Everyone. Thank you again for joining, our last cube webinar for the year. We have a super, super special one, all about New Year. New plan and, mapping your twenty twenty four finance strategy. Today is gonna be a panel. I'm sure, on your screen right now, on top of the slides, you'll also see some faces. I'm so, so, so excited to introduce them, before we get started. But, just ahead of that, I'm gonna go ahead and always just cover some housekeeping items for them. There's folks joining us maybe for the first time. So, as always, for any queue webinar, we'd like to have a live q and a at the end of the session. During the actual conversation and panel discussion, you are free to drop, any q and a questions, to be asked, right at the very end. In the q and a section, it should be at the very bottom of your screen right next to the chat. Option. We have, Gina, who is our head of product marketing, who is, going to also be in there answering questions, if there's anything we can answer right away. Or, if not, we'll bring that back up during the live Q and A portion at the end of the webinar. So, again, feel free to use that option. Also, I see folks already messaging in the chat. Please feel free to, during the conversation. If you have comments, you want to kind of chime in there, like, keep the conversation going, in the chat section. And other the other item here is recording and slides will be passed to you after the webinar. There's not really too much information in the slides, but you'll get them. Most of it will be probably in the recording during the discussion that is happening live right now. So without further ado, I wanna introduce you, to the folks you probably see in front of me now. Jim, who is our, head of solutions consulting here at cube. He will be hosting and, moderating the panel discussion today. Super, super excited to announce, Julia Koto. She is a CFO at ChartSpan Medical Technologies, and last but not least, Ryan Fancher, who is the VP of Strategic Finance at Figma. So, without further ado, Jim, I'm gonna go off camera, pass you the mic. I'll let you go over the agenda. And Ryan and Julia, thank you so much for joining us today. Excellent. Yeah. If you wanna pop to that next slide, super excited for the session to hear the insights from Julie and Ryan coming up here. So as noted, our our, you know, title, new year, new plan, but first topic before we actually can get to the new year. We gotta close out the the current one. So we'll talk through some year end, closing insights, then we'll pivot into planning, right, budgeting forecasting for that new year, how do we factor in market trends, and then, you know, keep is bringing us all together today, but, you know, just leveraging technology in, in general to kind of streamline some of these processes that we'll talk about to start. So to get things kicked off, you know, while everybody's getting excited for the holidays coming up, a lot of finance folks are really dreading what comes right after it. Know, tis the season for your end close. So our first topic's gonna cover that year end close process and reporting and, you know, getting some insights from our panelists here and kinda best is they uncovered. So we're gonna start with Ryan. So just really interested to hear your approach to your end closing. If there's specific strategies that you and your team employ to both guarantee accuracy and completeness in that financial reporting And any tools or processes that have been really effective for you and your team in kind of generating this process. Yeah. Sure. So in general, I think from a closed perspective, it's really much of the same. We try to maintain the same processes that we have in place for our month and quarter end closes. It it is obviously a longer process because you are closing out a full year. We, especially, you know, we have a lot of assets and and investments on our balance sheet, so maybe it takes a little bit longer to, reckon do those deletations and and make sure the valuations are correct on those. And then just going through the the overall year and making sure didn't you didn't miss anything there. Obviously, you know, you're having your ERP squared away and then and then cube on top to be able to do the flux analysis makes that extremely helpful. And then, just converting that back into the reporting packages. Right? And so I'll generally while accounting is going through and I'll like, working through the close, I'll generally have myself and the FB and A team also start preliminarily pulling together the reporting packages and the KPIs and start seeing, you know, if those are trending towards where we were expected, even ahead of close, and putting that together. Your ed package is generally a little bit more in-depth than than the monthly, obviously. And then fairly similar to a quarter, but obviously you're looking at the full year how you compare it back to, you know, you might dive into a little bit more of the scenario variances. Right? You've got your your most recent forecast. And then how how did you think you were gonna start for the beginning of the year? Depending on, you know, what the objectives were and how they changed throughout the year that may or may not still be a a pretty valuable, metric to look back on. Perfect. Yeah. Julia, you wanna jump in? Yeah. Sure. So similar to Ryan, year end close is very similar to month end. Maybe a couple of extra days to allow for anything that was missing. We will usually send out towards the end of December and email to all of our employees and budget holders Just a reminder to make sure they submit any reimbursements or any last minute bills that maybe they've, you know, spent or put through, but we haven't seen it yet. I also will spend a little bit more time on the balance sheet reconciliations are team is very small, so we won't might not have as much time to go through all of the balance sheet reconciliation. So this month, we're actually spending more time digging into some of those suspense accounts, cleaning it up, and making sure it's all tied up towards the end of the year. And, as Ryan mentioned, we have preset, reports that I set up through queue So we're able to use that for, actual versus budget review. And then once that's closed, I just refetch and the package is similar. So for us, it's actually the year end package is very similar to the month end. Gotcha. Back in my consulting days, I was definitely a violator of not having my expense receipts and everything booked in in place. So that's fine. Yeah. There's always gonna be a surprise bill in, like, February or March. I'm like, oh, sorry. I forgot it. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, Julia, we'll keep it with you Can you share maybe a specific challenge that you've faced during your end reporting, how you overcame it, and if that experience was maybe a one time thing or if you actually factored in your adjustments into your future and subsequent years, based on that experience. Yeah. For sure. I think, you know, I've been doing this for over ten years now, and I don't think I've had a year where there wasn't some surprise bill that came in February, March. Of, oh, yeah, we spend it, but we forgot to tell you about it, and it didn't go to the right AP department. So what I normally do at end of the year is have a general accrual to sort of a catch all for those things and the balance will be depending on your expenses So then when the auditors are going through the year and audit and looking for unrecorded liabilities, most likely they'll find some bill that you forgot to record or just didn't have on time. And so we'll say, okay, here's this general accrual that covers it, and that makes them comfortable. So that's definitely something that's been recurring. And so if adjusted have this general accrual big enough to cover those things. Perfect. How about you, Ryan, any kind of specific challenge that's come up in in previous cycles that has, you know, changed your process? Yeah. I think, I mean, similar, you know, last minute bill is making sure you haven't accrued it to account for those. I also think year end's a good time to clean up, you know, obviously, you wanna stay on top of it as much as possible, but any reclasses between departments. We also have a a lean team. So depending on the size of your team, you you wanna try to, you know, knock those out during the month ends. But if not, year end might be a good time to to kinda make sure that you're grouping your your cost center's expenses correctly just so it doesn't throw off especially how you're thinking about it going into the next future, as much as possible without having to to go back, too far historically, obviously. Perfect. Nice. Yeah. We wanna get the audience engaged a little bit here. So we're gonna fire up a quick poll question, kind of pivoting into our next topic, which is forecasting. So general, what's the biggest challenge you've encountered recently while creating financial forecasts for the upcoming year? You know, a lot of times we see, you know, problems accurately estimated sales and revenue and especially in unpredictable markets. It just popped up in front of my screen here. There we go. Alligning financial plans with know, your key business objectives kind of juggling those immediate needs and long term plans, planning for economic and industry uncertainties, or, you know, anything else. So, you know, Julia, is there one of these that sticks out to you? Yeah. I think for me, in all the industries that I've been estimating sales and revenue, or especially as you're coming towards the year end, it sometimes that the sales team might be too optimistic about what's happening and what's getting closed. I am more real lips realistic but optimistic, view on on what's happening, but I think adjusting and making sure your plan for next year is truly aligned to, what's getting close at the end of the year and that you don't have any unknown sales that are going live if it's not yet closed. How about you, Ryan? Yeah. I mean, a, the the sales revenue always always probably the the trickiest place there. But I would also say just aligning the the financial plans with the business objectives. Right? Not necessarily that's the most difficult, but I think it's the the place working potentially, you know, be overlooked. So you wanna make sure that once you, especially going into the next year, you know what the business objectives are for the next year, and then where you're investing on those financial plans aligns directly with those. Right? So the business might not might might grow twenty percent next year or might contract twenty percent next year. That doesn't necessarily mean that every single department or every single area of the business is gonna grow or contract that exact same place. You wanna make sure you're making your investments or divesting in the in the places that make the most sense. You know, and and not spending money over over investing is something that doesn't align what the overall, objectives are. Right. Yeah. It sounds like, you know, the group has some of the same thoughts as you, just based on the pull pull results there. So Let's use that to pivot into our next topic. So most teams are in the processes of wrapping up budgets this time of year. Maybe, you know, you January year inflows, whatever it might be. Some of you might be on, you know, version seven dot twenty five dot a b c dot fifty eight, whatever it is right now. I'm sure. But as soon as those budgets are finished, of course, you're gonna be immediately asked for a reforcast, you know, based on what's happened the first couple weeks. So as we're wrapping up those twenty twenty four budgets starting to think about those next forecasts, we're gonna dig into the planning. So Julia will start with you this time. When you're developing a financial forecaster, plan, especially for the upcoming year. Are there certain key factors that you consider and maybe you'll provide an example of a recent factor that's, you know, popped up for you? Yeah. For sure. So I think the and and Ryan touched on it. What are the objectives for the next year? Maybe it's the next two years. Right? Are you looking for the top line growth? Are you looking to get profitable next year? Are you looking to add a new product line? Based on that, your projections will be very different. Right? So are you fully investing into sales team and hiring as many sellers as possible so that you can get the biggest top line, or are you at a comfortable growth rate with your existing sales team? And now you're really watching your spenses in trying to get either to profitability or just to, improve your bottom line. So I think one, understanding that and making sure everybody's aligned. Because if your CRO thinks go go go sell as much as you want and and hire as much as you can, but maybe your operations has no cut all the cost things are not gonna be aligned. Right? So one, have these objectives, but then make sure that your leadership team and the board are all on the same page. And so once that's done, then you're obviously starting with revenue. You get the budget holders to say, what do you need to deliver on this? Put this all together and then look at the whole picture. And then the hard part comes is like, okay. Does this make sense? Where do the cuts have to come through? Where do I make the adjustments? And that's maybe where the version thirty seven. Right? Your your final final final comes through. Perfect. Yeah. Ryan, how about you any key factors that you're considering? Yeah. Pretty similar process, making sure we're we're going back to making sure aligned with the objectives and and what we're actually gonna try to accomplish. And then what I try to do is I try to take that from what we discussed as an executive team and bake that in into initial kind of buckets may probably not, you know, obviously down cost center level, but into the function in the department level where they have an initial guideline guide post of, like, hey, I think in our first cut, this is where we should start. And I'm generally more conservative because once you give somebody money, it's hard for them to kinda grasp if you have to take it away during the any process. So those are usually a little bit smaller than than the incremental budget we may or may not have, for that particular group. That'll give a guideline. I've kind of run into, a situation before where I just asked for, hey, what, like, what do you guys need next year to start? Then come back and then it's I I found that there was a ton more to cut down than if you give kind of that goalpost initially and say, hey, anything that you go after, that's great, but let's, like, prioritize, like, what you absolutely have to do to accomplish mission, and then, in order for anything over that initial go. Goal post, right, what's most important to you. And then, you know, some of the hard work's already done if that goal post has to change or if you're trying to figure out across the company, everybody's priorities and kind of what the outcomes are there and measure that up to the goals. And I think that's worked pretty well. Perfect. Yeah. You both kinda brought it up, which is starting with those objectives. And so, Ryan, we'll keep it with you real quick just in terms of, like, those financial goals perspective of those objectives. And, you know, specifically, how do you handle kind of some of those potential conflicts between maybe those short term financial targets, but aligning those with maybe those sort of longer term strategic objectives and these insights there? Yeah. I mean, that's the that's the balancing act. Right? There's always There's always a a need, for investment across probably every group. Right? Everybody can justify you know, that there'll be an outcome and and just making sure. You know what the end goal is and what options are available to you. Right? You may be more inclined to approve or make, bigger investments, above what you initially set at the beginning of the year. If you think, hey, in six months, you know, we'll have a capital infusion of some kind, whether that's a raise, whether that's an IPO, whether that's you know, just a, you know, growth on the top line. Or you might think that, okay, you know, likelihood of those options are a little bit lower, likelihood of the overall market. Probably not looking too great. We're gonna be a little bit more conservative there. And so really just a a measuring act there, and that's that's through conversations with with executive team and the board and kinda getting everybody's perspective there. And and that's kind of how I dictate how strict or how likely it is that will make a ton of investments on on the short run, but try to keep everybody focused at least, you know, on a twelve month plan. Now, of course, you have to execute and evaluate every quarter. Things change, especially in the startup world. Right? Thing, you know, things that you said a month ago might be obsolete already. You also also have to be nimble. And then, you know, what, know what your decision points are. Right? Like, I try to always think ahead in the next, over the next three months. You know, what are the things that could happen that would change how I view this plan or, like, change what we have to do? And as much as possible, we'll try to scenario plan that. So you at least have it put together. Perfect. Yeah. Julia, anything to add in terms of, you know, keeping those, you're trying to align those short term financial targets with those long term objectives. Yeah. It always has to be a compromise. I think probably if you ask, I don't know, anybody, right, they want the top line growth and as big of a, bottom line as you possibly can. Right? But usually, you can do both at the same time. So where do you focus on? And what I tell my budget holders, we have a budget, but we have to deliver on this. Right? So the sales is not meeting the targets we're not implementing as quickly, then the expenses will adjust. So just because it's in a budget doesn't mean it's approved, then go ahead and spend it. Right? So these are guidelines as Ryan mentioned, but we'll review it. And if there's something new, let's discuss how that, incorporates into what's happening. Perfect. Yeah. And if I if I could just add on there too, I think it's really important too to to be involved and and know exactly, like, why the spend is is there as well and as much as possible. You know, some cases you wanna be a scorekeeper, you know, if you're a private equity environment, know, like, you're very much running by the numbers, but I think if you're in a high growth environment, in the startup space, you know, it's important to kind of be able to coach. And I think that's easier when you know why, like, what the spend drives and and the purpose behind it. You know, I've I've got two hundred k set aside for this huge tech implementation or these consultants. And if you know what they're trying to accomplish, maybe, like, like, makes an easier conversation to say, okay, look, I can't give you two hundred k, but here, you know, here's what we can do just business health or, or drive other conversations. Or be able to build a cross department communication if if there's some trade offs to be had there. Perfect. Our next our next topic's gonna be kind of market trends. You know, it's it's natural to focus most of our time on the internal data sets we have, our systems, right, and obviously those are crucial, but a lot of times when we're executing our functions in FP and finance, that external data and those market trends can be just as important or as influential. So Ryan will will send it to you. You know, what methods do you generally use to kind of stay updated on market trends and you know, how do you factor those in when building out your financial strategies? Yeah. Sure. So, in my mind, this is a really critical piece, especially when you talk about your capability to, a, make sales and b, raise capital if needed. And just understanding the overall direction of your, of your industry and how you can perform there, because that that'll obviously adjust. That can adjust TAM and Sam projections that can adjust, obviously, the sales, pipeline as well. So depending on the stage of the company, there's a lot of different ways do that at public company. When I was at, you know, a big fortune five hundred public company, I would just pick five or six other industry players that were closely aligned with us. I would always read their their fine filings and and especially the business outlooks, and try to stay in touch there. In a startup environment where a lot of your, you know, competitors or peers are are private. You don't have access to that information. I try to follow just broader industry, right? And so in SAS, you know, you can follow a lot of, VCs. And it's as simple as it is or silly as it is, like, Twitter Twitter posts or or their newsletters and kind of they they're always putting out their thoughts on on the economy and pouring that with just reading, you know, with the fed doing and everything like that and how understanding how interest rates kind of dictate the behavior of capital allocators in the space. And then for me, you know, like, we're uniquely we're in the crypto industry. We run crypto software and a lot of our top line is derived from, you know, driving and tokens themselves, which we then have to manage through the treasury to convert to cash and and pay bills. And so how the market shakes up directly affects my top line projections. And, obviously, I don't try to make a price prediction on the asset or else I'd be, you know, doing something a lot different. But, but what I it does do is it weights the probabilities of my scenarios differently, and obviously adjust the base case. And so I'll either be more conservative or aggressive depending on those. But again, it's it's a lot of, just paying attention to the, to the people in the space who, especially when you're a start in the startup world, I think capital allocators put a lot of material out there that you can weave through and just, combine that with with other sources and and make determinations there. Brian, have you found any newsletters specifically that you subscribed to that's been helpful? Yeah. So, I do follow, you know, it it's funny. It's it's, the, Thomas' news pay, newsletter that goes out is really helpful and that's is more SaaS driven, like, a lot of the SaaS metric analysis of stuff is kind of like less, less useful, in the in the crypto space sometimes. But on that newsletter and then just following, you know, market driessen and and all of the, you know, pay sixteen z. David Sachs, you know, they're all in podcast crew. Like, they they do a good job of bringing on different hosts, as well as just following know, you can follow the Feds updates and all of that good stuff on the on the interest, rate from. But yeah, several recommendations out there. If anybody wants them, feel free to reach out to me and I could I could look at the list. Yeah. Gonna say Preston just threw up. Preston to keep software. How can I forget the keep keeps newsletter? The new, you know, finance fix feel free to check that out as well. I think we'll plug it at the end. Julia, throw a slightly different question your way. Can you share an example of way maybe just want an unexpected market change hits that required you to pivot on your current strategy and, you know, how you manage that transition. Yeah. I mean, for us, was there remote last company we were refinancing, and then COVID hit. And then all the term sheets and everything we had in place all of a sudden were completely off the table. Nobody knew what was happening. Everything had to revert back to where we were. And so that obviously impacted our financials and what we were looking to get, from financing. And so readjust our expectations on the cost and the investment, and the sales projection. So that was, I think, probably, almost everybody on this webinar has gone through that, and experienced it. Yeah. One of my customers at the time was a brick manufacturer, which is like the most plain Jane type of company you might think of. Right? But their fiscal year end was end of June. COVID hit March right when they were starting their budget. And thankfully, the technology place and they ran about fifty different versions of their budget because there's so much uncertainty as well, remember during that time. Yeah. And I think that's having multiple scenarios of here's upper limit, and here's your lower limit, and where can you go within that, and having that sort of prepared, is helpful when something unexpected comes through. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. With that, we're gonna jump into another, poll question for the audience. So I've pressed and fired that up, and it's really gonna be, being honest about maybe mistakes you've seen companies make around when planning for the year. So what what's that biggest mistake that maybe you've seen out there Is it setting unrealistic expectations around revenue and growth targets? Is it neglecting to review and learn from past results? Overlooking the need for maybe some contingency planning around your processes, you know, inadequate collaboration with other stakeholders in the business. Or or something else that maybe sticks out to you. So, you know, Julie, I don't know if you have a thought in one of the bigger mistakes you've seen out there. Yeah. I I think that the revenue and the the sales targets have always been the tricky ones. And as the company is growing so quickly, how do you estimated that your historical growth is aligned with your future growth, but you don't really have history to go on. Right? Because you have one seller and now you have eight. You're in a totally different market. So I think that that's definitely been the the tricky one. And so here I just learned to, pare down the, the expect and I always tell them I want optimistic but realistic numbers. Don't give me, you know, in the cloud numbers that Everything has to match up for that to happen. Alright, Ryan. How about you? What sticks out? Yeah. Same. So, you know, setting the non realistic revenue or growth of targets, and I think the best hedge to that is just having an extremely close relationship with the the CRO or the VP of sales. You know, most of my F and A career has been supported go to market organizations, and I think that's just such a critical step and and then you'll quickly realize as well, like, how good or bad are they? I I I I had understanding exactly how realistic some of the bottoms up targets are and then making sure you have, you know, over a size or or your haircutting from from that number appropriately. To to make sure, Hey, what's going into the the financials is is conservative and accurate. They have kind of a stretch goal And then the the board has probably more than, like, most realistic scenario. And then I'd say the other next, you know, probably tied for number one is overlooking the agency planning and unexpected events again, like, going back to what I talked about earlier, just knowing that you have as much as possible pre identified decision points and some idea of what the the remediation action is to that. And sometimes that's easier said than done. But at least knowing, right? You you know, if if we're off by x percent on the top line, for example, then here's here's how we correct course by by the middle of the year. But I think a lot of times that kind of that people will do the scenario planning, but they will they they won't actually think through, like, the action plans to get to that that point as well. Right. Or the action plans you need to take into account after if it does hit one of those. But yeah. But most of the, you know, over half the the group definitely agreed with you. Another big one was kind of the adequate involvement of other stakeholders. The great thing with that one is that is a fixable one. Once you learn that lesson, you know, hopefully, you you can embrace that and, you know, bring bring others into the fold more frequently in the future. So perfect. We got kind of one more core topic to cover, and gonna gonna be streamlining, you know, workflows with technology. So, you know, technology's crucial to the finance function. It's more important than ever. To embrace technology to keep, you know, finance teams fast nimble and impactful. They're being asked to do more than they ever have in the past. So obviously, it keeps what brings us all together here today. So we'd love to hear about your experience with the queue, but if there are other technologies you embrace that help you with your processes, would love to hear about those as well. So We'll start with you, Julia, you know, let's, you know, how do you use cube as part of your unit process or other technology in helping with financial forecasts. Are there specific improvements you've noticed with those technologies, things that you're able to do now that you weren't able to do before, or maybe problems that used to encounter that you don't anymore. So, yeah, cube has been a lifesaver for me. So, I joined charts span in the beginning of the year. There's only three of us. So I I have an AR person and an AP payroll manager. We're on QuickBooks. So my initial reaction was I gotta get off QuickBooks. I gotta get on NetSuite, but NetSuite implementation is also not an easy one. So bringing in queue allowed me to be able to do what I used to do in NetSuite, but much quicker and allow me to make changes as I need to. I'm also starting to train my budget holders to use cube so that instead of me sending them out monthly reports of actual versus budget, or they're not sure what's in some line item, they're able to pull that information in. And what I've done the last couple of months, I've preset reports. So I have my standard reports. I just changed the month on the top and fetch. We also use QBOAD for month end reporting. An actual versus budget. Right? So as I'm reviewing this with my AP person, where I able to drill down live into the detail, see what's causing the variances, see if there's we're missing anything. And then once we close, I just refetch the numbers, and my work package is done. Which before that either I had an FPA analyst doing that, or it would take me a whole day to produce these reports. And now it just takes me an hour or two. So it it's definitely been saving me a lot of time and money. Perfect. Ryan, how about you? How's how's Cuba or any other technologies kinda helped you with your year end process or financial forecasting or budgeting? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely definitely cube for all the reasons Julia listed, but also I think the the key aspect of cube for me, is the simplicity of the UX, you know, having worked on Hyperion and SAP and all these much larger systems that also need a full team to essentially maintain back end of. It's it's extremely quick not only to use it, and teach somebody else how to to kinda be self serving, and we eventually, you know, we got the accounting team to use it for the flux analysis, and then we obviously use it for the forecasting and all of the PBA. But just the simplicity of the of the inputs of the forecast as well and how quick it is to, duplicate or create new scenarios and all of that makes it extremely useful. We also when I started at my my current role two years ago, we were on QuickBooks, went through a migration of NetSuite, and it was a very helpful bridge. You know, we initially connected with Qmed to QuickBooks and then was able to set up a second one while we were migrating to next week. To get that up and running, so it's just been an extremely helpful thing. And then, obviously, I think everybody will probably laugh at this. It's kind of half tongue in cheek, but it's true. Right. Like, we're all very, very, married to Excel. And so I I've always been hesitant of the tools that are complete, like, take you try to to take you completely out of Excel altogether because that's the reality is everybody needs to cut numbers differently. And, like, there's not, you know, and depending on how you're looking at things, I don't know about anybody else, but I always change how I will get these all the time. Like, something will come up with a new question, to have, like, a cut ready word for everything answered. So how well it works natively in Excel two is just extremely helpful, and it it just reduces the you know, the learning curve for anybody else who wanna bring in to to using it, whether it's accounting, whether it's a new hire, whether it's a department leader who wants to be a little bit more self serve. It's it's just been extremely helpful. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We all can't get out of Excel. I was just planning my family's vacation in March in Excel. It's a preferred preferred spot. So, yeah, Ryan, we'll keep it with you just, you know, when planning for the new year. It's kinda crucial to, you know, get the the broader organization on the same page. However, kind of technology technological advancements helped improve collaboration for you and your team. In the finance team, it may be broader to other stakeholders as well. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's it's interesting because because we're, you know, we're a completely remote company, and so everybody is is across, across different time zones. And then, so you think how helpful it is to have, you know, be on, either a a SharePoint or a Share Drive or Google Drive where people can be working in the same files, the same time that has been huge. But I I really think it less so than any technology really helping the collaboration process, it's it's almost just more so face to face time, whether that's the meetings or or trying to set aside the dollars to be able to get those planners in the same in the same room. There there's a lot of, like, video fatigue that happens during planning, especially long working sessions, and You just don't get the same, the same squeeze that you do, get everybody together for two or three days. You'd be surprised what you can get through, get done. And then, you know, productivity tools are out there that are, you know, helpful depending on how well, you know, there there are a lot of, like, very much garbage in garbage out. Right? Like Notion, can be the best thing to ever happen to your your organization, or it can be the absolute worst. And it really dictates on how much people lean into that stuff. So you know, I I think just overall from a planning perspective, the technology that's been helpful is, you know, something like you where you're able to keep track of everything you've talked about. I save all of our different versions and rereference and compare to what's changed since last time and have that version control. And then on the collaboration, I could, you know, I can't stress enough getting people together, for those, at least, at least the kickoff planning sessions where all the, you know, the grinding conversations happen. Perfect. Yeah, Julie. I'd wrap us up. Any final thoughts on collaboration. Yeah. What was really helpful this year for me is I set up the template for our department, but I did it in cube so that it's all ready. I wasn't ready for them to publish it yet because this is the first year that we're really rolling out. Budget process that everybody's in participating, but but I set it up in a way that I can review and quickly hit publish. And so we did that so that it saves so much time, which is copying and pasting or moving things from one sheet to another, and then something doesn't link and with whatever else. Like, I'm sure we all have gone through this. So having, you know, for them to see here's your historicals for this year, by vendor, by month, by department, take a look and if there's anything different for twenty four, update those numbers. And then I ask them to to send it back to me, and then I review and published. And then so within couple of hours, I had that combined model where I think in the past that would take us a week. To go through all the sheets to manually re input it into whatever model we were using. And then now I can tell them, hey, I made these changes. Version three is the latest version. You can pull down v two versus v three and see where I make the changes. So that's been really helpful. We're also a fully remote company. So that that helps significantly. Absolutely. Well, we appreciate the insights. We're gonna, you know, turn it over and kinda do a Q and A session, but thank you both for for all that. That was phenomenal. Preston, I think there's some I saw some questions popping in the chat. Yeah. Absolutely. So, again, thank you. That was such a great discussion. I there's a ton of questions that I wanna get to. Just again, one final kind of shameless plug before we hop directly into the Q and A. These will also be shared with you, post webinar with the recording and slides. We have some resources for you. So, as part of the the post webinar email, we're gonna send over a financial planning calendar template. We also have a guide on aligning the KRs and Financial Planning kind of ties in with what we're doing here. And, my last final shout out, and hopefully, Ryan on it too is, we have the finance fix versus a a newsletter that are our founder and CEO Christina Ross send out, every other week. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and stop, the screen share. I have a couple questions here that I wanna post to you guys. Jim, I'm gonna kinda have you act as part moderator part, maybe you can time in as well. One of the questions we have here, I'm gonna start with the chat, is from, Navine, they wanted to ask in your experiences, which departments are usually good at creating budgets or managing them well, and kind of part two of that question is, for those that don't do a great job. What kind of processes and guardrails do you, create to kind of keep them in check as as they're building those, budgets and and things out? Brian, I'll cut through that at you first and then we can go round table. Yeah. I mean, I I think it it depends probably. I don't there's ever a a very clear cut, you know, this department at every company is always good or bad at it. I think it depends on the leader of that department and and what their background is. I would generally say, you know, the G and A functions tend to be better. Simply be it's a little bit more of a, less variable, you know, approach. Right? Like, you know, it it they're changing less then, for example, the the go to market org or the engineering org, which is very much tied to a specific, right, like, you know, has the product plan changed, or did we run into bumps that result in, need for more engineers, or, you know, did you hit a ton of growth and now you don't have the coverage you need to be able to, to make those sales or on the flip side of that. Right? Are you gonna divest a a product that, you know, is no longer working? Or you're running into slower sales and can wind down. So I think just naturally those two departments generally tend to be the the more difficult ones. I cannot behavior based. I think just nature the beast. Yeah. But before I hop to to part, to Julia, to kinda touch on that, is there anything, like, just as your been working with departments like that that you'd put in place to make it easier for them to just manage their their budget, any guardrails, or or any processes that that you currently, Yeah. And I I mean, I I, especially on the sales side, definitely having a robust sales deployment model and making sure that you're measuring, you know, rep productivity and and lead coverage and and all the ratios of how many, you know, SDRs you have for every rep and things like that and making those are all aligned and as efficient as possible. I think helps keep on track and sales side. And then on the engineering side, I think it's much more just kind of being involved in the product development side and and managing, especially understanding, you know, whether or not you're building out, you know, heads that will impact your gross margin, right, whether they're they're dev ops or not. I have less of a defined process for that as I do go to market. But it's really just in discussion on on those needs there. Yeah. Julia, I'll I'll toss that over to you. I'm not gonna make you, unless you want to call out any of the departments. I'm trying to expand, but, any, thing you're able to build on top of just, in terms of process or or guardrails that you you'll be using. Yeah. No. I definitely found it really depends on on the leader. Right? If they're very detail oriented, they're on top of their stuff, they understand Excel. It's easy to work with. For those departments that are maybe either not gray with numbers or not gray with Excel, I would sit down with them and explain to them the impact of either them not providing the information or providing incorrect information, and what is the downstream impact of that? Right? So if you're not watching your spend or if you're not watching the hiring, what happens to everything else in that budget? Right? So if you're telling me you're bringing in too many sales, and that's not happening, I'm already hiring people to support those sales. And if you're not watching your budget, the rest of the departments are hurting. Right. So sometimes it's not that they're not don't like doing is that they don't fully understand the full picture. And the impact that their department has on the rest of the group? I I love that. I think just just that thought of transparency and communication to drive ownership and just kind of understanding paid the reason is this. I I tend like a couple of the customers I've spoken to before, just, that piece that's kind of piece that may sound easy and small, has it really drove and then back. So that that's definitely hurt a ton on our side as well. I'll hop into the next question, and Jim, this one, you might we might have you pop in on as well. Lindsey wants to ask, just how users are making use of cube for modeling, forecast and clap cash flow projections and how they manage assumptions and how far out their projections go. So, Julia, just, if there's any part of that, you want me to repeat, I know that there's a kind of couple built into that, but just a thoughts on just, how you're using Q for modeling, forecast and cash flow projections and how how you manage those assumptions and how far out, your projections go typically. Yeah. So currently, I have it outed to twenty twenty five. The one thing that's been really helpful is to able to merge actuals into my current scenario and so that I can quickly update my current forecast and see where we are. And then I've built in that the P and L are more the inputs, and then it drives the cash flow from there. And then then I, will publish the cash flow, but the P and Ls are the main inputs, and then the balance sheet and the cash flow coming from that. But it's sort of still living in this model, but a bunch of the sheets are my inputs from others that I'm able to publish into the model and then quickly pull it to see the impact on my balance sheet and cash flow. Awesome. Yeah. Ryan, do you have anything else to add there, just in terms of kind of that that whole process and how far out of your projections go, when it comes to modeling. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very similar, you know, go out to twenty twenty five right now. We'll probably go out to twenty twenty six here in a few months. I try to keep three years at least on the cash flow projection side. And then, you know, that one year forecast is very much bottoms up in very detail. And then, as far as the assumption drivers for the future years, I generally try to have an inputs one sheet that, I can control all those assumption drivers that will then, you know, flow through, to the public sheets, the input sheets, through through cube. And use that. And then, yeah, the the merge scenario has been a lifesaver. So I was using cube pre vet launch, and and since that's launch, it's it's even better. So Yeah. I mean, generally, I mean, we see some customers that go five, ten years out. Most are similar to Ryan and Julia. Like, three years or less, you know, maybe forecasted at the end of the year, rolling twelve forecasted the file line. Right? It really depends. In terms of cash, really depends on type of the type of business and how, like, short term their focus is, you know, you'll see a lot of organizations just do like monthly cash forecast multiple years out. Some are doing, you know, thirteen week cash forecasts and have that laser focus. And really the big considerations are what are those other datasets you need to facilitate that plan? Right? You're gonna be able to bring in your forecasts from your normal financial models, but you're doing that really short term lens, do you need to pull in like AR AP, you know, bank balances, things like that? So those are some of the considerations that come into play. But what's great with cube, we're not forcing you to have to move everything into cube. Right. You can still export those maybe into Excel and combine that with the data that's flowing in from cube. So it's a really flexible hybrid model to give you tons of value, but not necessarily try to force you to integrate with every source system you might need, still gives you that flexibility. So just for this, I I know we're at we're at time, but just for the sake of recording, I'm gonna try to sneak in two final questions. I see there's a bit more in the chat, but we'll make sure to, make note of those, just in case we need to follow-up and kind of share that post, post as well. So, thanks you too for staying over time. Last questions here. I wanna sneak in. First one is up from Mark. This is on communicating strategic objectives. Timing, priority, enter, and intra dependence. How do you guys typically do that? He put up some suggestions on, like, do you use a road map? Do you visually communicate this? I'm kind of on strategic objectives? What have you found? Most helpful when communicating this to the wider org. I'll start with, I'll start with Ryan. I'll pick on you. Alone. Yeah. I think we it's it's kind of a combination. It there is a we do use a a road a road map approach, and and start off with kind of product development launches and what does that look like? What are the sales based objectives off of that? And then the, you know, there'll be another few objectives. Obviously, that that are the result of those those two groups priorities, and then we'll go based off of, you know, expectations. And then that's that's kind of where you start to go down the rabbit hole of Okay. Now now how do you create the the OpEx or CapEx that that's gonna result from that. And then, yeah, we visually communicate them. I mean, we we'll post them initially everywhere for the executive operating team to see and work off of. And it's a very much messy, all of the notes, all of everything's going into that, that one page, and then I'll publish the, the initial cuts and the models and, and everything that drives that. Afterwards, and then we'll post a broader company. And then everybody's, you know, marching off of the same objectives there. Once you've got everything tightened up, and that the financial is probably locking either before that or or shortly after. Cool, Julie. I'll pass the mic over to you on just on kind of how you've been, finding success and what you typically do when communicating strategic objectives. Yeah. I think because it's a remote company, right, so it gets a little trickier. So we'll have like a a quarterly. So for the leadership team, it's on on regular leadership meetings. We'll just use the slides, and present it that way prior to that, obviously, go through the process that Ryan mentioned. Make sure everybody's on board. So it's not the first time you're seeing it. And then for the rest of the org, it could be either like a monthly newsletter that goes out, or if we have like a town hall, we'll discuss that as well. Perfect. But I think also repeating that over and over because just saying it one time doesn't mean that people remember it next month or the next water. And so I think, refreshing people's memory on what the objective is and where we're going is important. Yeah. Sweet. And I'm gonna wrap things up with the last question we have here. I think just uniquely, because we have both of you, joining us from leaner finance teams. The last question here, I wanna just close things out with how have you been able to do more with, smaller teams? So, I I've I've been picking on Ryan a lot. Julie, I'll throw that over to you. To you first of just being able to touch on some things that you've been able to do just to get get more out of the team you have, Patrick. It's where I'm not getting paid by q, but cube is definitely what allowed me to do what I'm doing for the last nine months. Right? I was expecting to hire an FP analyst. I was expecting to go into NetSuite. And with three people, right now, which is not possible. So the fact that I'm able to run reports, do the model, do various, analysis by myself with the help of the budget holders, has helped a lot. So cube has been a lifesaver for me, and and the resources that I have in place right now. Julia. I'll I'll set and I'm kidding. I mean, we're not we're definitely not paying, Julia. But I definitely may clip you for that, a lifesaver piece. I know a lot of folks, internally joining or are loving that. Ryan, I'll I'll we'll kick it off to you to end off the webinar. Just, any final thoughts on how you've been able to do more, just being a a leaner finance team there. Yeah. Sure. You know, very much having very rigid processes, right, and making sure that Everybody is essentially doing the same thing, every month because then you can figure out ways to automate. And that's where cube's been huge. Or, you know, or drive making sure you can write the right formulas to repeat it, but as soon as much as possible automating the stuff. And if you can't automate it, at month end than making sure that you're you you have a process that is so repeated that there's you just get better and better at it every time. I think that's been really key, to helping us. And then, you know, cube because of how simple it is to use and learn, you know, and when somebody new does come in or roll off or there's there's turnover. It it's that quick. And people just like to play with it and figure out, can I automate this or add a new dimension or formula driven dimension there and and to take care of a KPI, right, and had it locked in, in, in all that? So, yeah, pro process implementation is is huge. Awesome. Well, with that, we're we're already a bit over, but, again, thank you, Julia, Ryan, and Jim for just taking the I'm mid December, and all the folks that are joining us live to just, again, participate in our final Q webinar for the year. So, again, look out for the resources, look out for a post webinar, all the recordings and such. And, I hope to see, all of you, more webinars in the coming years. So, thank you so much, and happy holidays. Alright. Thanks, Alcon. Bye. Thank you.
.png)
.png)
.png)
