Accepted internship offer in FP&A, how to get ready?

Whether you expect to or not, you probably will learn most of it on the job. With that said, many FP&A departments cover a lot of different roles, could you give a brief job description so we could advise you more effectively?

Remember the 5 W's + H (who, what, when, where, why, and how). This will help you to become a good FP&A partner to your business partners.

Just make sure you are really comfortable in Excel. All the interns will have accounting and finance knowledge but if you can handle Excel tasks while others are having their hands held it will be really helpful.

First off, congratulations, and I hope you do well. Here are some quick tips I've posted in another thread but I'll just copy paste for you.

Maybe learn some excel shortcuts and tricks, but I would really start being proactive on the job rather than before it, You have to anticipate what upper management wants next, and bring it to the table to make them think its their idea, and you're golden once that relationship develops.

Oh, and by the way, most interns do close to NOTHING. So just get to know people and network while there and I think you'll be fine.

In addition to the above, I would try to really understand the business they are in and how it will translate into the numbers and reports you will be working with. What are the main revenue/cost drivers? Heavy fixed costs or variable cost business? What are the different sales channels? How is pricing done? Anything special about how billing/collecting is done in this industry? Are sales contract/project based? All these can be super simple, or super complex depending on what industry the company is in. When I worked for an airline for example, billing/collecting wasn't even tracked by FP&A as it was not an issue, but pricing was so big they had their own deparment.

I would spend time going over the companies most recent annual reports and maybe see how your company compares to the industry. Even pull up a transcript for the most recent earnings call. Just a few hours spend doing this will really help you understand your companies market position. You'll learn what your company is doing well and where they need improvement, which will be really helpful when your sitting in meetings trying to find ways to contribute.

Thanks for all the replies guys, all of this is very helpful.

I definitely think my excel skills could use some work so I would love any advice about how I could specifically go about learning/working on that.

Lastly, the director of the group is the guy who has taken me on and hired me as he is an alum from my school (top 20). He asked me to let him know if I have any questions for him before I come in for the summer, anything you all recommend I can ask him to show that I want to come in prepared?

Thanks again everybody!

I think PLV really hit this one on the head here. For a F100 company, getting a grasp of the entire business and the different segments of it is the hardest part the first 2-4 weeks. If you can learn acronyms (not key or necessary but nice to know), the different arms of the business, your arm of the business, or the operations and process flows of the the overall business you'll be perfectly fine. You'll learn everything else on the job.