---
title: FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis)
description: FP&A runs a company's budgeting, forecasting and management reporting. You will learn driver-based models, variance analysis, KPIs and how to turn finance data into business decisions.
category: finance-economics
subcategory: corporate-finance
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/fp-and-a-financial-planning-analysis
---

# FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis)

FP&A runs a company's budgeting, forecasting and management reporting. You will learn driver-based models, variance analysis, KPIs and how to turn finance data into business decisions.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 1 Papers

## Books

### 1. Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You

**Author:** Randall Bolten

Rules and worked examples for management reporting: laying out P&L and variance reports, formatting tables and charts, choosing what level of detail to show, and presenting financial results so non-finance managers can act on them. It appears on standard FP&A reading lists.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118172574?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** management-reporting, financial-presentation, data-visualization, variance-analysis, fp-and-a

### 2. Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting

**Author:** Steve Morlidge, Steve Player

A book on corporate forecasting practice. It explains why forecasts fail, how to separate forecasts from targets, how to build rolling forecasts, how to measure forecast error and bias, and how to design a forecasting process that supports decisions.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470747056?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** business-forecasting, rolling-forecasts, forecast-accuracy, fp-and-a, performance-management

### 3. Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management

**Author:** Jack Alexander

A full reference for the FP&A function by a former CFO. It covers budgeting and rolling forecasts, driver-based planning, KPI and dashboard design, variance and business analysis, long-term projections, and how FP&A supports capital allocation and value creation.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119491487?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** fp-and-a, budgeting, rolling-forecasts, kpi-dashboards, performance-management, capital-allocation

## Papers

### 1. AFP FP&A Guide to Driver-based Models and Plans

This is the primary-source, non-vendor treatment of driver-based models. The Association for Financial Professionals' guide to driver-based planning (2024). It covers structuring the model, finding and measuring the operational drivers that predict financial results, and rolling the process out. You need a free AFP account to download the PDF.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.financialprofessionals.org/training-resources/resources/guides/fp-a-guides/detail/driver-based-modelling

**Tags:** driver-based-planning, financial-modeling, budgeting, fp-and-a

## Youtubes

### 1. Christian Wattig (FP&A YouTube channel)

**Author:** Christian Wattig

Free walkthroughs of day-to-day FP&A work: building budgets and forecasts, variance analysis, driver-based models, business partnering, and presenting results to executives. Taught by a former P&G, Unilever and Squarespace FP&A leader. This is the free-first practical companion to the Alexander book, from the person who runs Wharton's paid FP&A certificate. It is hands-on 'how to actually do variance analysis and forecasts' content that the books do not give you.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.youtube.com/@christianwattig

**Tags:** fp-and-a, variance-analysis, budgeting, forecasting, business-partnering

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