A System Designed to Forget Finance: Why FP&A Ends Up Carrying the Rest in Excel

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/