do not inherit big-company bureaucracy by default. Ask what failure a control or process was designed to prevent and whether that risk is material to your business.

• Start with cash and the drivers behind results. If the reports disappeared, Eric would restore cash-flow visibility first; he also values business KPIs that explain the P&L.

• Build FP&A around the decisions that matter. Start with a decision inventory, reliable actuals, business drivers, and a driver-based forecast before layering on specialization and technology.
  
  

Timestamps

02:08 - Why FP&A needs to evolve from analysis to decision architecture

05:40 - How junior analysts become more valuable business partners

08:10 - Knowing when to dive deep into the numbers

12:19 - Making reporting efficient to protect forward-looking work

16:54 - The three layers of AI in FP&A and why governance matters

23:39 - What to copy from big tech - and what bureaucracy to avoid

29:30 - If every report disappeared, start with cash flow

31:37 - KPIs versus the P&L: understanding what drives performance

35:07 - How Eric would build an FP&A team from scratch

42:31 - The Monday test: does your finance work drive impact?

Earn CPE Credit

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Further Reading / Listening

About Eric Lin

Eric Lin, former Head of FP&A for Roku TV, led the financial strategy and cross-functional business case for the Board-approved launch of Roku-branded TVs and helped scale the new business from $0 to $200 million in first-year revenue.

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericlin/

A forecast can be useful for running a business and still lack the evidence needed to defend it.

What happens when accounting and FP&A report different revenue numbers for the same month, and the disagreement comes down to how a contract is interpreted? In this episode of FP&A Today, Sarah Schlott welcomes Norm Osumi to explore the judgment calls that sit between financial reporting, business performance and forward-looking forecasts.

Through a SaaS revenue-recognition example, Norm examines why bookings, billings and recognized revenue are not interchangeable, and how implementation fees and sales commissions complicate the picture. The conversation then turns to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, where excluding recurring expenses or making aggressive add-backs can change the story a business tells about its performance.

The central question is what happens when an FP&A forecast becomes evidence for an auditor, lender or investor. Norm discusses an auditor requesting five years of purchase orders to substantiate future revenue and explains why assumptions around growth, customer activity and the sales pipeline need to be reasonable and documented. For smaller finance teams, the lesson is not to build more elaborate models. It is to understand which numbers matter, what supports them and when to bring accounting into the conversation.

Key Moments

• Recognized revenue, bookings and billings serve different purposes. A sound FP&A forecast needs to account for the underlying revenue-recognition rules.

• SaaS implementation fees and subscriptions can produce different monthly revenue outcomes depending on the contract and performance obligations.

• Sales commissions raise both operational and accounting questions, especially when bookings, revenue and related costs fall into different periods.

• Adjusted EBITDA requires judgment. Recurring expenses cannot simply become one-time adjustments because excluding them creates a more attractive result.

• Forecasts can become part of an audit, valuation or financing process. Assumptions may need to be supported by customer activity, purchase orders and a credible growth pipeline.

• Smaller finance teams still benefit from documenting the handful of assumptions that materially drive their forecasts.

• Repeated misses against publicly communicated financial projections can damage management's credibility.

• FP&A and accounting need shared definitions, clear communication and a process for challenging assumptions before numbers reach external stakeholders.

Timestamps

05:42 - Why FP&A and accounting can recognize different revenue amounts

09:04 - Bookings versus billings versus recognized revenue

12:21 - How smaller companies should approach accounting for sales commissions

16:46 - EBITDA and the judgment behind adjustments

21:14 - GAAP, non-GAAP and adjusted EBITDA reporting

28:08 - When an FP&A forecast becomes audit evidence

33:33 - What auditors look for in forecast assumptions

36:45 - Documenting assumptions that support revenue projections

42:15 - Does forecast accuracy actually matter?

45:13 - Rapid fire with Norm Osumi

Earn CPE Credit

If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit:

https://earmarkcpe.com/fpa

Download the app, take a short quiz, and get your CPE certificate.

Further Reading/Listening

Related FP&A Today episode:

The $100M Revenue Mistake Everyone Missed, with Devon Coombs

https://www.devoncoombs.com/

The books were closed. The audits were supported. Then the CEO asked two simple questions: which products make the most money, and which ones don’t? Nobody could answer.

Purity Kibaki was the consultant hired to implement the system that was supposed to answer them.

Purity, CPA(K), leads group reporting, consolidation and finance systems at Hatch Africa. She previously founded Zirconn Black Group. She has been the accountant closing the books, the FP&A analyst who inherited them, and the consultant building the system underneath. She and Sarah explore what happens when finance systems are built around transactions and order-to-cash, but not around the questions FP&A eventually has to answer.

The result is familiar to many FP&A teams. Accounting closes successfully, but finance still can’t answer basic questions about product profitability, regional performance, campaigns, utilization or operational drivers without pulling data together by hand. Purity and Sarah discuss why “heroic Excel workarounds” can hide weaknesses in the underlying process. They also cover why FP&A data rarely gets the same scrutiny as accounting data, and why buying another planning tool doesn’t fix a broken source.

The conversation also gets practical. Purity explains which dimensions and tags need to be captured at the point of entry. She argues that system requirements should come from the people doing the work, not only senior leaders, and that finance professionals are better placed to become systems-aware than technologists are to become finance-aware. Her core message is simple: fix the source, and let everything downstream flow from it.

Key Moments:

A system can close the books correctly and still fail FP&A if it was never designed around forward-looking business questions.

"Heroic Excel workarounds" may keep reporting moving while hiding weak controls, manual dependencies and missing source data.

FP&A quantity and operational data often does not receive the same audit discipline as revenue, inventory or the general ledger.

Finance and accounting should help define system requirements before a business selects or configures its ERP or planning tools.

Product, region, segment, campaign and cost-driver tags need to be captured at entry if FP&A wants to analyze them later.

The best requirements often come from the person actually doing the work, because that is where undocumented process knowledge and reporting gaps live.

Finance professionals already understand the end result they need, making it easier for them to become systems-aware and use tools such as Power BI, automation and AI effectively.

Buying another tool is not the solution if the source data is still incomplete, manual or inconsistent.

Try This Monday: Trace One Unanswered Question

Pick one question your leadership asked last month that took too long to answer.

What data point would have answered it?

Where does that data get entered, and who owns that step?

Ask that person for what you need, and tell them why.

Timestamps:

(08:16) - How systems become "designed to forget finance" and push FP&A into Excel

(11:43) - Why heroic Excel workarounds can hide the real problem

(19:12) - Why FP&A and accounting need a seat at system selection

(24:20) - The missing data points that cripple FP&A analysis

(33:21) - Why requirements should come from the person doing the work

(39:45) - Why it is easier for finance to become systems-aware than developers to become finance-aware

(43:52) - "Buying a tool is not the solution" - fix the source first

(53:59) - Rapid fire: keep the annual budget only if you actually use it

(57:29) - Purity’s Monday move: pass the knowledge down

Earn CPE Credit:

If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit:

https://earmarkcpe.com/fpa

Download the app, take a short quiz, and get your CPE certificate.

Further Reading/Listening:

Purity Kibaki, CPA(K) - group reporting, consolidation and finance systems at Hatch Africa; founder of Zirconn Black Group (2021-2025).

Purity on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/puritykibaki/