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cover of episode Getting to a great Controller FP&A Relationship – Bill Hanna

Getting to a great Controller FP&A Relationship – Bill Hanna

2025/3/13
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Bill Hanna: 我偶然进入会计行业,并非刻意选择。我的第一份工作是酒店管理和旅行社,后来由于行业变化转行,机缘巧合下选修了一门会计课程,受到教授的影响而爱上会计,并最终进入会计行业,在不同公司积累经验,学习不同的会计软件和流程。在职业生涯中,我总结出优秀的会计领导力在于关注员工职业发展、传授高级知识、坦诚分享错误以及将会计职能视为工厂,识别可自动化的流程。 现代财务控制者的角色已发生变化,自动化技术减少了对特定职能人员的需求,但同时也导致了劳动力从一个领域向另一个领域的转移,而非岗位消失。目前会计行业面临人才短缺,自动化和AI技术导致入门级岗位减少,而经验丰富的人才需求却很高,这是一种不平衡的短缺。 我创建的财务控制者教育平台旨在通过实际案例和故事讲解会计概念,而非单纯的理论教学,并提供实践练习和软件操作,提高学习参与度。财务规划与分析(FP&A)部门和财务控制部门之间强有力的关系建立在良好的沟通和信任基础上,双方应互相支持,分享经验,共同确保财务数据的准确性和一致性。 想成为首席财务官(CFO)需要具备全面的财务和会计技能,包括战略思维能力、风险管理能力以及对会计、财务分析和Excel的熟练掌握。我的YouTube频道每周更新一次视频,时长通常在10到20分钟之间,内容涵盖会计领域的各种主题,旨在帮助会计专业人士提升技能。 Glenn Hopper: (访谈者,问题引导,未表达个人观点)

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Bill Hanna initially pursued a degree in hotel management but transitioned to accounting after a chance encounter with an inspiring accounting professor. His career path involved working at PWC and various startup companies, where he gained experience with multiple accounting software systems and diverse industry processes.
  • Initially studied hotel management
  • Transitioned to accounting after taking a course with Professor Dauper
  • Worked at PWC
  • Gained experience with various accounting software systems (SAP, NetSuite, Sage Intact, QuickBooks)

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Welcome to FP&A Today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper. Today, we have a fantastic guest who's redefining what it means to be a modern finance leader. Bill Hanna is a CPA, seasoned controller, and the founder of The Financial Controller, an education platform helping finance professionals level up their careers. With a background spanning public accounting, private industry, and leadership roles at high growth companies, Bill has mastered the art of bridging technical accounting with strategic finance.

Beyond his corporate experience, he's built a massive following, over a quarter million subscribers on YouTube, where he simplifies complex accounting topics and shares real-world insights. Today, we'll dive into the evolving role of controllers, how FP&A and accounting can work better together, and what's next in finance leadership. Bill, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Glenn. You make it sound so good, man. I appreciate the intro. Yeah, it was an easy one to write. You've done some pretty cool things that I can't wait to dive in. So I guess we've heard my words. Let's now turn it around and have you tell us about your background and kind of take us back and tell us what led you to a career in accounting and what attracted you to the controllership path.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I actually stumbled into accounting. It wasn't by any sort of design. My first bachelor's degree was in hotel management and travel agency work. So that was back in 99, 2000. And

Back then, that was the beginning of the online travel agencies taking over the world and sort of the traditional travel agent model has gone away at that time. And so I wanted to jump ship because that wasn't going to work. And that's when I migrated to the U.S. in 99. And I've taken a couple of college courses when I came to the U.S. And just by chance, I've taken a course with an accounting professor, Professor Dauper. I hope he's listening today.

And he is the reason why I got into accounting. And it's a story that I've heard from others too, like where you see one professor, you kind of admire their personality, the work they do, and how do you talk about the profession? So he was talking about what he does with love. He ran a CPA firm and he taught accounting at the local college.

And he just sounded like he was just having a good time with his job. And he just sounded like a really great guy. So I decided to do that. And then I went to work for PWC right after college. I did a couple of years there and I just looked at how overworked and sort of tired, you know, the professionals who kind of progress and stay till the partnership route. And I just decided that's not something that I was going to do. So I started looking around what to do next and

The traditional routes were either to go to private industry accounting or equity research. There's also other things like internal audit and things like that. So I wanted to do equity research at the time, I remember. But then when I looked at the people who were doing that, I realized that they're probably smarter than me and I'm just not going to make the cut for this kind of work. And so I looked at private industry and then I took a job as an accounting analyst with a startup company.

And then sort of took it from there, going from one industry to the other without any specific plan to take over anything. It was more just like learning some skill set in this job and then going to the next. And I spent about maybe two to three years in each job. And I often speak about it in my videos on the benefit of working in maybe seven different places in my career over the span of 18 years.

where I've gathered from an accounting software standpoint, like I know how to work with SAP, NetSuite, Sage Intact, QuickBooks. I wouldn't have learned all of these systems and different processes and philosophy of different controllers that I worked under if I haven't done that. And so, yeah, so that's how I ended up in the controller route. Gotcha. And, you know, we're going to talk the technical part of this, but you mentioned SAP.

you know, it was a person, a professor that brought you into accounting and then thinking about the different controllers that you worked with. And I guess before we dive into the technical part, is there something that, you know, 18 years in your career, is there something that stands out as,

a lesson that you've learned in accounting leadership and, you know, have these people who influenced your career and brought you into accounting to begin with. I think a lot of times we overlook sort of the personal side of this or the soft skills and the leadership part. So I'm wondering if there's anything that stands out to you on the leadership side from your career. Yeah, yeah. So that's a benefit of working under many CFOs and controllers, you know, is learning their different styles and the different things that they prioritize and how they mentor and coach people.

And so one of the things I learned is talking to my staff about their career progression often, you know, realizing that this is what they're here for. They're here for what? For the paycheck and for their career progression. They're not here because I am a great guy. They're not here because this company is a great company. They're only here for their career progression. So having that sort of become the focal point of discussion in our one-on-one conversation

Not every week, but maybe every couple of weeks we'll kind of bring it back and like, you know, how are you progressing toward what you already trying to do? Teaching staff about advanced stuff. So like oftentimes your staff is doing the mundane, the daily stuff, but

But then taking some time to walk them through a more advanced topic like transfer pricing or consolidation or things that they don't really do on a normal daily basis or at all sometimes, help them kind of realize, okay, here's what's waiting for me in the future. And this person cares enough to talk to me about these things and get me exposed to them. Talking to my staff about mistakes that I make. I think this is an important one because a lot of times

Some bosses that I've had, their style is to talk about only the good things and not talk about the bad things, the mistakes that they've made. It makes you human, it makes you relatable, and it makes it easy for them to come to you when they made a mistake themselves. The other thing too is that, and I wrote some notes here because I knew this question was coming, looking at the accounting function as a factory and sort of realizing what should be done by a robot.

So like you can just look quickly and say like, you know, I don't want my staff spending time on this because this is just going to erode their self-worth just working on this day in and day out.

Right. So kind of have that ability to identify. And then maybe you're not going to have the budget to invest in technology for all these things all at once. But at least if you identify them and keep them in a parking lot sort of thing and, you know, get back to them sort of tackling the ones that you can as much as you can. So, yeah, these are maybe the four things that I've learned in terms of leading a team.

That's great. And really, you know, thinking about automation, that's a topic that's near and dear to my heart with technology, whether it's AI or just rule-based automation and everything that's going on out there right now with agents and thinking about, you know, there's a quote and I've got to refer to it here. I used to have it memorized, but I haven't used it in a while. The quote is by a guy named Clifford Stoll. And it is, data is not information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not understanding.

understanding is not wisdom. And I think about that all the time as sort of a pyramid that the value that we bring to a company. And so talking about that mundane stuff at the beginning, that's the lowest level data entry, taking data, turning it into information, but then you've got to kind of move it up the chain. And I think as automation gets more accessible and you mentioned budget and they're still, depending on the size of the company, what's going on, we're not going to

be able to have it all at once. But I do think the technology is quickly getting there where, you know, RPA used to take months to set up, but now you're looking at these computer use agents that can go in and be set up in five minutes to do those mundane tasks. So I think that's an important thing to focus on. And I, you know, it's interesting. I've been around a while. And when I first started in finance there, we didn't have a field called FP&A. And a lot of the stuff that FP&A does was done by the controller back then. And I think

As FP&A has branched off and developed as a field, there can be this sort of chasm between accounting and finance. And I think for our FP&A audience, how do you define the role of a controller today and how have you seen it evolve over the years?

The role of the controller, if you think of a traditional sense of a controller, you're running the accounting function, which breaks down broadly into accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and maybe the smaller processes that go along with these. Like, you know, if you're talking payroll, then you have like the employment tax and compliance and reporting and stuff like that.

But then also you have the other side, which is running an external audit. So typically a controller is looked at to run the operational side of the audit to distinguish between the operational side and the strategic side of the audit. So you have maybe a VP of finance or a CFO running the strategic side of the audit, which is discussing with the auditors presentation of certain items on the financials and things that will benefit maybe the way the financials are presented. But the operational side is typically run by the controller.

So the accounting function, APAR payroll, all

audit, and then you have the development of the staff. Now, how this have changed over the time period that I've worked as a controller. With technology, obviously things have been changing a lot. And I'll say that the role of automation has been such that the number of people that you need for a certain function would be reduced. And that's the statement. And I get that question sometimes from my audience and from people in general that I talk to.

What's going to happen to the profession with automation? So it's not that their jobs will be less in accounting. My theory is that people who work in certain function will be less. So if you needed two or three people to run accounts payable, you're only going to need one. What is going to happen to the rest of the workforce that's been doing all of these tasks? If you look at new industries, like, you know, just to take one example, like Flowcast, which is a software that's used to close the books.

If you look at their headcount and the people that work there, many of these people who are now sales development reps and people who work for the solution team, these are all accountants, right? So I think with automation, you're just going to see a distribution of the workforce from one area to another and not so much jobs vanishing. It's just that they're going to get shifted and redistributed.

So that's what I've been seeing in my career is, you know, if I needed on my team 20 people 15 years ago, now I'm going to need just 10. The other portion, you know, will go to either system admin, sales solution. This is for the shifts that have been happening over the last decade and a half, maybe.

And it's interesting. I agree with you on that. Right now, there's a shortage of accountants as the older generation of accountants is retiring. In the pipeline, there are not as many accounting grads as there were a few years ago. So there is a shortage. But at the same time, there's this balance with the automation. And it feels like

if you let market forces sort it out, the fact that there are fewer people coming into accounting, more retiring and not being replaced and the technology moving right now. I mean, maybe the crisis is overblown and maybe it'll sort out. I don't know. Are you seeing or hearing from any of the people you talk to? Is there a sense right now that there aren't enough accountants to do the work or do you get a sense of that?

Yeah, 100%. And you see that in the data. And like I was looking at Robert Heff's salary guide for 2025.

And the numbers have went up by maybe like 10% compared to 2024. And that's not inflation. Inflation is just maybe 3% or 4%. And so that represents the shortage in the market. And it's a funny shortage because it's like a funnel where the entry-level jobs are diminishing because of automation and AI. And I will say automation only because AI...

I haven't seen AI taking over or reducing the number of headcount needed. It's more automation. And I sort of distinguish between the two because automation has been around for maybe 15 years, whereas AI is just a new kid on the block. But this shortage is an interesting kind of uneven shortage because you have, on one hand, the high demand for the talent that has experience and then sort of lower demand on a talent that is entry level.

And so this is one to watch and to see like where we're going to end up here, because yeah, it's an interesting one. Like how do you get experienced staff if you don't get them to become entry level to begin with? Right. That's what I think about. Yeah. So like, you know, nobody goes and gets a master's in accounting because they want to do data entry. But it's sort of when you come in, you're learning as you're doing this, the lower level stuff and it's, you know, starting internalizing it and it's making sense. And now if the expectation is,

We don't need you for the lower level stuff. We're going to throw you in at a higher decision point. And kind of moving up that pyramid I was just talking about, that's a stressful situation to be in where you're just straight out of college, first time in the workforce and having the expectation is higher. Yeah. And also to add insult to injury, the decision that has been made in the U.S. to increase the requirement for the CPA license is

10 years ago. Now, thankfully, it's been reversed where now the AICPA is looking at it and saying, listen, we're going to have a real crisis here if we don't reduce the barrier to entry. So I think that that's going to help somewhat alleviate the pain. And I see that in the comments. I have this video that I created and I have comments on it that

keep coming in every day where people are saying, now I'm thinking to go the accounting route and take my CPA now that we're back to 120 hours or potentially back. It's not really fully back and only maybe a couple of states, but I think slowly it's going to get there. But that's a really helpful thing to see and have some hope now that people will begin to take that route.

I had this question I was going to ask later in the show, but I think this is probably a good transition point to what you're doing now with the Financial Controller and the videos and the education platform and everything. Because I'm thinking about whether someone is brand new in their career or mid-career or even someone that has experience, but just trying to level up in a way. Tell me about what led you to start it, how long you've been doing it and the kinds of courses and videos you're doing for the Financial Controller.

I started completely by accident. I was taking an executive coaching training with someone. And this lady, I wish I remember her name. She was really good. She came out of California to coach us here in New York City. And part of the coaching was each of us would have to do a presentation on a whiteboard. And when I was doing mine, she just made a comment. And she's like, gee, when you're up there on the whiteboard, you just seem like you're in your element and you're really enjoying it. So...

I went home and I came up with the idea that I'll do a video on, I think it was Enron or one other firm. And I didn't even do that good of a job, to be honest. Like now when I look at that video and I'm like, I missed some of the things that Enron did that was pretty big. And the video was not that awesome.

I would do a much better one now if I do. And I checked and I got like many views. So I said, you know, I'll do some of these explainer videos and whiteboard and it kind of took off from there. My concept from the channel and my courses was that maybe I'm not going to teach you something that is completely new to you because...

Frankly, a lot of the stuff that I teach is either public knowledge, like it's available somewhere. I'm not inventing anything. It's just the same stuff that I learn and I'm teaching. But the feedback that I've gotten was that it's really helpful to see someone doing and confirming, A, what you already know. So like, hey, I'm good. Like, I've been doing this for years and this guy is showing it and it's like, this is the same way I've been doing it. Then I'm right.

Or be like, hey, like, you know, there's a slightly different way to do things. Maybe I'll check it out or see like, oh, crap, I've been doing this wrong. You know, let me kind of revise and do things and look it up and see maybe I can correct. So that was the YouTube channel. And then I came up with the idea, like if people are enjoying my 10 minute videos and someone said like, hey, in your 10 minute video, I learned like a semester of college.

So I'm like, you know what, maybe I'll do something then that will be more involved, like a six to eight hour course that visits everything to do with the controller function. And that's where the Controller Academy came. And I wanted to do it in a way that's different than any of the other courses out there. So I created a company and I called it Spa Booker. It's like a SaaS company. And I said...

The entire course is centered around this company. So we will record the equity, the stock options, we'll create a chart of accounts from scratch, we'll set up payroll, how to operationalize payroll accounts, payable, receivable, all of these things using a company. Because I noticed that the other products out there are just really talking about the theory of accounting and not so much like how to apply it on a daily basis in an accounting setting.

So the reviews have been good. I've gotten 4.9 stars from many, many people. Yeah, so it's been rewarding. So my philosophy is to use company examples and to tell a story because my experience from college and any other course that I've taken is that if I'm not engaged in what the instructor is saying, I will lose interest really fast.

And so I'll make it engaging. I'll give you practice. So I'll give you then access to the accounting software in the course. I'll give you the Excel file and I'll tell you in the video, okay, here's what you need to do with this. Do it as a practice and then submit it back. I have quizzes. So you go in there, you're expected to take quizzes and you really earn your certificate of graduation. So yeah, it's been fun so far.

That's great. And how long has Controller Academy been around? 2023 is when it started. And you are the single professor on this, all your courses, or have you brought in others to help with it? Recently, we just launched the FP&A Academy. So I brought in Connor Beck, who is the FP&A manager or CD manager at the

my previous company at Fortr and we worked together, you know, we kind of joked about it when I was at Fortr. I'm like, Hey, maybe we'll do a course together on FPNA. And he's like, yeah, sure. Ha ha ha. But it was really just like a comment. But then we, we sat down and at the end of 2024 and we outlined it and got it done in about maybe three months.

And it's the same concept. So we're taking one company from the beginning and we're saying, okay, how do we create a five-year plan? How do we create an annual budget? What is the three-step model look like? How do you present to management? What is important to present and how do you create those PowerPoint slides and all of the things. So he really wanted to mimic his function as an FP&A manager in the course. And so it's been good so far. I think we have about a hundred people in that course and in just a month, month and a half.

So it's been fun. And then I also brought in my other friend who does corporate taxation and we created the Tax Academy as well, which is more of a U.S. centered course because of the nature of the tax. But the other courses are I have students from all over the world. That's great. That's great. Well, I was checking out the website before the show and it looks like a lot of great content out there. So very, very impressive website there.

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Now that you have FP&A at the Controller Academy as well, I think that taking it back to our FP&A audience, what's the key to a strong relationship between FP&A and the controller's team? And like thinking about where that handoff is and sort of the expectation in both directions between both departments. That's a really good question. So I think, you know, these two functions are like, you know, like buddies. These are two kids playing on the playground and they really should be friends.

I think that the key here is building enough rapport and friendship to the point where you get feedback and you get good insight from your counterpart in FP&A. So for me as a controller, I remember this once where we were doing a presentation and the

The company was small enough where when we did accruals on the employee bonuses, we just accrued the annual amounts or the quarterly amounts and just had the accrual in there. So after the meeting, my FP&A counterpart, I know she came to me and she's like, listen, the way my previous company done it is that not only that you accrue for the bonus, but you'd have to look at the employer taxes associated with them and the accrual as well.

So when we were small enough as a company, this was not an issue, but her insight is that as we are growing now and we are approaching an event, most likely in the term, this can come up as a material weakness. And so you get these nuggets of experience from other people if you have the relationship with them. And so I think that

That's why you need to foster that relationship in a way that it becomes like a really good bond where the other person feels like it's easy to talk to you and just tell you what shared experiences.

So it's a strategic partnership. You are presenting information at month end or at year end, and they need to have that trust in your numbers because that's what they're working with. And you need to have their numbers as well to kind of soundboard and be sure that you have good numbers as well to compare to their budget and their plan and see how

see where you fall short or maybe extra and make corrections. And so, yeah, I think that relationship is really important. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's kind of like you talking about the opportunity to work for so many different controllers and how much you

You learn, and I think that you also learn from the other departments, whether it's business partnering in the business unit or just within the office of the CFO, the controllership and accounting side and the FP&A side and treasury and tax and all that. You learn from working with the others. And I think what you're doing at the Controller Academy is very interesting to me. I kind of came into finance through...

through a side door. After my MBA, I was in marketing. And anyway, I ended up coming into finance, but I didn't roll up to the CFO. I rolled up to the COO. And it was just, I was kind of outsider looking in. And I ended up, if I had a weakness in the beginning, it was, I'd never worked in accounting. I'd taken the courses, of course, but it's a lot different between what you do in academia and out in the real world. So it was a lot of

learning on the fly for me. And there weren't, this was a million years ago, so there weren't all the online courses out there and everything. But I really appreciate what you're doing with the Controller Academy that you are now adding the tax and the FP&A in that. And I'm thinking, again, bringing it back to our FP&A listeners, if someone came in like me or even... I talk to people all the time that come in, first they do accounting and then they move into FP&A. But a lot of them are just

you know, straight into finance. So if someone were looking for a, to kind of round out their whole finance and accounting skillset and soft skills and everything that they needed, because they want to move up, hopefully to become a CFO someday. And, you know, it used to be, if you didn't have a CPA, forget it, you're not going to move up that. And that certainly has changed in recent years, but you still have to have this skillset and you have to be able to

round out that whole picture. So what, I mean, what would you advise someone who maybe they're an accounting manager, you know, or entry level accountant, and they tell you, you know, you're talking about career progression before, if they they want to move up and move to CAO or CFO or whatever it is, ultimately, what skills do they need to start working on to get that full picture?

I get that question sometimes where like, you know, what do I need to learn to get to a CFO? I think it's really easy, right? Because when you look at a CFO, they know accounting, they know financial analysis. They must have gone through a period where they learn Excel. And so when someone is asking me, like, should I learn accounting or financial analysis or Excel or what else? And my answer is like, learn them all because...

It's really like when I think of the CFOs that I worked with in the past, right? On a higher level, they're all strategic thinkers, right? That's what makes a successful CFO. You're able to scan the environment and identify risks. I was just a quick example driving up the road today and I saw a truck, a Fresh Direct. Do you remember Fresh Direct, these deliver food

Vaguely. Yeah. So exactly right. Fresh Direct. It was the biggest player. Their CFO scan and see that Amazon Fresh was going to come in and take their market. I don't know, but that's that's exactly the kind of thing. Right. And now me running a small company like the Controlled Academy, I'm like, you know, what's the biggest thing that's the next thing that's going to come and just like take the market away from me? Right. So that's what the CFO should be doing is what is the risk? And so if your goal is to be a CFO,

You need to be that strategic thinker that doesn't come from one course or one skill that comes from real life exposure to problems and their solutions on a daily basis. So you need to get your hands dirty with actual work and talking to banks and raising money from either debt or equity and understanding how to remedy certain situations like that. But in terms of sort of the core skills, if we're talking about

the things that you can take a course for because risk management, there are courses for that, but I don't think they really teach you what real life can teach you on these things. But yeah, like just at least equip yourself with the basics that you need to know, like the accounting knowledge, the analysis, just the basic thought process of where do you begin building a budget? How does an income statement connect into a cashflow statement, into a balance sheet? Like how do they work in harmony together? So these are the basic things.

And I've been surprised to see people enrolling in my controller academy who are CFOs of, you know, 10,000 employee companies. And like, that's what I've been thinking. Like, why are you enrolled in my academy if you are already a CFO? And the thing is, like, I know how to do the strategic thinking, but I just don't know what my controller is doing. So I need to learn what they're doing.

Yeah, yeah. And as you're trying to develop those skills, and I think you've really nailed it saying, you know, you've got to kind of be in the seat and see what's going on. And it can be difficult if there's an accounting shortage and you're understaffed or whatever, and you're heads down and you're just laser focused on the task at hand. And I think that you were talking about leadership earlier. I think that one of the great opportunities as a leader is if you can help your team to, we're all busy, but we're going to pull out and we're going to, like you said, expose them.

to other areas of accounting that they may not have worked with before. Transfer pricing and consolidation and, you know, just getting them that broader expertise because it's, especially with so many remote workers now, it's hard to find that time to isolate and pick an employee and say, let me help. We're going to coach here and work on a new skill set and all that. So, and that's,

part of leadership too. If you want to move up to CFO, being able to build up a team, you know, that's just, it's all part of it. So giving them access to tools like the Controller Academy or, you know, even if they have time to watch videos for the short learning experience and, and then they've got to have the passion too that, uh,

Why are we here? Yes, to get a paycheck, but also to move forward and sort of that continuous learning. So it's amazing what you're doing there. So let's go back to the YouTube channel again, like thinking about those videos. That's the kind of content that is just, it's easily digestible and you could almost take it for granted, but you're putting a lot of effort into it and offering up some valuable lessons. So take me through, like how frequently do you put out videos? What's the normal length on the videos there? And what are some sample topics you've covered?

Yeah, absolutely. So I try to post once a week and I try to make my videos around 10 to 20 minutes. I've been criticized by my viewers for making longer videos.

So it seems like the, at least the newer generation, their attention span is like, keep it under 10 minutes. Okay, fine. We'll try to keep it under 10 minutes. I started out with things that are searchable. So I would go into, you know, YouTube or Google search and find the keywords that are most searched. But then I began to move away from that when I started doing videos on things that are not searched, but more like, you're not searching for it because you don't know it. So I'll kind of give you what I think you should be searching for almost kind of thing.

I did a video on how to turn a tribe balance into a balance sheet. No one has really ever searched that topic before, but that video gathered 100,000 views in just maybe a month. And that gave me that concept of people are not going to be searching for certain things. But if you are thinking it as an individual who works in accounting, the chances are there's plenty of other people are thinking it as well.

And so I am trying to keep that going. I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep it going where like I'm trying to think of inspiration from the problems that I've been facing throughout my career and hopefully I don't run out of ideas.

I love your example of trial balance to a balance sheet because someone who's like I said, started out in finance, not in accounting. If anybody ever hands me a trial balance, I'm just looking at it like it's, you know, it's like a Greek scroll. And can we put this in a financial statement? Because I think that my brain just doesn't work that way. And so it's funny that you mentioned that. And I really appreciate that. I have some comments, especially the video, for example, like where people would see the video and then comment and say, hey, like that's such an easy topic. Like why are you even bother presenting that?

that. But that's a fraction of it, right? Like that's maybe the one to 5%, but then you have an avalanche of other commenters who are like, "Thank you so much for that." So you got to be able to stomach sort of the criticism of the 1% who is going to say like, "That's such an obvious thing. Why are you even presenting this?"

Well, yeah, if you're a CPA and you've worked in accounting for 15 years, it is easy. But then there's people like me that say, this is a lifesaver. So thank you. So now I need to go watch that video. That'll be my continuous learning project for today. We are getting close to the end of time here. And there's a couple of questions at the end that we'd like to ask all of our guests. And, you know, we've, we talked about the technical side of everything, but we do like to dive in. And the first one is, what is something that not many people know about you? Maybe something we couldn't find by just going on Google and searching for Bill Hanna.

Yeah, I grew up in... I was born in Egypt and I spent my teenage years there. And then the one thing maybe I've never mentioned is my dad had moved to Libya when I was in high school. So I went to Benghazi and that's where I went to high school. And other than that, I think my

life is pretty, maybe a little bit too much public on some of the platforms. But I'm married and my wife is also an accountant, which makes for fascinating dinner combos. And I have three boys aged nine to 13. So hopefully one of them will be like the next junior controller or something like that. Continue the family business. Yeah. Yeah, carry. Exactly. Just keep it going. Exactly.

Oh, nine to 13. So you guys are busy. Yeah, less busy. I'll have to say like, you know, for anyone's listening who is contemplating or have maybe young kids, it's a breeze now for that age, to be honest with you. You know, granted, given, thank God their health is good and everything else is good. That

that age is a lot easier than what it used to be before. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm fully on the other side. We're empty nesters now. So we're, it's just my wife and I in the house and it is, it's never been easier than it is right now. So that's great. I miss the kids, but you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Now for everybody's favorite question. What is your favorite Excel function and why?

Favorite Excel function is probably command. I'm a Mac user, so command open bracket takes you to the source of where the information is coming from. And that's kind of like the closest I'll ever get to teleportation. So...

I love that you're a Mac user. I've been a Mac user for 25 years and everybody thinks, how can you be a finance guy and be on a Mac? And back in the day, I used to run Parallels, Dual Boot, and I'd run Windows within my Mac so I could get the full Excel. And honestly, as you move up, the level of complexity that I

I have to build into models is not what it used to be. So Excel on the Mac is fine for me. And I love not having all the pop-ups and updates and everything that come in the Windows machines. So I love when I come across another Mac user. A thousand percent. Me too. When you see one, you're like, hey, that's my tribe. But try teaching an Excel course when you're a Mac user. That was a nightmare.

But anyway, like because when you speak to audience who use PC, you'd have to have two brains of like the shortcuts and all that. But no, Mac is just a lot. And it used to be in the past there was a lot of limitation on using Excel or Mac, but it's just not true anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been great. And we'll put information in the show notes, too. But how can our listeners connect with you if they want to learn more and find out about the courses and all that work? Should we direct them? Go to YouTube.

The Financial Controller is my channel. My website is The Controller Academy. If you put that into any search, you'll find it. And take a look. There's some stuff that I'm teaching on there that's been valuable. So have a look at it. Well, Bill, this has been a great episode. I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Glenn. Really appreciate being on the show.