Course overview
Start hereAI for Financial Controllers
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Priya's Thursday, two ways

8 lessons · 24 prompts

A day in the life of a Financial Controller: what changes with these prompts.

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Priya, financial controller at a regional building supplies company.

Priya opens her laptop at 7:40 on Thursday. Month-end close starts tomorrow, and she has a checklist with missing owners for inventory and freight accruals. She asks ChatGPT: "Here is our close checklist for six locations. Draft a two-week plan that flags dependencies, missing owners, and items that need approval before posting. Our inventory entries wait on counts from the Columbus warehouse." She reads the draft, adds two owners, and sends the plan by 8:15.

At lunch, Priya opens Claude with actual versus budget figures for temporary labor, packaging, and outbound freight at three plants. She prompts: "Draft plain commentary for each line above or below plan. List three questions I should ask plant managers before I finalize, using only these figures." The draft points to overtime at one plant and a packaging price change. She emails the questions before the afternoon calls.

For audit prep, Priya uses Gemini: "Draft an auditor request list for revenue, inventory, and payroll samples for our December year-end. Include owner, system, and typical format. We use NetSuite and ADP." She checks the list against last year's notes and assigns owners in the shared tracker.

Before leaving, she asks ChatGPT: "Turn these notes on margin pressure, inventory days, and a new credit facility into six talking points for the audit committee. Keep the tone calm and fact based. Add one likely question and a short answer." She edits the points, saves them for Monday, and leaves at 5:30. The time won back goes to a walk with her dog and dinner with her family.

Before

  • Close weeks blur into late nights.
  • Budget versions live in scattered files.
  • Audit requests arrive with little warning.
  • Board updates get rewritten many times.

After this course

  • Close plan is clear by Monday morning.
  • Variance notes start with a solid draft.
  • Audit requests go out with owners named.
  • Board talking points hold up in review.

What you'll learn

  • Close and statements: Plan the month-end close and draft financial statement explanations from your numbers.
  • Budgets and forecasts: Draft budget instructions, shape assumptions, and build scenario forecasts from actuals.
  • Variance commentary: Turn actual-versus-budget figures into draft commentary, questions, and executive summaries.
  • Cash and capital: Use AR, AP, and forecast data to draft cash flow views, risk lists, and improvement options.
  • Controls and duties: Document controls, map segregation of duties, and test a described process for gaps.
  • Audit preparation: Prepare auditor requests, draft finding responses, and organize timelines with owners.
  • Policy and compliance: Translate regulatory updates, draft accounting memos, and create compliance checklists.
  • Board updates: Prepare board explanations, audit committee talking points, and finance training on controls.

How this course works

  1. 8 lessonsOne task of your job each, from financial close and statements to board and stakeholder communication.
  2. Ready-to-paste promptsCopy, fill in the parts in {{brackets}}, paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
  3. Tick and completeTick the prompts you tried and mark each lesson complete.
  4. Get certifiedFinish and keep the prompts as your own library.