I didn’t know what to expect when I started my job as a financial analyst for a healthcare company. I had recently been a staff accountant but realized I wouldn’t say I liked accounting work. Here is a quick rundown on my life as a financial analyst.
I still had a monthly closing process, although it didn’t start until the accountants had actually closed the books for the month. Once the books were closed my team of financial analysts would start our close process. This entailed creating around 25-30 reports for the executive leadership team. The reports consisted of your typical P&L for each hospital and a variety of other financial and non-financial metrics that were important for the executive team. These reports would be comparing everything from actuals to budget, actuals to prior year, actuals to 3 month average, and actuals to prior month. We’d also be responsible for consolidating reports to show everything at the highest level.
Once we pulled the reports and provided them to the executive team, the remainder of the month would involve doing ad hoc reporting based on trends that were found during close. That was usually when it would be more interesting work because no two months were the same. The usual reporting process was a bit mundane, and honestly, it felt like it could have been automated. The ad hoc reporting is where you started to learn the business and what trends to looks for during close.
If we weren’t doing close or ad hoc reporting, we’d be cleaning up inefficient reports to make sure they ran faster each month. We’d maybe do cross-training if someone was out of office during close. That way we could still get work done regardless of who was there. Additionally, we’d clean up data, ensure we stayed away from manual calculations, and did everything we could to have the data warehouse handle the calculations.
