The TACTICAL Room
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AI only told me what I already knew
September 2026 Here is your reminder for the week: I was using AI to confirm what I already knew For a long time I thought I was using AI responsibly. Ask a question, read the answer, check the logic against what I already knew, then decide whether to trust it. Then I noticed the pattern. When the model said margin slipped because of mix, and I already suspected mix, I nodded. When it said a customer's payment timing had shifted because of a discount term I hadn't considered, my skepticism...
AI goes as deep as your question
August 2026 Here is your reminder for the week: A wide question is permission to stay shallow. Usually, when people say "human in the loop," in AI Finance workflows, they mean either approving or checking numbers. The so-called human judgment. AI does the work and you sit there at the exit, checking the numbers, approving the output, making the final cut. Nothing wrong with that. I do that all the time. It's the right way for safety. And that's how we make automation trustworthy. But it puts...
You don't need the prompt. You need the workflow.
July 2026 A reminder from the room: A workflow is only as good as the human who runs it. I've been building AI workflows with a human in the loop for a long time now. It's the part I refuse to skip, and this week gave me a clean example of why. I built a workflow that analyzes a company's cash conversion cycle and hunts down ways to free up cash. And when it finished the analysis, it did what all my workflows do at that point. It stopped. It didn't hand me an answer. It put every strategy it...
The board deck is dying. The judgment behind it isn't.
Hello there, It's Carolina here! One quick thing before this week's edition. On Wednesday I did a live session with Datarails: we took a real industrial company's numbers, connected the receivables, payables, and inventory tables live through FinanceOS, their AI Connector, and built a complete cash conversion cycle analysis with a decision tool at the end. If you didn't catch it live, it's worth catching up on the Datarails FinanceOS Academy 👉 watch it here. The Board Deck Is Dying. The...
The question your P&L can't answer
Hello there, Here's a test. You know last month's revenue to the dollar. Now, without opening a model: how many days does a dollar stay trapped in your business between the moment you pay a supplier and the moment a customer pays you? Most finance teams can't answer that quickly. Not because the data's missing. Because the answer lives in three tables that never sit together: accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory. Each one has an owner, a report, and a review meeting. The number...
You can't create this with a prompt
Hello there, Three days before the masterclass, I want to do something different. Instead of telling you what you’ll learn, let me actually walk you through one real workflow I built. The one most people ask me about after they see it. Last month I built a board presentation. Cover, KPI dashboard, variance commentary, the narrative arc, the asks, the appendix. Clean, on brand, and tight enough that I was happy to put my name on it. Here is the part most people get wrong about how this gets...
I had to break to him: You're not FP&A yet!
Hello there, It's Carolina here! I was talking with a young financial analyst and he told me he was an FP&A analyst. Then I asked him what his role looked like. He said:budgetforecastcompare actualscreate the presentation He's a very bright guy, and I hated to break it to him…He’s not really doing FP&A yet. Why?Because reporting isn’t FP&A.Not by itself. FP&A is about helping the business make better decisions.Spotting trends. Asking questions. Offering insights.Not just pushing PowerPoint...
I finally saw the structure behind AI (and now I can’t unsee it)
Hello there, It's Carolina here! Until this week, AI felt like magic. Cool outputs, sure.But no real structure I could grasp. Then I ran my first test with AI agents. Still not achieving the full potential but it helped me understand a few things. (watch it here) For the first time, I saw what’s under the hood: ➤ Goals ➤ Planning ➤ Tools ➤ Execution loops And suddenly… things clicked. Now I can’t stop thinking about what’s coming next. We throw around words like automation and augmentation a...
They say AI Can Build the Model. But Can You Walk Without It?
Hello there, A few years ago, I broke my foot. It was brutal. Surgery, recovery, ten full months without walking.And for all that time, I relied on crutches. Now, crutches are amazing, for what they are. They help you do what you can’t do right now.But if you stay on them too long? They keep you from getting strong again. You can’t carry things. Can’t move freely.You start avoiding stairs, tight corners, anything that requires balance. Eventually, you forget how to walk. That’s exactly what...
FP&A is a relationship game ...built on numbers
Hello there, It's Carolina here! I’ve been thinking more about the FP&A brain, and how the mix of hard and soft skills shows up in real life. Not in dashboards. Not in decks. In relationships. Because that’s where your FP&A career is built. The truth is, Reader, the relationships you build across the business (sales, ops, product, execs) are what make you effective. They’re how you go from being “the numbers person” to a true partner in decision-making. But here’s the catch: those...
The TACTICAL Room is your go-to place to learn how to apply AI in FP&A . Subscribe to receive firsthand the great resources on financial modeling and beyond