What to ask an FP&A supplier before you trust its numbers

Agentic AI FP&A software is any system built to run multi-step finance work on its own initiative, such as reading a trial balance, building a variance bridge, drafting a forecast, or working a diligence file end to end. The label doesn't say whether the number the system hands you comes out the same way every time, or who checked it before you saw it. Those are the questions that matter to the person signing the engagement letter.

Under that label, four jobs come up most often. None of them on its own tells you whether the number that comes out the other end is right.

Variance analysis

A system reads actuals against budget or last year, works the exceptions, flags what moved, and drafts the commentary a controller would otherwise write by hand.

Forecasting

A system rolls closed months into a full-year estimate, projects the open months, and compares that estimate to budget without a person rebuilding the model at every close.

Board and monthly reporting

A system assembles the reporting package itself from one underlying data set, instead of a person copying figures between tabs and a deck.

Diligence support

A system works a trial balance on its own initiative, surfacing add-backs, red flags, and the questions a buyer's team would ask.

This is the checklist we'd want a buyer to run against Vantage as much as against anyone else using the term.

Does it flag variance against real data?

Flags should tie to the actual trial balance, with a dollar and a percentage threshold behind each one. Vantage flags a line against budget and prior year, by month, quarter to date and year to date, when either threshold clears.

Does the forecast match its method to the data?

The method should attach to a real driver and say so when the data won't support it. Vantage sets the forecast method per line item, and where a line's data doesn't support its method, the line falls back on the sheet rather than projecting something the data can't carry.

Does it land in the file you already keep?

It should. Vantage starts from your accounting exports and the Excel files your team uses today, and builds on top of what you already run, one workbook off one set of exports, so the reporting and the forecast agree with each other, and with the deck where one is built.

Can you trace a number, or only view it?

Click the figure and see the path back to source. Vantage renders its structural checks in the workbook itself, so a buyer can check a figure without asking anyone to explain it.

Where does the arithmetic happen?

Ask anyone using the term, ours included. In a Vantage deliverable, all numbers trace back to the source. Agentic AI built the Vantage system, Vann, and maintains it. In the build it handles the work around the arithmetic, reading in files, drafting and putting the steps in order. The commentary in a board pack is templated off the same figures the tabs are built from.

Who checks the author's work?

Each package goes through an automated check, and where a deck is built, it confirms the headline figures read the same in the workbook and the deck. A check waiting on data names the input it needs. A package sent for separate review goes to a reviewer that did not build it and cannot edit it.

Does it name what it didn't do?

A deliverable should list the diligence work it did not perform, why, and what would close each one, on the first tab. Vantage's package does, and a draft can't be produced without it.

What do you need from us to start?

A trial balance is what most of the work runs on. General ledger detail, bank statements and a receivables register each unlock a specific section.

Do we get the software or the output?

You get the deliverables and the trail behind each figure in them. The build itself stays ours.