A System Designed to Forget Finance: Why FP&A Ends Up Carrying the Rest in Excel
Purity Kabaki, a Kenya-based CPA, discusses why FP&A teams spend 60-90% of their time on data collection and manipulation rather than analysis. She argues that the root problem isn't inadequate tools but systems designed without finance requirements in mind, and advocates for fixing data sources at their origin rather than applying downstream solutions.
Summary
The episode explores the disconnect between accounting systems and FP&A capabilities. Kabaki explains that while accounting focuses on closing books and supporting audits (a backward-looking function), FP&A requires forward-looking analysis that demands different data structures and dimensions. She illustrates this with a real example: a CEO asked which products were most profitable, a seemingly simple question that couldn't be answered despite having sales prices and purchase costs in the system.
The fundamental problem, according to Kabaki, is that ERP systems are designed around the order-to-cash cycle and stop at cash conversion, leaving finance teams to manually extract, clean, and restructure data in Excel to answer business questions. This occurs because finance teams are typically brought into system selection and implementation late, after sales and operations requirements have already shaped the system architecture.
Kabaki identifies three common approaches for companies facing this challenge: those implementing new systems (who have the opportunity to design correctly), those with existing systems that need plugins or upgrades, and those living in manual, spreadsheet-heavy environments. She emphasizes that buying additional FP&A tools doesn't solve the problem because the underlying data source remains flawed, forcing teams to upload Excel files into new systems, merely displacing the problem rather than solving it.
The conversation covers critical missing data points that cripple FP&A analysis: uniform data structures across multiple entities, dimension tags at point of entry (product, channel, campaign, initiative, region), operational metrics outside the ERP (utilization, pipeline, headcount), and aligned definitions across departments. Kabaki stresses that these must be captured during initial data entry, not reconstructed later.
She outlines a blueprint for fixing this: gather requirements from the people actually doing the work (not just managers), document decision-maker wish lists, design uniform data structures that answer both operational and strategic questions, involve finance professionals in system building, and establish clear communication between finance and developers using simple, context-specific language. Finally, she advocates for cascading FP&A knowledge to junior accountants to build organizational capability and reduce bottlenecks.
About this episode
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
Key Insights
- ERP systems are designed to optimize order-to-cash cycles but intentionally stop at cash conversion, leaving finance to manually reconstruct data for analysis
- FP&A teams spend 60-90% of their time on data collection and cleaning rather than strategic analysis due to systems that weren't built with finance requirements
- Buying additional FP&A or planning tools doesn't solve the root problem because they still depend on Excel uploads and manual data sources from upstream systems
- Finance teams are consistently under-resourced relative to accounting teams within finance departments, receiving headcount and budget only after accounting's needs are met
- Data dimensions like campaign, product variant, and region must be captured at point of initial entry (sales order) rather than reconstructed downstream in Excel
- Finance professionals can more easily become systems-aware than developers can become finance-aware, due to the contextual complexity and business variability in accounting
- Operational metrics like vehicle utilization can exist within ERP systems if properly configured during implementation, but many companies calculate them manually outside systems
- Key definitions (like utilization percentage) often differ between operations and finance teams, causing misalignment in KPIs despite using the same terminology
- System implementation projects fail to engage working-level operators who understand actual daily processes, instead relying on interviews with senior staff
- The balance sheet receives minimal attention from business leaders who focus exclusively on P&L, creating blind spots for working capital and hidden accounting errors
- Auditors verify revenue and inventory data through documented workflows and supporting evidence, but FP&A data lacks equivalent audit trails and validation mechanisms
- Knowledge transfer from experienced FP&A professionals to junior staff is frequently neglected, perpetuating inefficiencies and preventing organizational capability building
Topics
Transcript
FP&A is not done because accounting is done. You're not going to get your analysis because accounting is done. Buying a tool is not the solution. The solution is fix the source. Fix from the word go, the primary source. And then your secondaries will be fine. So you start from the base. When your master is good, everything else flows. If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit earmarkcpe.com slash FP&A. Download the app, take a short quiz and get your CPE certificate. And if you enjoy listening to FP&A today, please leave a rating and review. And now, on to the show. From Data Reels, this is FP&A Today. The books are…
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