Toptal is a marketplace for top financial planning and analysis consultants. Top companies and startups hire FP&A freelancers from Toptal for their mission critical projects.
Craig is an operations and financial optimization expert who works with C-level leaders to solve complex analytical and business problems. He specializes in FinOps, loyalty, FP&A, and operations. His past accomplishments include building a world-class FinOps program, developing multiple loyalty programs, and creating the broadband experience of a satellite TV company. Craig loves helping companies make sense of the data in their organizations and bringing an outside perspective to their teams.
James is an executive with financial, strategic, and operational experience in emerging growth and Fortune 500 companies. He has a proven track record of creating value and establishing market-leading positions. With expertise in FP&A, strategy, M&A, and financial reporting, he effectively communicates with investors and boards. His early career in investment banking and investment management enhances his strategic perspective. James holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and is a CFA Charterholder.
Michael is a finance leader with 17 years of experience in operational finance, VC investing, consulting, and entrepreneurship. He set up a shared services FP&A team of 30+ people at GE, managing $200+ million. As a VC fund manager, he assessed 600+ startups and doubled the portfolio value in two years. Michael is passionate about improving a business's performance and has helped 40+ clients with company valuations, M&A transactions, raising capital, and developing strategic growth plans.
Ravi has a 25-year GE executive experience driving financial, operational, and strategic initiatives across industries and geographical sectors, covering FP&A, treasury, risk management, audits, controllership, investor relations, and capital markets. He has global joint venture experience and is astute at managing boards. Ravi has also turned multiple business units around to profitability and cash generation and is skilled at navigating economic cycles: growth, liquidity crises, and COVID-19.
Jared is a CFA, finance leader, and trusted business partner with over a decade of experience. He excels in FP&A, financial modeling for DCF and M&A, valuation, variance analysis, and strategic direction. Jared has worked with companies from startups to Fortune 30 in industries ranging from manufacturing to tech to healthcare. In one project, he created a financial model that improved the forecast accuracy of a $300 million business by 35%. Jared also has an MBA from a top-20 business school.
Aleksandar is a passionate finance, business, and technology professional with 14 years of progressive experience devoted to understanding and improving the correlation between core business, finance, and technology. He has successfully served, advised, and supported top management with the necessary information for decision-making. Aleksandar's areas of expertise include digital transformation, corporate finance, financial and management reporting, FP&A, and cost management.
Orvile is a senior finance executive with experience in leading the financial planning, reporting, and controlling of a global leader in consumer finance technology with $20+ billion in assets, 100,000+ employees, and 130+ million customers. He is a well-rounded and data-savvy professional who enjoys advising multiple startup management teams with his complete suite of finance expertise.
Saadat is a finance executive with 30 years of enterprise leadership experience at Shell, Johnson Controls, and Schlumberger across six countries and three continents. With deep expertise in FP&A, accounting, business planning and management, auditing, and ERM, Saadat has led major initiatives and won the Shell Global CFO Award and JCI's Merit Award. He adds exceptional value to enterprise and team success through collaborative and decisive leadership.
Dhruv has worked on successful finance and consulting projects worth over $1 billion, focusing on tech, energy, and life science companies across the US, Asia, and Africa. He currently serves as a fractional CFO for multiple startups, is a partner at AND Business Consulting, and has more than 15 years of experience in FP&A, fundraising, startup consulting, M&A, and project finance. With an MBA in finance, Dhruv enjoys the exposure and sheer variety of assignments that come with freelancing.
Over the past twenty years, Kenny has been helping companies expand as a CEO, COO, and managing director. He has been instrumental in finding creative solutions to advance company objectives and has singlehandedly secured over $300 million in new business since 2015. Kenny has worked with WGC International, Ninety Plus Coffee, and InBEV Thailand on financial structure and strategy, technical consulting, retail franchising, and distribution. He enjoys freelancing for select companies.
Xiang Jie is a vice president of finance at Carro, Southeast Asia's largest automotive marketplace. He has secured over $500 million in capital, overseeing a tenfold surge in revenue and entry into three new markets across APAC. Currently, he is focusing on various areas of corporate finance, including M&A, FP&A, transformation, and restructuring. Xiang Jie has also spent several years building well-rounded finance skills, including serving as an auditor, consultant, and financial controller.
Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) consultants are skilled in providing all kinds of financial analysis, ranging from simple business budgeting to complex strategic planning, to help business leaders make informed decisions to support their company objectives effectively. This guide to hiring a financial planning and analysis consultant features interview questions and answers, as well as best practices, to help you identify the top candidates for your company.
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Testimonials
Martin so far is a complete Rockstar.
His first bit of work produced a tool for us to model and forecast our financials and is far and away worth every penny we paid and more.
Just thought I’d share that with you.
Pete Pellizzari
CEO
Erik has been an extremely valuable member of our team who has tremendous breath of experience with start ups in our lifecycle phase. What makes his contribution unique and highly effective is not only his excellent financial modeling skills and knowledge, but also the emotional intelligence with which he manages each relationship at Vault, understands our team dynamics, and helps us tackle start up challenges effectively. It is rare to find a part-time consultant who makes you feel like he/she is genuinely invested in the success of your company.
Romy Parzick
COO
Toptal has been an incredible key partner for Sidekick. As an early-stage start-up, we’ve leveraged both design and financial talent. The experience has been incredible, with those professionals bringing creativity, expertise, and advice to ensure Sidekick succeeds. My Toptal financial expert helped steer Sidekick’s business model, which resulted in an initial ROI of 650x! My experience with Toptal has given me great confidence in the future.
Doug MacKay
Founder / CEO
Chris was great to work with and was always available on my schedule. His communication skills and personality were a 10/10. His outputs on the project were top notch and allowed us to develop more efficient forecasting and initiative prioritization frameworks. I would definitely use Chris again.
Chris Pozek
CEO
What really sets Toptal apart is the caliber of finance talent available in their network. I had a very specific and pressing need, and Toptal quickly matched me with the perfect person for the job. The expert produced a thoughtful and robust financial analysis that has ultimately allowed us to forecast and prioritize initiatives much more efficiently.
Chris Pozek
CEO
How to Hire FP&A Consultants Through Toptal
1
Talk to One of Our Client Advisors
A Toptal client advisor will work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics.
2
Work With Hand-selected Talent
Within days, we'll introduce you to the right FP&A professional for your project. Average time to match is under 24 hours.
3
The Right Fit, Guaranteed
Work with your new FP&A analyst for a trial period (pay only if satisfied), ensuring they're the right fit before starting the engagement.
Find Experts With Related Skills
Access a vast pool of skilled management consultants in our talent network and hire the top 3% within just 48 hours.
What is the value of investing in a dedicated FP&A team?
Dedicated FP&A teams are commonly used in large organizations—and for good reason. FP&A is central to strategic decision-making and optimal resource allocation. Dedicated FP&A teams and professionals can enhance financial management and budgeting, improve outcomes, identify growth opportunities,and offer valuable insights into business performance and trends.
What are the pros and cons of outsourcing FP&A services?
The single biggest pro of outsourcing FP&A services is the cost savings compared to maintaining a full-time employee or team. Additionally, by outsourcing FP&A, you can access specialized expertise and rapidly scale up resources as needed. Drawbacks include the loss of in-house knowledge and a degree of control, as well as the potential challenges that come with communicating with an external resource.
What is the no-risk trial period for Toptal FP&A analysts?
We make sure that each engagement between you and your FP&A analyst begins with a trial period of up to two weeks. This means that you have time to confirm the engagement will be successful. If you’re completely satisfied with the results, we’ll bill you for the time and continue the engagement for as long as you’d like. If you’re not completely satisfied, you won’t be billed. From there, we can either part ways, or we can provide you with another expert who may be a better fit and with whom we will begin a second, no-risk trial.
How in demand are FP&A professionals?
Demand for FP&A experts increased between 2012 and 2022, according to a 2022 McKinsey article, and this trend is expected to continue. That’s because, in an increasingly volatile and data-driven economic landscape, FP&A is critical to business success.
Can you hire FP&A professionals on an hourly basis or for project-based tasks?
You can hire FP&A analysts on an hourly, part-time, or full-time basis. Toptal can also manage the entire project from end-to-end with our Managed Delivery offering. Whether you hire an expert for a full- or part-time position, you’ll have the control and flexibility to scale your team up or down as your needs evolve. Our FP&A analysts can fully integrate into your existing team for a seamless working experience.
How do I hire FP&A analysts?
To hire the right FP&A consultant, it’s important to evaluate a candidate’s experience, technical skills, and communication skills. You’ll also want to consider the fit with your particular industry, company, and project. Toptal’s rigorous screening process ensures that every member of our network has excellent experience and skills, and our team will match you with the perfect FP&A analysts for your project.
How are Toptal FP&A consultants different?
At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our FP&A professionals to ensure we only match you with the highest caliber of talent. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, fewer than 3% make the cut.
In addition to screening for industry-leading expertise, we also assess candidates’ language and interpersonal skills to ensure that you have a smooth working relationship.
When you hire FP&A professionals with Toptal, you’ll always work with world-class, custom-matched FP&A analysts ready to help you achieve your goals.
How quickly can you hire with Toptal?
Typically, you can hire FP&A analysts with Toptal in about 48 hours. For larger teams of talent or Managed Delivery, timelines may vary. Our talent matchers are highly skilled in the same fields they’re matching in—they’re not recruiters or HR reps. They’ll work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics, and match you with ideal candidates from our vetted global talent network.
Once you select your FP&A analyst, you’ll have a no-risk trial period to ensure they’re the perfect fit. Our matching process has a 98% trial-to-hire rate, so you can rest assured that you’re getting the best fit every time.
Eric is a financial services professional with 14-plus years of experience as a sell-side, buy-side, and startup professional, advising on debt and equity deals from $10 million to more than $1 billion. While at Apollo Global Management, he deployed more than $2 billion into funds across various structures and sectors.
How to Hire Financial Planning and Analysis Consultants
Business Leaders Seek the Help of FP&A Consultants Amid Economic Volatility
The primary mandate for financial planning and analysis is to link corporate strategy to execution and financial results, thereby improving management’s ability to influence performance positively. Business owners need FP&A experts to analyze financial data and performance, develop and track key performance indicators (KPIs), and provide insights and support for business decisions.
In fact, according to a 2022 McKinsey & Company article citing proprietary data, companies are spending 10% more on FP&A activities now than they did 10 years ago. The article suggests that increasing economic volatility, which necessitates FP&A reports in real time, rather than just annually or quarterly, and the proliferation of data that can play into analyses may be reasons why the demand for FP&A expertise is growing.
Although there can be multiple definitions for many finance and accounting roles, the common scope of an FP&A function or job is to assess and help ensure the general financial health of a company through four focus areas:
Planning and budgeting – This involves creating a framework to help a company reach its financial goals in the long term and on a monthly basis.
Integrated financial planning – This involves developing a comprehensive plan that includes all aspects of your business’s finances across all divisions.
Management and performance reporting – This involves evaluating and effectively communicating to stakeholders how well your business is doing, including tracking KPIs.
Modeling and forecasting – This involves generating a comprehensive view: Financial modeling helps you see your company’s performance in the past and present; forecasting looks at the expectation of future performance.
Financial planning and analysis is not a job for inexperienced accountants or even seasoned accountants who only have a background in general management. FP&A can be extremely complex, requiring the consultant to obtain information and cooperation from many business units, get buy-in from multiple stakeholders with various objectives, and navigate the nuances of different organizations. Small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have in-house FP&A expertise will often hire an external FP&A consultant through a specialized financial service provider or as an independent contractor.
This hiring guide offers insights into how to hire the best FP&A consultant for your particular needs.
What attributes distinguish quality FP&A Consultants from others?
The person you hire must be someone you can trust to provide accurate financial analyses, effective reports, and advice that adds value to your business. Prioritize experience. A high-quality candidate will have at least five years of general FP&A experience. Typically, top FP&A consultants have worked in all four FP&A focus areas and are able to determine the methods and data sources to deliver accurate, insightful, and actionable analyses.
In addition, the best-qualified FP&A experts have worked directly with executive management teams, delivered board reports, and driven business decisions and results through their analyses.
And finally, top FP&A consultants are not only skilled and knowledgeable from a technical financial perspective, but also creative, adaptable, and adept at working with diverse stakeholders, processes, and financial systems.
How can you identify the ideal FP&A Consultant for you?
Accurate and actionable FP&A is a crucial driver of business performance and success, so your ideal consultant has to be able to help you make some of your most important business decisions.
Common tasks for which a company decides to hire an FP&A consultant include:
Assisting with capital budgeting.
Performing variance analysis (budgets and forecasts versus actuals).
Developing compensation plans.
Working with turnaround situations.
Assessing the financial impact of strategic business initiatives.
Evaluating the viability of new products and markets.
Given the strategic importance of these tasks, it’s wise to opt for a senior-level expert with experience that’s relevant to your situation. In addition, to find the right FP&A consultant for your needs, look for these important skills:
Financial analysis – Performing in-depth financial planning and analysis demands strong skills in selecting, analyzing, and working with financial data.
Financial reporting – FP&A requires the ability to use various input and output accounting software and data sources to create well-organized and intuitive reports, analyze the data, and present the findings. Most FP&A professionals are expert Microsoft Excel users.
Financial modeling and financial forecasting – All qualified FP&A professionals should be experts at financial modeling and forecasting. Typically, this will also incorporate robust budgeting skills and experience.
Financial management – Higher-level financial managers can provide an extra level of sophistication to FP&A activities by digging deeper into key metrics and company performance.
Depending on your business’s use case, you may also want to look for these complementary skills:
Management consulting – Since FP&A involves helping organizations reach their goals, management consulting experience can enable an FP&A expert to add extra business value from a broader perspective. For instance, such experience would be of interest to a client who wants a more sophisticated financial analysis of the health of their business.
Business plan consulting – Some consultants specialize in business plan consulting, which may include assisting with market and product research and pricing. This background can be especially useful for FP&A feasibility and viability reports.
Industry analysis – Industry analysts create and analyze reports covering updates and performance of specific industries, sectors, and companies. This expertise can add value to your FP&A project, including the identification of key metrics.
FP&A management – Many larger organizations have dedicated FP&A teams and business unit leaders. Having this kind of background can elevate the consultant’s ability to add value.
In addition to these technical skills, strong communication, presentation, and problem-solving skills enable FP&A consultants to present findings and recommendations to clients and help them navigate complex business situations.
How to Write an FP&A Consultant Job Description for Your Project
Start by clearly describing your business sector and project, including any relevant strategic initiatives or other reasons why you’re hiring an FP&A consultant at this time. Clearly articulating your needs improves chances that suitable candidates will apply for the opportunity. Be as specific as you can about what you want to accomplish, and clearly state your expectations in terms of the qualifications and experience you’re looking for.
Also, it’s never too soon to engage stakeholders and compile the information and sources relevant to the engagement. Even if you aren’t sure about the full scope yet, getting a head start will help the analysis move forward more quickly. If you can begin these preparatory steps before you need to write the job description, it may be helpful to include information about what you have done already and/or plan to do before the consultant starts.
What are the most important FP&A Consultant interview questions?
In addition to possessing experience and rigorous analytical skills, a qualified FP&A consultant must also communicate, collaborate, and build trust with you and others. During the interview, you’ll want to see the candidate demonstrate these soft skills as they answer the following questions:
How would you approach this particular budgeting and planning exercise based on what you know so far?
Budgeting and planning is one of the most important ways for companies to analyze and manage current and future financial performance. Ask what approach the candidate would use to meet your specific business needs in this area. Do their answers make sense to you based on your experience of the company? If not, ask the candidate to explain their reasoning.
Describe your experience working on financial forecasts.
A good candidate should be able to describe a recent financial forecast they developed. Ask how they approached the situation, arrived at their assumptions, and handled nuances and complications. Ideally, their example will be recent and relevant.
Describe your approach to integrated financial planning.
Expect a good candidate to talk about how they would leverage your financial data and provide additional analytical value by integrating other components, such as dequity, free cash flow, and payment terms.
Walk me through an example of management and performance reporting you’ve done.
The candidate should provide you with a detailed explanation of how their FP&A outputs have been used for management and performance reporting. This can be especially useful for executive incentive compensation and capital budgeting exercises.
What steps do you follow in your workflow?
No two financial FP&A projects are exactly the same, and consultants’ practices may vary somewhat; nevertheless, a typical workflow includes the following steps:
Step 1: Define objectives and stakeholders.
Discuss the specific reason an FP&A consultant is needed; for instance, to raise capital or forecast business economics and KPIs.
Determine what methods and data sources will meet the FP&A and stakeholder objectives.
Step 2: Gather data.
Compile information about the business, including relevant business operations overviews and other business-specific particulars that are relevant to the use case.
Aggregate existing business financials and develop a preliminary financial forecast and/or financial model.
Sensitize and make adjustments to the financial data, as necessary, collaborating with business partners to stay on track.
Identify and calibrate forecast or analytical drivers, assumptions, and sensitivities, as relevant, to make the forecast more robust and insightful for specific use cases.
Ensure that the design, inputs, outputs, and summaries are easy to use and presentable for all stakeholders.
Step 3: Conduct additional research and analysis, as needed.
Perform in-depth analysis of relevant company data, industry-specific best practices, or standard performance metrics to enhance the FP&A outputs, as relevant.
Step 4: Present findings and iterate/collaborate with management, as needed.
Prepare and deliver a comprehensive presentation of the FP&A outputs and run additional modules, as relevant.
Step 5: Finalize the FP&A deliverables and decide on next steps.
Ensure that the deliverables have satisfactorily met all the needs of management and decide whether the analysis needs to be maintained and periodically updated.
Make a plan for any future work.
Why do companies hire FP&A Consultants?
An FP&A consultant is a financial professional who has experience designing and building robust, strategic financial analyses to achieve or support specific business initiatives and outcomes. FP&A experts perform scenario modeling, assess potential outcomes and risks associated with different options, identify KPIs and financial metrics to measure progress and performance of strategic decisions, and collaborate with other departments to align business goals with overall financial objectives.
There are many reasons your company might need a thorough, accurate, and actionable financial analysis and/or plan, including when you’re planning capital budgeting projects and profitability, analyzing KPIs, or improving understanding of business units and sensitivities. For any of these use cases, hiring a qualified FP&A consultant will help you gain a deeper understanding of your company’s financial performance and provide important information for management’s business decisions. Hiring the right FP&A consultant will ensure that you’ll derive meaningful value for your business from the engagement.
