AI Tools for FP&A: What Survived and What I Abandoned

After trying 30+ tools this year, here’s what actually stuck. A few are AI tools for FP&A. Most are not.

The Survivors (What I Use Daily)

Claude - Primary AI assistant. For board prep, scenario modeling, analysis reviews. The workhorse. 3+ hours saved per week.
Excel - The cockroach. Still the fastest for iteration. Will outlive us all. Accept it.
Notion - Knowledge management. Team documentation, meeting notes, project tracking. Not perfect. Good enough.
Slack - Communications hub. Finance channel, Marketing channel, Tech channel, HR channel. And DMs. So many DMs.
HubSpot - Marketing/CRM. Lead warmth tracking lives here. API connects to Claude for weekly analysis.
Google Sheets - Collaboration. When Excel needs to be shared and edited simultaneously. Reluctantly essential.
Loom - Async video. Explaining complex analysis without scheduling meetings. Underrated time saver.
Calendly - Scheduling. Eliminated 90% of scheduling back-and-forth. Simple. Works.
Figma - Presentations. Stopped using PowerPoint. Figma templates look better, iterate faster.
1Password - Security. Team password management. Non-negotiable.
Linear - Tech project tracking. Replaced Jira. Faster, cleaner, less overhead.
Rippling - HR platform. Payroll, benefits, compliance. One system instead of five.

ChatGPT - Replaced by Claude. Tried both extensively. Claude handles my workflow better. Context window, coding ability, tone.
Asana - Too heavy for our needs. Project management overkill. Switched to Notion + Linear.
Tableau - Implementation overhead. Beautiful dashboards. Two-week turnaround for changes. Back to Excel.
Monday.com - Wrong fit. Fine tool. Didn’t match our workflow. Sometimes it’s just fit.
Zapier - Replaced by native integrations. Most of what I used Zapier for now has direct API connections.
Salesforce - Cost vs. value. Enterprise features we didn’t need. HubSpot handles our scale.
Confluence - Notion replacement. Knowledge management moved to Notion. One less tool to manage.
Evernote - Outdated. Apple Notes or Notion. Evernote felt stuck in 2015.

Before adopting any new tool, I ask five questions:

Does it solve a problem I actually have? Not a problem I might have. A problem causing friction right now.
Can I get value in under 2 hours? If implementation takes longer than an afternoon, adoption risk goes up.
Will we still need Excel anyway? If yes, I’m buying a tool and maintaining two systems. That’s overhead, not efficiency.
Can my team modify it without IT? Approval queues kill adoption. Self-service or don’t bother.
What happens when I want to leave? Data portability matters. If export is painful, think twice.

Most tools fail not because they’re bad.

They fail because the problem they solve isn’t urgent enough to change behavior.

The tools that stick solve a pain point you feel every day.

The tools that fail solve problems that exist on a roadmap somewhere.

List every tool you pay for.

For each one: When did you last use it?

If the answer is “I don’t remember,” it’s probably time to cancel.