A Day In The Life Of A Manager Of Financial Planning And Treasury At Big 5 Sporting Goods
Kelvin's role as Manager of Financial Planning and Treasury at Big 5 Sporting Goods involves a dynamic mix of daily cash management ("download the day's banking reports...decide whether we need to borrow funds"), monthly/quarterly forecasting incorporating "historicals from the accounting group and then forecasts for what we think is gonna happen in the future," and long-term finance projects such as "capital budgeting for the future" and cost savings initiatives, showcasing the multifaceted nature of their career in a challenging retail environment.
Financial Forecasting, Cash Management, Financial Project Management, Data Analysis, Problem-Solving
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Kelvin Sun
Manager of Financial Planning and Treasury
Big 5 Sporting Goods
New York University, 2008
UCLA Anderson School of Management
Business Management & Admin
Apparel, Beauty, Retail & Fashion, Sports & Fitness
Finance
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. Daily tasks involve cash management, tracking daily cash flow, and making decisions about borrowing or investing funds.
2. Monthly and quarterly responsibilities include financial forecasting, gathering data from various departments, and using historical data to predict future trends.
3. Additional projects may include capital budgeting, cost savings initiatives, and exploring new investment products for the company.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a manager of financial planning and treasury look like?
Thanks, Gavin. Let me think about this for a second. Accounting and finance are usually on the corporate side and quite structured. We go through business cycles.
Since I'm wearing two hats, on the treasury side, we quite simply keep track of daily banking reports. This is the cash management piece of the business. We make sure we understand, track, and record all of the day's cash.
At the end of the day, I'll decide whether we need to borrow funds to take care of tomorrow's anticipated expenses. Or, if I need to make any cash management decisions about investing our cash reserves. So, that's a very typical day for treasury operations.
On a monthly and quarterly cycle, I'll put on my forecasting hat. My team and I will start to gather all the reports from the different department heads about our expenses. You know, we're a retail company, so I want to know where inventory is, how our shipping and trucking operations are doing, and where they think they'll come in. We'll gather historicals from the accounting group and forecasts for what we think will happen in the future.
The last couple of years have been tremendously disruptive for retail and for everyone. It gets a little crazy when the world changes, business is unexpected, or when there's inflation like there is right now. So, these forecasts can get quite dynamic, especially because we're forward-looking instead of just keeping track of what already happened. That's kind of what I used to do, which informs me and gives me the skillset to look forward.
The final third piece of my responsibilities is to tackle finance projects. This covers anything that falls under the realm of finance but not under the daily reporting things. This is where things get a little more interesting. I can work on capital budgeting for the future, cost savings projects, or investment projects for my company.
So, those three pieces make up the majority of my workflow, and they each have different cycles. It's a bit of a challenge to keep it all together, but that's what makes the job exciting.
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