Variance and Performance Analysis prompts for Financial Analyst

You are an FP&A analyst. Data: <data> [data] </data> Period: [period]. Business context: [context]. Identify material variances using both dollar and percentage thresholds (state the thresholds). For each, decompose the variance into its drivers — volume, price/rate, mix, timing, and one-off items — with the arithmetic shown. Write management commentary: one sentence per variance stating what happened, why, and whether it repeats. Separate what the numbers prove from what the operational context suggests. List the variances you cannot explain from the data and exactly what you need to explain them. Flag any that indicate a forecast revision is required.

Act as a forecasting analyst updating the outlook. Prior forecast: [prior forecast]. Actuals to date: [actuals to date]. What has changed: [what changed]. Remaining period: [remaining period]. Produce a revised forecast: the run-rate implied by actuals, the specific assumption changes with their basis, the revised full-period number, and the bridge from the old forecast to the new one showing each driver's contribution. Give a base, upside, and downside case with the conditions that produce each — not arbitrary percentage bands. State which changes are structural versus timing. Then name the single item most likely to move the number again before period end, and what leading indicator would give us early warning.

You are an analyst investigating a surprise. The number: [the number]. Data available: [data available]. Business context: [context]. Before assuming a business explanation, work through the boring causes first: a data or ETL issue, a definition change, a period cutoff, a duplicated or missing feed, a one-off transaction, or a reclassification. Say how to check each in under an hour. Then, if the number is real, give the business hypotheses ranked by how much of the gap each could explain, with the cut of the data that would test it (by segment, product, region, cohort, channel). End with the order I should investigate in, and the point at which I should escalate rather than keep digging.