Finance as a team sport: How to connect finance with every department

With over a decade as top finance leader in tech startups, I’ve partnered with founders and teams across sales, tech, and marketing. Finance must integrate into every business area to drive collective success.

How can you help everyone grasp finance, own it, and ease the overload on in-house teams from constant queries? Here are proven strategies to achieve this.

Understanding What Drives Each Department

Talk to them! This seems basic, but it’s vital. Go beyond current challenges — explore their backgrounds, past processes, budget experience, and unique projects. Tailor your support to their needs and expertise.

No more silos Ditch the ‘back office’ stigma by embedding finance in the business. Include a finance rep in management meetings. In early-stage companies without a full CFO, rotate finance managers or controllers for exposure and perspective.

Understand their needs CEOs need timely data for decisions. Partner to monitor progress and pivot plans. Finance goes beyond budgeting, reporting, and judging—it’s about co-owning tracking and adjustments with the business for smart, collective decisions.

Do the groundwork Early, finance builds a reliable data foundation with smooth flows. As the company scales, BI teams may own data, but finance establishes initial processes and integrity.

A unique perspective Finance accesses the full numerical story: financials, customer insights, marketing metrics, sales data. Consolidate these—manually or via automation—for a holistic business view. Collaborate with department heads: ask what they need, spot revenue leaks or inefficiencies, and keep communication open.

Making Finance Less Scary

Finance 101s Not everyone shares finance’s language. Avoid jargon; simplify terms like accruals and prepayments. Cover your company’s specifics: finance’s thinking, role, accountability, and departmental support.

At LoveCrafts, I likened our first budgeting session to a knitter’s yarn stash—our cash ‘stash’ allocated to projects. This analogy made budgeting relatable and highlighted planning for growth.

Additional training and support New managers face budgets and growth targets abruptly. Offer in-house help plus LinkedIn experts. Secret CFO explains growth-driving finance expertly and engagingly. Zanda offers blogs on finance roles for founders. My Finance for Founders program suits founders and operations managers new to finance.

Making Data and Information Self-Servable

Self-serve tools Reduce queries like bill status, credit card use, or LTM EBITDA with self-service. Spend platforms track budgets and invoices. Virtual cards and expense apps boost transparency. BI dashboards show key metrics.

AI AI advances this: Notion’s upgrade links Slack and Google Drive for queries like product release dates. Soon, accounts platforms will answer bill status directly.

FAQs Use Notion or handbooks for common questions: payroll dates, PAYE issues, subscription cards—cutting repetitive finance asks.

Sharing Budgets

Share budgets company-wide (excluding salaries). Use Google Sheets early, granting access to relevant sections. Scale to FP&A software for self-serve CRM, product, and financial data. Train on tools or metric requests.

Run budget/re-forecast 101 sessions per cycle for management: explain importance, terms, and roles for alignment.

Embed finance in operations: understand needs, demystify via training/tools, break silos, communicate openly. Transform finance into a strategic partner for superior decisions, efficiency, and growth.