CBA Certified FP&A Professional

FP&A Foundations and the Planning Cycle15%

• Distinguish the FP&A role and its outputs from financial accounting, management accounting and treasury responsibilities.
• Interpret how the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement interact within a planning model, including the accruals-to-cash bridge.
• Sequence the activities of an annual planning calendar and a monthly close-forecast-report rhythm, identifying dependencies and common bottlenecks.
• Select appropriate levels of planning granularity (entity, cost centre, product, channel) for a given decision purpose.
• Evaluate the quality of source data for planning, identifying issues such as mismatched hierarchies, timing cut-offs and inconsistent definitions.

Budgeting and Annual Planning20%

• Select an appropriate budgeting approach (incremental, zero-based, activity-based, top-down, bottom-up or hybrid) for a given organisational context.
• Calculate budget lines from underlying assumptions, including headcount and payroll plans, inflation and phasing across months.
• Evaluate budget submissions for padding, sandbagging, unfunded assumptions and internal inconsistency.
• Distinguish operating expenditure from capital expenditure in a budget and interpret the P&L and cash consequences of each.
• Interpret the behavioural effects of target setting and budget-linked incentives on the quality of submissions.

Forecasting and Driver-Based Modelling25%

• Distinguish rolling forecasts from static budgets and select the appropriate horizon, frequency and granularity for a business context.
• Construct driver trees that link operational drivers (volumes, prices, headcount, utilisation, conversion rates) to financial outcomes.
• Calculate forecast values using run-rate, trend, driver-based and event-adjusted methods, and select the method suited to each line.
• Evaluate forecast accuracy using bias and error measures, and interpret what persistent bias reveals about the process.
• Interpret scenario and sensitivity analysis, distinguishing a scenario (coherent set of assumptions) from a single-variable sensitivity.
• Evaluate the appropriate and inappropriate uses of statistical and AI-assisted methods within a forecasting workflow, including validation of machine-generated outputs.

Variance Analysis and Performance Insight20%

• Calculate variances between actual and plan or forecast, correctly labelling them favourable or adverse for revenue and cost lines.
• Decompose a total variance into price, volume, mix, rate and efficiency components using standard bridge logic.
• Distinguish controllable from uncontrollable variances and permanent from timing differences.
• Interpret a variance bridge or waterfall to identify the underlying business cause rather than the arithmetic effect.
• Evaluate when a variance warrants action, escalation or a forecast change, applying materiality and trend judgement.

Management Reporting and Business Partnering20%

• Select the content, comparatives and level of detail appropriate for a monthly management pack aimed at a stated audience.
• Evaluate KPI sets for a business, distinguishing leading from lagging indicators and diagnosing weak or gameable metrics.
• Interpret data visualisations and identify misleading chart choices in performance reporting.
• Distinguish effective from ineffective finance commentary, applying an insight-led structure (what happened, why, so what, what next).
• Evaluate business partnering situations, selecting responses that balance constructive challenge, independence and commercial support.
• Calculate simple decision-support figures, including break-even points, payback periods and the directional impact of a proposed action on profit and cash.