You are the FP&A analyst for a B2B logistics company serving retail clients. November close is done. Revenue landed almost exactly on budget and management is relaxed about the month — but EBITDA missed plan. The CFO wants commentary that explains what is really going on underneath the flat revenue line.
| Line | Budget | Actual | Var |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | €4,200k | €4,215k | +€15k |
| Gross profit | €1,176k | €1,140k | −€36k |
| Gross margin | 28.00% | 27.05% | −0.95pp |
| Warehouse payroll | €380k | €402k | +€22k |
| Maintenance & repairs | €150k | €170k | +€20k |
| Admin & IT | €210k | €228k | +€18k |
| Sales & office | €180k | €180k | +€0k |
| EBITDA | €256k | €160k | −€96k |
| On-time delivery | 96.5% | 93.8% | −2.7pp |
Analyse the variances, identify what actually drove them, and update the December outlook. Work in your own spreadsheet — the full data pack is below: GL account detail with owners, revenue by week × channel, client-level contract revenue, and 4-month trend.
Your submission — four parts:
1. EBITDA bridge — max 5 lines, from budget €256k to actual €160k.
2. Investigation findings — 3–6 bullets. Separate what the data proves from what remains unresolved.
3. CFO commentary — what you'd actually send. Guide: 150–300 words; a CFO must read all of it. Conciseness is graded, not enforced.
4. December forecast impact — the adjustments and risks you'd flag for next month's forecast, quantified where the evidence allows, each labeled: confirmed / likely / needs confirmation.
5 messages from the business. Some of it matters. Some of it doesn't. Some of it deserves a challenge.
As discussed on the ops call: the main conveyor at warehouse 2 was down for 4 days in the second week. We switched to manual handling — a lot of overtime for the crew — and brought in an external contractor for the repair, roughly €20k. A number of outbound shipments were missed or delayed during those days. Line should be stable now, vendor did a full recalibration.
Commercially November was a solid month — revenue basically on plan. Meridian Retail even asked us to ship part of their December peak volumes early, which we handled without issues; great service story for the account review. Nothing to flag from my side.
To confirm: the TMS implementation remains fully within the total budget approved by the steering committee. Roughly €18k of consultant invoices originally scheduled for December landed in November — procurement agreed to the earlier billing. December project spend will be correspondingly lower. No overruns expected on the project as a whole.
Heads up for the close: Meridian Retail asked us to ship roughly €100k of their December peak volumes in the last two weeks of November — their DC wanted stock early. We invoiced on shipment as per contract. Their December call-offs will be correspondingly lighter.
Diesel is up around 9% since late October — you'll see it in direct transport costs. For contract clients the fuel surcharge clauses kick in automatically, so most of it comes back on the revenue side. Spot freight has no such protection, but that's a smaller share of volume.
A weighted rubric, applied by a reviewer calibrated on real FP&A management standards:
Hard caps: an EBITDA bridge that doesn't reconcile caps the total score at 60/100, regardless of everything else. Investigating immaterial lines costs marks — knowing what NOT to analyse is part of the job.
You'll get a graded review against the rubric — dimension scores, what you caught, what you missed — within 24 hours.
Submit for grading →