Day 5: Building Your Finance AI Workflow

Map Your Monthly Finance Calendar

Every finance role has a rhythm. The close happens every month. The board deck happens every quarter. The budget happens once a year. AI pays the highest dividend on tasks you do repeatedly — so the first step is mapping your calendar and identifying the recurring documentation work.

Close Week (Days 1-5):
  D1-2: Reconciliations, accruals, intercompany
  D3-4: Financial statements, variance analysis
  D5:   Management report, executive summary
  → AI value: variance commentary, exec summary, narratives

Mid-Month (Days 6-15):
  Forecast updates, cash flow projections
  → AI value: scenario narratives, cash commentary

Late Month (Days 16-28):
  Next month budget reviews, board prep
  → AI value: talking points, risk narratives, summaries

Identify: where do you spend 2+ hours on writing/narratives?
Those become your AI automation targets.

The Month-End Report Sequence

Build a sequence — a set of prompts you run in order every month. Not one massive prompt. A structured flow where each output feeds the next.

Step 1: Variance Commentary
  Input: actual vs budget table + context notes
  Output: 3-paragraph commentary per department

Step 2: Executive Summary
  Input: Step 1 outputs + key metric table
  Output: 200-word exec summary (conclusion first)

Step 3: Board Talking Points
  Input: Step 2 + slide titles
  Output: speaker notes per slide with Q&A prep

Step 4: Next-Month Outlook
  Input: current results + pipeline/forecast data
  Output: 150-word forward-looking section

Total AI time: 20-30 minutes
Total manual time replaced: 4-6 hours

Build Your Finance Prompt Library

Create a document: "Finance AI Prompt Library." Structure it by use case. Here are the 8 prompts every finance professional should have ready:

1. Variance Commentary — department-level narrative from actuals vs budget
2. Executive Summary — 200-word conclusion-first report summary
3. Board Talking Points — speaker notes with Q&A prep per slide
4. Devil's Advocate Review — challenge assumptions in any financial plan
5. Scenario Narratives — bull/base/bear case business logic
6. Control Documentation — SOX-style narrative from process description
7. Audit Inquiry Response — professional factual response draft
8. Risk Register Starter — initial risk identification by category

For each, document: the prompt template, what context to provide, what to review before using the output, and examples of good vs. poor output. This library becomes institutional knowledge — not just for you, but for anyone who joins the finance team.