About this Strategic Financial Analyst role at Actionstep
Actionstep is a pioneer in the development and sale of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, specializing in the delivery of Legal Practice Management and Legal Accounting software. We are a fast-growing, dynamic business with a global customer base of more than 50,000 and a team of over 250 across the USA, Australia, UK, Canada, and New Zealand.
Actionstep is expanding its product portfolio and adding richer AI functionality across the platform to deepen customer value, accelerate cross-sell revenue, and introduce new add-on modules that increase competitive differentiation.
THE PURPOSE OF YOUR ROLE
The Strategic Finance Analyst is a core contributor to Actionstep’s Finance team. The role’s initial focus areas are core FP&A work, including forecasting and profitability analysis; gross margin and pricing analysis; and commission calculations across Sales, Partner, and Operations teams. You will report to the VP of Finance and work closely with the broader Finance and RevOps teams. As Actionstep’s needs evolve, the specific mix of responsibilities may shift, and you may take on additional or different analytical work over time.
ABOUT YOU
You are a strong financial analyst who thinks in numbers first, and you’re just as comfortable in the data and systems behind those numbers as you are in a spreadsheet. You build clean, reliable models and analysis, and you understand that the work behind a recurring deliverable has to be right every time, not most of the time.
You bring real curiosity to the business behind the numbers. You do not just produce an analysis, you ask what it means and whether it should change how the business plans or decides.
You move comfortably between recurring, deadline-driven deliverables and more open-ended strategic analysis, and you know how to prioritize when both compete for your time.
You build trust across Finance and other teams by being accurate, responsive, and clear about what your analysis does and does not say. You take feedback well and ask questions up front rather than guessing.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
The focus areas below reflect the business’s current priorities. As with most roles on a growing team, they may change as those priorities evolve, and may also include support for strategic initiatives such as partnerships or M&A as they arise.
FP&A: Forecasting & Profitability
- Support the development and maintenance of annual budgets and rolling forecasts.
- Conduct budget-to-actual variance analysis and support profitability analysis across the business.
- Build and maintain financial models to support business decisions, including scenario and sensitivity analysis, particularly through the use of AI tools.
- Contribute datasets and analysis to board and executive reporting materials. Work closely with other members of the Finance team, including the Senior Financial & Systems Analyst, on shared data and reporting priorities.
Pricing & Gross Margin Analysis
- Conduct gross margin analysis by product, segment, and customer cohort, and identify trends and margin improvement opportunities.
- Support pricing strategy and annual price increase analysis, including modeling impact across customer segments, for new and existing product lines.
- Partner with Billing and RevOps to validate pricing and margin data before it reaches leadership.
Commission Calculations
- Support monthly/quarterly commission calculations for Sales, Partner, and Operations teams, including quality control checks prior to distribution.
- Partner with Sales, RevOps, and Partner teams to ensure the data behind commission calculations, such as bookings, quotas, and contract terms, is accurate.
- Investigate and resolve commission discrepancies as they arise.
Data & Systems
- Partner with the Senior Financial & Systems Analyst on the data and systems behind the company’s business intelligence, recurring reporting, and general analysis efforts.
- Automate recurring deliverables, such as commission calculations, to reduce manual, spreadsheet-based work over time.
- Contribute to the infrastructure work, the “plumbing,” that keeps Finance’s data and systems running reliably via a company-wide data warehouse.
- Help document the business logic behind recurring Finance calculations so it’s repeatable and scalable.
- Build or maintain dashboards and reporting views that support recurring Finance deliverables.
Flag data quality issues upstream and work with the relevant team to fix them at the source.
Requirements
EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
- 1–3 years of proven work experience as a Financial Analyst, or in a similar FP&A, accounting, or business analysis role.
- Strong Excel skills, including advanced formulas and financial modeling.
- Working knowledge of SQL and curiosity to learn more.
- Excellent analytical skills and comfort working with large, sometimes imperfect datasets.
- Ability to present financial data clearly through reports, charts, and summaries for both financial and non-financial audiences.
- Hands-on experience with financial or ERP systems.
- Strong personal accountability for accuracy, particularly on recurring deliverables that affect employee pay.
Preferred
- Experience in a SaaS or subscription-based business.
- Experience with NetSuite or a similar ERP platform.
- Experience with a cloud data warehouse platform (e.g., Snowflake) or BI/reporting tools (e.g., Power BI).
- Prior experience with sales commission calculations, gross margin analysis, or pricing analysis.
THIS ROLE REPORTS TO
VP of Finance (Christian Ebersol).
METRICS OF SUCCESS
- Accuracy & reliability: recurring deliverables are accurate and delivered on time, with minimal rework.
- Analytical value: your analysis is trusted and used by Finance leadership and cross-functional partners in decision-making.
- Cross-functional trust: partner teams across the business view Finance as a reliable, responsive partner.
- Growth in scope: demonstrates readiness to take on broader financial planning and strategic analysis responsibilities within 12 to 18 months.
Benefits
We have a fantastic and inspirational working environment!
- Robust medical, dental, vision offerings
- 401K with company match
- Flexible working and PTO
- Take your birthday off
- Frequent team building events
- Fantastic training and development opportunities
- $90-100k base plus variable