The finance prompt library.
A working reference of battle-tested prompts for FP&A, controllers, and CFOs — written for the workflows you actually run, with honest notes on where each prompt breaks. Because AI in finance only works when the data underneath is right.
This week’s three most-read prompts.
Prepare a CFO monthly briefing
Turns the most recent closed month into a board-ready briefing: a short summary, the trends working for and against you, and questions to investigate.
Investigate YTD actuals against budget
Compares year-to-date actuals to budget, ranks the lines that are off plan, and proposes a likely cause for each.
Generate a monthly P&L income statement
Generates a monthly income statement for the fiscal year with Revenue, COGS, Gross Profit, OpEx, and Net Income as rows.
Calculate net burn and runway
Returns net cash burn by month over the last six months and divides current cash by the average to estimate runway.
Model the EBITDA impact of a hiring plan
Quantifies what a specific hiring plan does to EBITDA for the remaining quarters, accounting for loaded cost and start timing.
Prepare a CFO monthly briefing
Turns the most recent closed month into a board-ready briefing: a short summary, the trends working for and against you, and questions to investigate.
Model three financial scenarios
Models three what-if cases off current actuals: revenue growth with flat costs, an expense cut, and the growth needed to break even.
Detect seasonality in revenue and expenses
Compares the same calendar months across multiple years to find the spikes and dips that repeat, and the ones that do not.
Rank top customers by revenue and flag the trend
Ranks the top customers by year-to-date revenue and labels each as growing, stable, or declining against last year.
Generate a monthly P&L income statement
Generates a monthly income statement for the fiscal year with Revenue, COGS, Gross Profit, OpEx, and Net Income as rows.
Summarize the fiscal year in four numbers
Returns total revenue, total expenses, net income, and gross margin for the fiscal year, with a prior-year comparison when the data allows.
Find OpEx drivers and where spend is accelerating
Breaks operating expenses into categories over three months and separates one-time step-ups from spend that is genuinely accelerating.
Investigate YTD actuals against budget
Compares year-to-date actuals to budget, ranks the lines that are off plan, and proposes a likely cause for each.
Summarize a six-month P&L with trend commentary
Lays out a six-month P&L as a table and adds a three-sentence read on what is growing and what is compressing.
Break down monthly expenses by vendor
Takes a month of expense transactions and returns spend ranked by vendor, with each vendor's share of the total.
Compare revenue to the same period last year
Compares the last six months of revenue against the same period a year earlier and reads the trend behind the movement.
Revenue recognition close checklist
Step-by-step ASC 606 close checklist tailored to your contract types, with the supporting evidence required at each step.
Department budget summary email
Draft a personalized monthly budget update for each department head — actual vs. budget, top variances, and what to action.
Quarterly business review prep
Generate the financial section of a QBR deck: bookings, revenue, retention, burn, runway — with commentary tied to last quarter's plan.
Loan covenant compliance check
Compute current ratio, leverage, and DSCR against covenant thresholds; project compliance over the next four quarters.
Build a sensitivity table for EBITDA margin
Run a two-variable sensitivity (price × volume) on EBITDA margin and identify the breakpoints worth flagging to the board.
Prioritize capex requests for next quarter
Score and rank pending capex requests against payback, strategic alignment, and remaining plan envelope.
Draft a monthly flash report
Produce a one-page flash within 48 hours of close: revenue, gross margin, OpEx, EBITDA, cash, headcount — vs. plan and prior period.
Generate AR aging follow-up list
Rank past-due AR by days outstanding and balance, draft tiered collection emails, and flag accounts requiring exec escalation.
Customer cohort retention summary
Summarize NRR and GRR by quarterly cohort and surface the two cohorts driving the largest delta vs. plan.
Bottom-up revenue forecast from pipeline
Build a probability-weighted forecast from CRM pipeline, segmented by ACV band and stage, with a sanity check vs. top-down plan.
Gross margin bridge: prior period → current
Decompose gross margin change into mix, rate, and volume effects with quantified contributions.
Headcount plan vs. actual reconciliation
Reconcile HRIS headcount to budgeted plan by department, flag open reqs aging beyond 60 days, and compute fully-loaded run-rate.
Flux analysis for monthly close
Identify P&L line items with month-over-month changes above a threshold and surface plausible explanations to investigate.
Build an ARR bridge: starting → ending
Reconstruct the ARR walk from new logo, expansion, contraction, and churn — flagging any unreconciled delta.
Turn the close pack into a board narrative
Convert a finalized close package into a 1-page CFO commentary — drivers, anomalies, and forward-looking watchpoints.
Build a 13-week rolling cash forecast
Generate a weekly cash forecast model from AR aging, AP terms, payroll cadence, and known one-time inflows/outflows.
OpEx variance walkthrough by department
Identify the three largest OpEx variances by department, classify each as one-off vs. structural, and propose a phasing adjustment.
Explain revenue variance vs. budget
Decompose monthly revenue actuals against budget into volume, price, mix, and timing drivers — with commentary suitable for a board pack.
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