WHAT DOES A FINANCIAL ANALYST DO?

Published: Jun 11, 2025 - The Financial Analyst analyzes financial statements and operational budget trends to support cost control and identify savings opportunities. This role involves developing financial models, forecasting expenses, and preparing detailed reports to support business decision-making and variance analysis. The analyst also ensures accuracy in audits, strengthens accounting procedures, and maintains a robust control environment through continuous evaluation and reporting.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Financial Analyst

1. Financial Analyst Key Accountabilities

  • Financial Reporting: Support financial reporting processes and analyze findings to drive controllership
  • Data Analysis: Use data insights to support day-to-day organization operations and yearly operational planning processes
  • Reporting Design: Design new reporting processes to advise leadership's decision-making
  • Project Management: Participate in managing projects from start to finish that support the organization's initiatives
  • Financial Modeling: Ad-hoc financial modeling, data analysis, and presentation support (via Excel, QuickSight, etc.)

2. Financial Analyst General Responsibilities

  • Financial Analysis: Dissect actual results at the corporate and division levels
  • Financial Reporting: Be conductive in the production of monthly financial reporting and other business data
  • Internal Controls: Be instrumental in ensuring adequate controls and procedures
  • Compliance Monitoring: Guide the monitoring and maintenance of internal accounting controls to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements
  • Financial Communication: Could have to guide non-financial staff members on complicated financial subjects in special assignments
  • Cost Management: Dispense unique alternatives and advice to reduce costs and promote the financial performance of a company
  • Budgeting: Maintain the annual budgeting process
  • Forecasting: Stabilize and determine budgets and income statement forecasts
  • Close Process: Cooperate on a large number of aspects of the monthly/quarterly/annual close process
  • Data Analysis: Inspect and query substantial amounts of data
  • Audit Support: Assist internal and external auditors during financial and operational audits

3. Financial Analyst Role Purpose

  • Financial Communication: Clarify to non-financial staff members complicated financial subjects in special projects
  • Compliance Monitoring: Guide the monitoring and maintenance of internal accounting controls to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements
  • Forecasting: Compact and appraise budgets and income statement forecasts
  • Audit Support: Collaborate with internal and external auditors during financial and operational audits
  • Financial Analysis: Assess conclusive results at the corporate and division levels
  • Close Process: Direct different aspects of the monthly/quarterly/annual close process (i.e., journal entries, account reconciliations, expense analysis, trend analysis, and variance analysis)
  • Internal Controls: Provide support in ensuring adequate controls and procedures
  • Financial Reporting: Participate in the arrangement of monthly financial reporting and other business data
  • Cost Management: Prepare creative alternatives and propositions to reduce costs and help the financial performance of a company

4. Financial Analyst Essential Functions

  • Financial Analysis: Assist in conducting and documenting simple to moderate financial analysis projects.
  • Financial Planning: Help develop, interpret, and implement financial concepts for financial planning and control.
  • Reporting: Provide monthly revenue and/or expense analyses and reports.
  • Budget Monitoring: Monitor the operating budget process and allocations
  • Performance Evaluation: Provide analysis to determine present and future performance.
  • Policy Management: Assist in the development and maintenance of financial policies, procedures, and systems.

5. Financial Analyst Additional Details

  • Vendor Management: Coordinates the collection of vendor remittance documentation to initiate account updates via the SharePoint Global Vendor Master Form
  • Invoice Reconciliation: Reconcile invoices against the associated Microsoft Dynamics purchase orders
  • Discrepancy Resolution: Investigate, research, and resolve all discrepancies by working with internal and external business partners
  • Accounts Payable: Perform all accounting, coding, reporting, and analysis to ensure payments are processed accurately and on time, following company policies
  • General Ledger: Perform and analyze monthly general ledger account reconciliations following Corporate Accounting Standards
  • Journal Entries: Prepare and analyze journal entries for month-end closing
  • Process Improvement: Analyze processes, recommend improvements, and manage all internal controls

6. Financial Analyst Roles

  • Risk Management: Identifies basic control risks, evaluates impact, proposes changes, and implements improvements to remediate gaps
  • Financial Close: Delivers weekly/monthly financial close.
  • Data Management: Uses financial systems and advanced MS Excel functions to work with large data sets.
  • Forecasting: Outputs plans, forecasts, budgets, and consolidations.
  • Data Analysis: Works with a variety of data sources.
  • Data Quality: Identifies incomplete or inaccurate data, identifies root causes of data issues, escalates discrepancies, fixes data, or partners to deliver a solution.
  • Communication: Uses active listening skills intuitively to communicate data (both written and verbal) in a clear, concise, and unambiguous manner.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Adjusts style for various audiences to articulate complex finance issues clearly.
  • Process Improvement: Identifies and implements solutions to resolve, improve, automate, standardize, or simplify finance processes.
  • Time Management: Makes thoughtful time management decisions independently.
  • Task Prioritization: Prioritizes work, resolves issues, meets deadlines, and seeks feedback from the manager
  • Issue Resolution: Discerns between urgent and non-urgent issues and acts accordingly to solve them.
  • Self-Development: Drives own self-development in the Finance Community, seeks opportunities to expand finance expertise.
  • Knowledge Sharing: Participates in events, initiatives, and projects, then shares gained knowledge in and outside of the team.
  • Team Collaboration: Contributes to work-life harmony by being a positive, collaborative, and effective influencer to new team members as an indicator of operations excellence.

7. Financial Analyst Tasks

  • Performance Analysis: Produce month-end commentary and analysis on key drivers for topline and bottom line performance, risks and opportunities, and recommendations for improvement.
  • Business Partnership: Develop and maintain effective business partnerships throughout short- and long-term financial planning cycles
  • Strategic Planning: Partner with services, finance, and sales leadership to build a bottom-up operating plan and establish key initiatives to achieve topline and bottom-line targets.
  • Operational Analysis: Deliver analysis and recommendations to enhance field productivity, accelerate growth, improve processes, identify new key metrics, and communicate best practices.
  • Financial Modeling: Build models to measure the impact of past initiatives, assess the feasibility of new ideas, and support decision-making.
  • Controllership: Validate and improve controllership functions
  • Reporting Accuracy: Report accuracy, area training, customer past due balances, private pricing agreements, non-standard discounts or deal terms, and quality of writing.

8. Financial Analyst Details and Accountabilities

  • Financial Modeling: Build and maintain efficient and scalable financial models in Excel that drive optimal decision-making.
  • Corporate Planning: Actively participate in corporate planning, including budgeting, forecasting, project planning, and long-range planning.
  • Data Analysis: Analyze historical, current, and projected financial data for use in planning, forecasting, and management decision making.
  • Reporting Automation: Build and maintain automated reports and dashboards that are easily shared.
  • Process Improvement: Identify and implement improvements to make financial and operational reporting better, faster, and easier.
  • Close Process: Participate in the monthly close.
  • Financial Reporting: Provide accurate, timely, and actionable financial reporting and KPI’s to management, including both actual vs budget variance analysis and deep dives when observing abnormal trends.
  • Trend Analysis: Identify trends, concerns, and areas for process and/or reporting improvements
  • Business Partnership: Build strong relationships and collaborate with cross-functional business leaders to become a trusted advisor who highlights risks and spots opportunities.

9. Financial Analyst Overview

  • Financial Reporting: Prepare, analyze, and report on financial results, focusing on key drivers behind the performance.
  • Business Partnership: Partner with the business leaders by providing actionable insights and trends, and help formulate strategies to drive improved financial results.
  • Performance Review: Perform in-depth reviews and evaluations of monthly actual financial performance against budget and prior year.
  • Forecasting: Gather data from financial databases and business teams to create monthly and annual revenue and expense projections.
  • Budgeting: Assist with the annual budgeting processes, including data collection and analysis.
  • Team Mentorship: Mentor junior team members and collaborate with offshore finance resources
  • Ad-hoc Support: Respond to internal ad-hoc requests.

10. Financial Analyst Job Description

  • Financial Analysis: Analyze financial data and provide forecasting and planning support.
  • Financial Reporting: Prepare reports and projections based on financial data.
  • Data Compilation: Retrieve and compile data from various source systems.
  • KPI Tracking: Update and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and financial metrics.
  • Presentation Preparation: Prepare presentations for the senior leadership team.
  • Data Visualization: Build data visualizations for faster data-driven decisions and insights.
  • Data Management: Load and validate financial data into various systems of record.
  • Ad-hoc Analysis: Perform ad hoc analyses and other duties.

11. Financial Analyst Functions

  • Spreadsheet Management: Develop and maintain spreadsheets and analyses for a variety of financial applications, including financial statements, reports, budgets, and forecasts
  • Invoice Processing: Review, validate, track, and process payments of vendor-billed invoices within Contract Terms and approved budget
  • Billing Resolution: Negotiate discrepancies in billing with Vendors
  • Reconciliation: Complete monthly Reconciliation
  • Financial Reporting: Prepare special reports for finance teams and management
  • Database Management: Create and adjust Access database queries and formats

12. Financial Analyst Accountabilities

  • Performance Reporting: Generate monthly and ad-hoc reports to evaluate business performance results, including variance analysis and key drivers of performance for decision support and general business support.
  • Budgeting: Participate in the annual budget process, including data analysis, entry and validation.
  • Close Process: Assist in month-end and year-end closing responsibilities, including supporting schedules and preparing journal entries.
  • Financial Controls: Participate in identifying opportunities to improve financial controls, improve financial policies, procedures and systems within the area of responsibility.
  • Cross-functional Collaboration: Interact and liaison with cross-functional groups to identify and resolve issues in assigned areas of responsibility.

13. Financial Analyst Job Summary

  • Month-end Review: Lead the review of the financial month-end accounting cycle, in partnership with the control team, while proactively highlighting and resolving Profit and Loss variances
  • Account Reconciliation: Be responsible for various account reconciliations, journal entries, and internal management reporting
  • Shared Services Coordination: Partner with the Shared Service Center to ensure the flow of accounts payable, accounts receivable and cash management
  • Variance Analysis: Analyse financial results versus budgeted or projected results
  • Budget Collaboration: Collaborate with business partners in the development of annual cost center budgets
  • Decision Support: Apply analytical expertise to drive effective decision support to cost center managers across the business, while highlighting areas of opportunity or risk and developing appropriate action plans
  • Process Improvement: Review and improve processes, procedures, and financial models to better meet the needs of the business and to ensure the integrity of financial information and efficiency of processes
  • Ad-hoc Analysis: Manage various ad hoc information requests and financial analysis
  • Financial Planning: Participate in the development of the annual budget, financial forecasts, and strategic plan
  • Entity Reporting: Lead the month-end accounting and reporting process of the Canadian entities, providing insightful analysis of the business results.
  • Overhead Budgeting: Responsible for the business unit budget and forecast process for overhead expenses, collaborating with cross-functional cost center owners.

14. Financial Analyst Responsibilities

  • Month-end Close: Analyzes data to assist finance leaders, completes close review packages utilizing standard work, reporting, AR reconciliations, transaction monitoring, monitors themes to determine recommendations, and meets all required month-end deadlines.
  • Financial Reporting: Completes special reports, provides financial expertise for reports/surveys, and assists managers in understanding/interpreting monthly financial reports.
  • KPI Tracking: Captures key performance indicators for improvement based on the RCA tool.
  • Statistical Analysis: Reports key statistical data regarding payment patterns, denial details, etc
  • System Management: Responsible for system maintenance, developing reports, and expanding application functionality.
  • Stakeholder Collaboration: Works closely with stakeholders from different functional units, mainly revenue cycle/managed care/CareConnect, on topics, including billing, payments, RCA logic, and denial management.
  • Data Support: Acts as a resource to other units within Hartford Health Care Corporation by providing financial data and other support as a member of a team or in response to requests for information.
  • Professional Development: Assumes responsibility for self-improvement, in collaboration with supervisor, by identifying, communicating, and seeking resources or instruction/validation to meet own learning needs, and is self-directed in maintaining the latest education expertise.
  • Reporting Structure: Reports to the Director of Revenue and Analytics Reporting

15. Financial Analyst Details

  • Financial Analysis: Provides financial analyses related to budgets, forecasting, allocation of expenses, ad hoc analysis for business case development and custom financial analyses, peer group analysis, and internal consulting for all levels of management.
  • Model Development: Develops and maintains spreadsheets and statistical models for financial analysis.
  • Presentation Preparation: Prepares a variety of management presentations.
  • Data Resolution: Researches and resolves problems and errors in data from financial reporting systems.
  • Application Development: Assists in the development of financial applications.
  • Interest Rate Forecasting: Prepares interest rate pricing and forecasting information for use in asset and liability management.

16. Financial Analyst Duties

  • General Ledger: Prepare month-end general ledger close journal entries and supporting reconciliations.
  • Inventory Management: Lead inventory management activities, inclusive of goods receipt process, cycle count, and physical inventory planning and execution, reconciliation, and adjustment activities, and monitor internal control procedures
  • Expense Monitoring: Monitor, forecast, and budget cost center expenses.
  • Ad-hoc Analysis: Support the ISG management team with ad-hoc financial analysis and reporting.
  • Data Analysis: Provide analytical support, working with large sets of data, and mining for information.

17. Financial Analyst Roles and Details

  • Capital Transfers: Operate as the analyst for all monthly capital transfers requested by facilities, the Division, and the Groups, including the reporting, tracking, notification, and management of facility-managed projects and Group contingency funds.
  • Capital Coordination: Coordinate project approvals, reconciliation, notifications, and analysis for R-CAP and special capital totaling approximately $500 million per year.
  • International Reporting: Be the key contact for all International Division project reporting, to include the compilation of monthly capital spend and reconciliation, and the management of project close-out and project contingency reporting
  • EBITDA Analysis: Complete the analysis for annual incremental EBITDA and incremental admissions based on capital project completions by facility.
  • Special Projects: Complete special projects
  • Process Improvement: Act as a valued member of the Capital Deployment team, think strategically to continuously improve processes to improve both the department as well as the field’s reporting functions.

18. Financial Analyst Responsibilities and Key Tasks

  • Performance Tracking: Prepare and enhance reporting and business review presentations and track financial performance against annual budget, seasonal financial plans, and key performance indicators on a weekly, monthly and quarterly cadence
  • Metric Reporting: Assist in standardizing, consolidating and presenting key metrics to cross-functional partners and executive leadership
  • Variance Analysis: Analyze variances to plan and forecast, providing insight on current and expected trends, and identifying areas of risk and opportunities
  • Scenario Modeling: Assist with conducting ad hoc analysis and scenario modeling at the request of the finance team, management and business partners to aid in decision-making
  • Process Improvement: Evolve tools, enhance existing reporting, and improve business processes in partnership with finance and the business
  • Finance Coordination: Act as the point of contact between Corporate Finance and the Operations finance team to ensure corporate deadlines are prioritized appropriately
  • Data Interpretation: Identify, analyze, and interpret trends and patterns in multiple datasets across the operation and help with problem-solving
  • Operational Analysis: Prepare/Conduct ad hoc analysis and reconciliations to generate insights in Transportation Operations and Transportation financials

19. Financial Analyst Duties and Roles

  • Customer Experience: Actively and consistently support all efforts to simplify and enhance the customer experience
  • Business Analysis: Build a strong understanding of business processes and data relationships necessary to understand a business need, analyze related data, and deliver reporting that provides key insights used in decision making
  • Audit Review: Review results of audits received for accuracy and to identify trends or anomalies
  • Expense Reporting: Facilitate the delivery of data or reporting supporting operating expense variance analysis and reporting
  • Financial Modeling: Build and deploy financial models and utilize analysis to identify cost savings opportunities
  • Policy Evaluation: Analyze, educate, and recommend changes to accounting operations, policies and procedures to support a strong control environment
  • Project Tracking: Track, document, and work to resolve outstanding project tasks and issues
  • Financial Analysis: Prepare and review reports and other analyses for achieving financial objectives
  • Budget Analysis: Perform analysis of data trends on operational budget spend to enable the team to meet Key Performance Indicators
  • Cost Reduction: Utilize analysis to identify cost savings opportunities
  • Expense Forecasting: Create an operating expense reforecast
  • Trend Identification: Perform a monthly review of financial statements and identify trends

20. Financial Analyst Roles and Responsibilities

  • Sales Operations Support: Report to the Manager of the DISH Business Sales Operations team, responsible for working with a team of Business Operations specialists to create a first-class experience for customers and partners by assisting with the financial and business analytics for DISH Business
  • Financial Modeling: Create, manage and refine new and existing financial models to determine NPV, Break-Even, and Rate-of-Return.
  • Deal Analysis: Perform recurring and ad hoc deal analysis and make recommendations to improve profitability.
  • Cost Tracking: Manage and track deal costs, including capital and operating expenses, fixed and variable costs and cost of goods sold.
  • Variance Analysis: Perform variance analysis of installation costs and identify opportunities for improved forecasting and modeling.
  • Reporting: Generate meaningful reporting and analysis for the sales and management teams.
  • Cross-functional Analysis: Work cross-departmentally to perform and improve financial analysis
  • Task Management: Prioritize work efforts and manage competing deadlines to meet business needs.
  • Data Integration: Integrate data from multiple sources to produce the requested analysis.
  • System Utilization: Use a variety of reporting tools and systems to process requests, including Salesforce, Oracle, G-Suite, and Microsoft Office.
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