Dispatches
FIG. 19 AI enterprise search → FIG. 18 Athena Python SDK → FIG. 17 Athena Skills → FIG. 16 Web Monitor → FIG. 15 Athena for Operations → FIG. 14 Athena for Analytics → FIG. 13 AI search for your DMS → FIG. 12 Multiplayer AI agents → FIG. 11 Athena Anywhere → FIG. 10 Hey Athena → FIG. 09 Athena for Finance → FIG. 08 What code review becomes → FIG. 07 GTM without a CRM → FIG. 06 The company brain → FIG. 05 Two identical stacks → FIG. 04 Finance builds its own APIs → FIG. 03 Model routing in production → FIG. 02 Knowledge workers don't have GitHub → FIG. 01 Pricing, read from transcripts →
Dispatch 2026-09-28 Solutions
№09

Athena for Finance: AI agents for FP&A and the close

How finance teams build agents for the work they repeat every week, and what every one of those agents comes with.

Filed by Taylor Johnson — 8 min
Engraved plate for Athena for Finance: a ledger, balance scale, counting board and quill before a classical temple

Athena for Finance is how finance teams use Athena Intelligence to build agents for their own workflows, from the weekly flash report to reconciliations and the month-end close. Any process your team repeats can become an agent that runs in your systems, cites every number to its source, can be rolled back, and waits for a person's approval before anything goes out.

Over the last few months we pointed Athena at the work finance teams repeat every week. This dispatch walks through what those teams build, one example from start to finish, and the protections that come with every agent. Figure 1 shows the whole picture on one page.

Contents
  1. 01Where finance time goes
  2. 02What finance teams build
  3. 03The weekly flash, start to finish
  4. 04What every agent comes with
  5. 05Security and deployment
  6. 06Getting started
  7. 07Questions finance teams ask
FIG. 01Finance teams connect the systems they already use, and Athena runs an agent for each recurring workflow. Your team reviews finished work in familiar formats. The same four protections (A–D) apply to every agent, whichever workflow it runs.

01Where does finance time go today?

Most of it goes into putting the numbers together. Take the weekly flash report. The controller's actuals arrive by email on Sunday evening. Someone downloads the file, runs the ERP export by hand, finds last week's template, copies figures in slide by slide, and exports the final file just before midnight. On Monday the CFO asks why a region dropped, and the honest answer is "let me check."

Month end looks similar, only longer. Across more than 3,000 companies, the median time to complete the monthly financial close is 8 days, according to APQC's benchmarking data. A lot of those days go to reconciling, chasing people for files and reformatting, and the steps look almost the same every period. That repetition is what an agent handles well.

FIG. 02The same weekly flash, done two ways. Today the work fills a Sunday evening. With Athena, the controller's email starts the run, and the finished report is waiting for review on Monday morning. Times are from the scenario in the video in section 03.

02What can finance teams build with Athena?

Almost anything the team repeats. Your team describes a workflow, connects the systems it touches, and decides which steps need a person. Most teams start with one of the workflows in Figure 3 and add more once the first is running.

FIG. 03Workflows finance teams commonly build first, grouped by who owns them. Each one is an agent your team configures, and each one gets the same protections shown in Figure 1.

A few of these are worth a sentence more. AP reconciliation matches ERP exports, contracts and inbox attachments, and flags unpaid, underpaid or overpaid invoices with a link to the source document. Software cost capitalization under ASC 350-40 runs as a chain: one step classifies the work, a reviewer checks the edge cases, and a last step calculates the journal entries. And for analysts who live in Excel, the Office add-in means they can type =ATHENAQUERY("net sales by region, last 8 weeks") into a cell.

Recurring workflows run as an agent operating procedure (AOP): a trigger, your sources, your template, and the steps that need a human. Yes, finance, we know AOP already means Annual Operating Plan. We've run AOPs on your AOP. Our own finance team builds this way too; dispatch №05 tells that story.

03How does it work? The weekly flash, start to finish

The controller emails the actuals, and by Monday morning a flash report in your template is waiting for someone to approve it. The video shows one full run, and Figure 4 breaks it into the four steps you'll see on screen.

VIDEOThe weekly flash, from the controller's email to an approved deck in Teams (1:47). The figures shown are demo data.
FIG. 04The four steps of the weekly flash workflow. Steps 01 to 03 run on their own once the email arrives. Step 04 is where a person on your team takes over, so nothing reaches leadership without a sign-off.

Table 1 puts the two versions side by side, task by task.

TaskThe manual wayWith Athena
Collect actualsDownload attachments, run the ERP export by handAn email to the workflow starts the run
Check the numbersCompare by eye against last week's fileEvery figure checked against shared definitions
Build the deckCopy and paste, slide by slideBuilt in your template, every number cited
Answer "why did it move?"Ask the data team and waitClick the number to see its source and version
Fix a mistakeFind the right version and redo the editsRoll back that one change and keep the rest
Send itExport, attach, send, then version it againDrafted in Teams, approved by a person, then sent
TABLE 1The weekly flash, task by task.

04What does every agent come with?

The same set of protections, whether the agent builds a deck or reconciles invoices. The questions finance teams ask first are almost always about trust: where a number came from, what changed, and who signed off. Figure 5 shows how those answers look inside the work itself.

FIG. 05The four protections from Figure 1, as they appear in the weekly flash. Clicking a figure opens the cell it came from. The activity panel lists every change by person or agent, and any single change can be rolled back. Values are demo data from the video.

In practice this changes how review works. When Athena updates a model or a deck, the change is recorded along with who made it and why, and you can undo one range while keeping everything else. Athena also sees only what each person is already allowed to see in Snowflake, SharePoint and your other systems, and anything that leaves the team waits for a person to approve it. Reviewing the work takes minutes, so nobody has to rebuild it to trust it. More on how that works in attribution and reversibility.

05Is Athena secure enough for regulated companies?

Yes. Athena was built for regulated enterprises and runs in your own environment. It deploys in your VPC, on-prem or air-gapped, and is SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliant. It works with 60+ models, with zero data retention agreements at every model provider and no training on customer data. Athena has been in production at a Big Four audit firm for over a year, with over 1,000 users across five localities.

FIG. 06Athena runs inside your environment, next to your data. The models it calls keep no data, and each person's existing permissions carry through to every agent. See deployment options.

06How do finance teams get started?

With one workflow the team already knows well. The weekly flash is a common first choice because the template exists and everyone can see the difference by the following Monday. We usually set up the first workflow alongside your team within a couple of weeks, and after that your analysts can build the next ones themselves.

Teams that start in finance often find the same approach works for procurement, operations and audit, since every agent runs on the same platform with the same protections. The Finance & FP&A solution page has more detail on each workflow.

Curious how it would work on your numbers? We're happy to show you.

07Questions finance teams ask

What is a flash report?

A flash report is a quick, early read on the week's or month's numbers, usually revenue, margin, opex and key regional results, sent to leadership before the full close is done. It trades some detail for speed so leaders can act on the numbers early.

Does Athena work with Excel?

Yes. The Office add-in brings Athena into desktop Excel, and your existing templates, Power Query workbooks and Python keep working. For files that outgrow Excel, Athena Sheets handles more than a million rows.

Does Athena change our ERP or general ledger?

Only if you allow it. By default Athena reads from your ERP, warehouse and files with each user's own permissions, and any write-back you turn on goes through an approval step.

Who approves what Athena sends out?

A person on your team. Athena drafts the report, deck or message, then waits. Nothing is sent to leadership, Teams, Slack or email until someone approves it.

How do we know where a number came from?

Click it. Every number Athena produces is cited to the source cell and the exact version it came from, and every change Athena makes is recorded and can be rolled back on its own.

Is Athena for Finance a separate product?

Athena for Finance is the Athena platform, used by finance teams to build agents for their own workflows. Every agent gets the same citations, rollback, permissions and approvals, and teams that start with finance can use the same platform for other functions.

Athena Library

Run this on a schedule

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№08 32× — What code review becomes Commit and PR volume at flat headcount since agents became first-class engineers — and how the human job shifted entirely to review. next dispatch

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