Professionalizing finances in growing small businesses
What if you could get the same kind of financial insights that billion-dollar businesses do?
Large corporations mine their finances for insights using an approach called “Financial Planning and Analysis,” or FP&A.
But it’s so hard for small businesses to access FP&A, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of it.
NewCastle Finance was founded to fix that. We help growing small businesses like yours get the FP&A support you deserve, so you can start using your finances to shape your future.
How we bring advanced financial insights to underserved businesses
Deep FP&A expertise
so you can stop simply recording numbers and start using them to run your business better
Fractional model
so you can afford expert advice even if you’re not a giant corporation
Purpose-driven mission
to get more women to be CEOs by helping them build their own companies
How do big companies spin their financial data into gold?
With 3 letters: FP&A
In a small business, finance is often a source of frustration. Tracking spending, recording payments, reporting results—it all just feels like homework.
But in a large corporation, finance feels less like a burden and more like a resource. It’s like an endless supply of insights about what’s going on and what to do next.
Why the difference? One reason is that large corporations have teams who perform “Financial Planning and Analysis,” or FP&A.
In essence, they have experts who focus not just on reporting the numbers, but on actually using the numbers to guide the business.
Accounting vs. FP&A
The two main finance functions
Accounting
Tracking and reporting data about the past
- Record keeping
- Accounts payable and receivable
- Basic financial reporting like a generic P&L statement
- Tracking the numbers just to keep tax people happy
What you’re likely doing now
FP&A
Turning data into insights to guide the future
- Financial analysis
- Strategic planning
- Resource management
- Forecasting, projections, and “what if” scenarios for decision making
What you’re missing
Would Amazon be Amazon without FP&A?
In the early 2000s, Amazon’s FP&A team used financial modeling to prove that the company’s most effective incentive was free shipping.
That finding eventually led to the Amazon Prime program. Today Prime has 200 million members worldwide, produces billions in subscription revenue alone, and has cemented the company’s place as a global leader in online retail.
But it was only possible because Amazon invested in financial insights from the beginning.
Source: Forbes
FP&A helps you make smarter decisions. About everything.
The beauty of FP&A is that it looks at your business not as separate, siloed pieces, but as an interconnected whole.
In essence, it says: “Everything you do in your business ends up in your finances. So let’s study your numbers to help you make better decisions up and down the board.”
That makes FP&A a powerful tool for tackling just about any business challenge you can think of.
What FP&A can help you do
A small sample
In ops
- Anticipate inventory shortfalls
- Spot wasteful spending
- Assess your suppliers
- Catch contracts that are killing you
In sales
- Fix your commission structure
- Set better sales targets
- Balance your margins
- Brace for slow season
In tech
- Connect your CRM to your financials
- Evaluate the ROI of your equipment
- Prep for expensive upgrades
- Spot ways to save
In HR
- Know which role to hire next
- Identify your top performers
- Plan an expansion
- Find ways to reduce labor costs
In marketing
- Put your ad spend where it’s working
- Nail your pricing
- Find your most profitable products/services
- Drop ineffective tactics
In finances
- Fix drags on your profits
- Build a logical budget
- Plan for unexpected downturns
- Match your strategy to your vision
But there’s a catch: most FP&A talent is locked away
in the large corporate ecosystem
You can only learn FP&A through experience.
Although you can get a degree in finance or accounting, there’s no certification program for FP&A specifically. To become an FP&A expert, you need hands-on practice.
But it’s hard to get experience outside big businesses.
Only large companies have the resources to build FP&A teams. So if you want hands-on training, that’s where you head.
So what happens? All the FP&A experts end up working at large corporations.
And once you enter that world, the career incentives make it hard not to stick around.
This explains why most of the finance pros who work with small businesses come from an accounting background.
And that includes most Fractional CFOs.
(There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. But you should understand a person’s strengths and experiences before you trust them with your business.)
NewCastle Finance was created to open up FP&A expertise
to growing small businesses
So that’s what our whole company is designed to do.
NewCastle Finance was founded with a purpose: to help growing small businesses get the advanced financial insights they’re often denied.
Founder Kathy Svetina already had the FP&A chops, thanks to a lengthy career in senior finance roles at major companies. But she knew expertise alone wasn’t enough. To fulfill her mission, she’d also need a business model that let her share that expertise with her target clients.
An Uncommon Combination
Advanced FP&A approach
Deep FP&A experience
Founder Kathy Svetina spent the first 14+ years of her career in Financial Planning and Analysis roles at Fortune 500 companies like Aon and Discover Bank. So her background is FP&A all the way.
Holistic outlook
FP&A experts understand that nothing in business happens in a vacuum. Luckily, our Healthy Financial House™ framework looks at your financial structure as a whole, so we can strengthen it from top to bottom.
In-depth analysis of your business
Unlike high-volume consulting firms, we focus on developing close relationships with a small number of clients. This lets us get to know the nuances of your business, so we can spot the opportunities another analyst might miss.
Small business–friendly practices
Fractional model
Too often, business owners are priced out of the market for financial advice. But our part-time CFO services make it financially viable for small businesses to get advanced strategic support.
Jargon-free advice
Expert insights are useless if you can’t make heads or tails of them. Yet few financial experts put in the work to make their communication clear. Luckily we know how to convey complex financial concepts so that they’re easy to understand.
True partnership, not just “outsourcing”
With our Fractional CFO service, you don’t just get another batch of reports to ignore. You get a trusted advisor to talk you through your problems. Because often small businesses need the know-how, not the numbers.
I spent 14 years helping Fortune 500 companies build their lead.
Now I’m helping small businesses like yours catch up.
Even as a child, I knew money meant headaches for business owners.
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, so I watched firsthand as they wrestled with managing their cash, fending off fraud, and keeping their finances healthy.
But after working in FP&A roles at major corporations for years, I had a different view of finance: as a powerful tool that can make managing your business easier, not harder.
Still, it didn’t seem right that big companies had such easy access to FP&A support, while smaller companies were left to flail on their own.
So I started NewCastle Finance to fix it. Now I help growing small businesses like yours get the same kinds of financial insights that Fortune 500 companies get.
But there’s one more thing I know from experience: the extra hurdles that women face when dealing with a male-dominated field like finance. So to offset those obstacles, I also target my services to women-owned businesses.
My ultimate vision? A world with more women as CEOs and business leaders, because they have the strategic support they need to create their own companies.
If that sounds like a world you want to live in, please reach out. We’re here to help you build it.
Founder and Fractional CFO
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