Financial Planning and Analysis
The financial planning and analysis concentration, or the FP&A concentration for short, is designed to cover the fundamental concepts and techniques of financial reporting, planning, managerial finance, and analysis that are used by accounting and financial professionals to support the successful management of a business.
Financial planning and analysis is the business function that forecasts future financial performance and provides management with analyses and commentaries on actual financial results. The function plays two critical roles: providing operational insight through budgeting and strategic planning and timely reporting and analysis of monthly, quarterly, and annual financial results.
Where the Financial Planning and Analysis Concentration Will Take You
By taking financial planning and analysis courses, you will gain the analytical skills necessary to provide financial support for day-to-day management decisions. You will learn from forward-thinking professors, and access financial planning and analysis tools that give you real-world experience in this subject matter.
Thus, this concentration is particularly relevant if you plan to work within the finance and/or accounting functions of various-sized businesses, conducting analysis for financial management, from startups to large multinationals, or if you plan to work in a career requiring a high degree of analytical and communication skills, such as corporate finance, investment banking, and/or consulting.
It’s also ideal for current or aspiring entrepreneurs. Additionally, your coursework will prepare you for careers in investment banking, commercial banking, corporate finance consulting, strategic planning, and other FP&A-related careers.
What You Will Study in Your Financial Planning & Analysis Courses
You learn the basic frameworks and processes of financial planning and budgeting, including forecasting monthly, quarterly, and annual business results and long-range strategic planning—a fundamental of financial planning. Courses provide you the knowledge of the basic processes and analytical frameworks needed to effectively prepare and communicate to both company management and key external constituents, such as investors and creditors, a financial forecast, an operational and capital budget, and a strategic plan. Additional financial planning courses cover such topics as how to prepare, analyze, and report financial and operational reviews for a business.
By taking courses selected for the financial planning and analysis concentration, you gain accounting and financial knowledge, proficiency in planning and forecasting, and analytical and communications skills critical in providing financial support for daily decision-making and quarterly and annual reporting to key internal and external business stakeholders. Required and elective Courses in this concentration cover key competencies tested on the Certified Management Accountant (CMA®) exam, a certification offered through the Institute of Management Accountants, (IMA), the Association of Accountants and Financial Professionals in Business.
Required Courses
You will take financial planning and cost control and either financial reporting and analysis or intermediate accounting I.
Explore topics such as inventory, deferred taxes, inter-corporate investments, and pensions through the study of accounting principles, transaction analysis, financial statement disclosure, and financial statement analysis. This course is especially designed for finance majors who want to become more proficient in the financial accounting skills necessary to effectively read and interpret financial reports and is recommended for students interested in careers in financial management and Wall Street.
This course is one of the first steps you can take before you take on Wall Street in your professional career. You study the principles of financial management, including accounting principles, transaction analysis, financial statement disclosure, and financial statement analysis as it applies to corporate finance, credit analysis, and investment banking. You leave this course with the skill and confidence to effectively read and interpret financial reports.
Broaden your understanding of financial accounting concepts and understand the judgements involved in accounting. Topics include revenue recognition, earnings management, non-GAAP earnings, accounts receivable, inventory, intangible assets, and property and equipment.
Elective Courses
As part of your coursework in the financial planning and analysis concentration, you will take two electives. Options include:
Successful business decision making requires the systematic analysis of a firm’s internal factors and external market forces. This course uses applied microeconomics to prepare you to perform these quantitative analyses, both internally, looking at cost structure and scale, for example, and externally, to understand consumer preferences and demand, price sensitivity, the nature of competition, and the regulatory environment.
This course covers mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, private equity placements, senior and mezzanine debt issuances, leveraged buyouts, and other common financial transactions. Explore the process of each transaction and place heavy emphasis on the role of the financial analyst in analyzing each situation.
- Accounting Analytics
- Auditing
- Managing Growing Businesses
- Raising Money – VC & Private Equity
- Grow Your Venture
- Corporate Financial Management
- Corporate Financial Strategy
- Scaling Lean Ventures
- Supply Chain Management
- Computer Science for Business Students
Explore more financial planning and analysis courses
You Will Learn From the Best
At Babson, our faculty are experts, innovators, and forward thinkers in their chosen fields. Here are just some professors sharing their expertise and support with our students.
Weerapat (Go) Attachot
Weerapat (Go) Attachot teaches undergraduate-level managerial accounting. His research interests lie primarily in the international financial accounting and reporting arena. Specifically, Attachot is interested in publicly traded foreign (non-U.S.) firms’ characteristics, regulation compliances, regulation choices, incentives/disincentives etc. in the U.S. capital markets.
He is a certified public accountant (CPA), a certified internal auditor (CIA), a certified management accountant (CMA), a certified fraud examiner (CFE), and a chartered global management accountant (CGMA).
Richard Block
Richard Block currently teaches managerial accounting in the undergraduate college. Block is the former CFO to a family-owned, and recently sold, $225-million residential and commercial heating oil and propane provider, and a privately-funded feature film production company, whose film is now streaming on Amazon Prime pay-for-view as well as other similar sites.
Block has also served as the controller/treasurer of Terascala, a venture-funded manufacturer of high-performance parallel file system storage solutions; CFO of Avicon, a venture-funded supply chain and internet consulting firm; a partner at Tatum LLC, a national financial executive services firm providing interim financial management to companies in significant transition; and various senior management positions at Intel Massachusetts and Digital Equipment Corporation. He's a certified public accountant (CPA) and spent six years at Deloitte in both their audit/assurance and consulting departments.
Have Questions?
Faculty Contacts: Richard Block and Weerapat Attachot
Sponsoring Division: Accounting & Law
