FP&A Today FP&A vs Accountants in an AI era - with Accountant Emily Feinstone
Mar 12, 2026
Emily Feinstone, an accounting manager who builds automations and is studying data science, discusses the blurring lines between data analysts and accountants. She talks about transforming messy Excel processes into reliable inputs, keeping controls and auditability in automations, practical uses and limits of generative AI, and when to upgrade ERPs versus automate spreadsheets.
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Accounting Is Becoming Data Wrangling
- Emily frames her role as data wrangling: consolidating messy operational system outputs into clean accounting entries.
- She sees the future of accounting as cleaning and structuring operational data before it enters the ledger.
Hidden Hours Behind Overhead Allocations
- Emily describes allocating overhead that required preparing and keying 100-line journal entries, taking ~4.5 hours total for one allocation.
- Finance only sees the allocated result; they rarely see the manual effort behind it.
Run Processes Twice Before Redesigning Them
- Do run inherited processes for two cycles before redesigning them so you understand why they evolved that way.
- Ask 'stupid' questions, learn the people and edge cases, then propose streamlined changes that respect existing needs.