Posts
If your numbers face a board, an auditor or a regulator every month, this is written for you. AI and automation for finance, in plain language: essays, walkthroughs with receipts, and notes from real Anaplan estates.
Karim Lameer — Master Anaplanner, CIMA-qualified, 15 years in finance and FP&A. I build Grounded and published the Board Pack Test. LinkedIn · New here? Start here
Start with these
- Citations aren't verification
- The Board Pack Test: I gave four AIs the same board pack, then graded them with a script
- The 4:45-on-a-Friday question
New here?The reading guide lays the whole archive out in order.
The latest
The series
AI for finance, explained
Plain-English essays for finance people: what the technology actually does, where it fails, and the controls that make it safe to rely on. No pitch. Read them in any order.
AI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
What a continuous close is, and why to aim at zero days
Zero-day close as a direction, what a continuous close actually is, who is talking about it, why the forecast is the point, and why a finance team can now build one: writing the code got cheap, owning it did not.
7 Oct 2026 · 22 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
The use case: a contract signed on the 6th, on the forecast by the 8th
One FP&A month, old way and new: a contract that reaches the forecast in week six or on the morning of the 8th, which numbers can close early, which must wait, and the chain from purchase order to accrual that decides it.
7 Oct 2026 · 22 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
How to build it: small processes, one log, approvals where people already are
The architecture of a continuous close: small processes orchestrated centrally, one append-only log, people at the gates, approvals in Slack or email, and a console that is only a view over the log.
7 Oct 2026 · 28 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
Questions I asked
Questions I kept asking while designing the continuous close, with the answers I settled on: where the forecast lives, the two closes, why actuals load nightly against a monthly budget, exception queues, estimates, idempotency. A page that grows.
7 Oct 2026 · 29 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
Continuous FP&A reporting: the build, control and evidence notes
Companion to the continuous FP&A essay: the nightly load in detail, model-against-code benchmarks, question-box rules, access, failure modes and a go-live gate.
6 Oct 2026 · 29 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
An AI agent is a loop. Here is the loop.
The agentic loop explained for finance people: what an AI agent is, how it differs from a chat, and the ten-line algorithm underneath, with real runs.
2 Oct 2026 · 24 min readAI FOR FINANCE, EXPLAINED
Lotus 1-2-3 was finance's first automation. AI is the second.
The spreadsheet moved the ceiling on how much finance work one person could do, and we forgot it was ever automation. AI is moving the ceiling again. Nine things it already does inside finance teams, with pictures, a place to start, and a test for telling a good build from a dangerous one.
13 Sept 2026 · 25 min read
The Anaplan strand
AI around the model
Notes from eight years of Anaplan delivery: the automation, data pipelines and AI that wrap around a planning estate — never a replacement for the model, the layer around it.
AI AROUND THE MODEL
Anaplan Estate: what it finds and how to use it
A free, open-source review of your Anaplan estate from the metadata exports: 42 defined tests, an action plan of the five most impactful things to do, a change-impact explorer and the evidence behind every finding. A walkthrough on the fictional Caldergate estate, then how to run it on your own models.
29 Sept 2026 · 8 min readAI AROUND THE MODEL
Anaplan has the number. Finance still has the work.
Why is freight over budget? The model shows the variance; the three sentences for the pack still take the morning. Where the work around an Anaplan implementation actually sits, which of it is plain automation, and where AI has to interpret evidence.
13 Sept 2026 · 7 min readAI AROUND THE MODEL
12 days to 8 hours: what actually moved the close
I rebuilt a clinical-stage biotech's month-end around Anaplan and scheduled data loads, and the close went from 12 working days to under 8 hours. The list of what moved it is mostly boring. That's the lesson.
11 Sept 2026 · 5 min read
From the practice
Walkthroughs, with receipts
Real questions run against real (and openly synthetic) reporting packs. The product shows up here, because these are demos.