Thanks for being here. If your calendar is wall to wall and your spreadsheet has more tabs than a guitar shop, you’re in the right place. Sheet Happens is a short, useful note from the trenches of FP&A, written by people who build finance software all week and talk to CFOs the rest of the time. Some issues will be punchy lessons. Some will be field notes from customers and founder friends.
Always honest. Sometimes funny. Hopefully useful.
Here’s the realization that kicked this off. A lot of teams overcomplicate FP&A. They picture an army of analysts, a pricey system, and months of rollout. So they wait. Then decisions stack up without a simple way to frame them, which is exactly how risk sneaks in.
The truth is simpler than the powerpoints suggest: FP&A is any way to answer three questions.
What happened?
Why did it happen?
What do you think will happen next?
If you can answer those, even at a basic level, you’re doing FP&A. If you can’t, your business is more exposed than it looks. That’s not a dig, but think of it as a friendly check engine light.
The good news is it’s never too late. Why start now? Because early-stage choices hit harder. Hiring that feels a size too big. Pricing that looks clever until it meets real customers. That shiny partnership that eats focus. Waiting for “when we’re bigger” to start FP&A is like waiting until after the game to look at the scoreboard. The goal isn’t perfect models. The goal is a shared story about reality that helps you act with a little more confidence. And yes, it can be lightweight. A Google Sheet. A Notion page. A weekly 20-minute ritual. Tools matter less than the habit.
Try this tiny habit this week. Pick one meeting where decisions get made. Write the three questions at the top of the agenda. Keep answers to one or two sentences each. No heroics. You’ll be surprised how fast clarity shows up once the questions live in the room. If you want to push it a bit, add one forecast sentence that starts with “If X happens, we’ll do Y.” That single line turns talk into direction.
What does this mean for you if you’re a CFO or leading a team in the startup mess? You already collect the numbers. The missing piece is the story that ties them to choices people can make today. Investors will still ask for the fancy view. Boards will still want the neat chart. But your operators need the three questions answered in plain language so they can move.
What’s coming next here: a teardown of a real forecast that changed a company’s mind, simple patterns for scenario planning that don’t eat your weekend, and reader Q&A. Send your mess. We’ll protect the innocent. We’ll keep it short, practical, and a little human.
Because business is numbers and people and guesswork.
And sometimes, well,
sheet happens.