Who builds budgets, forecasts and board reporting?
Outsourced FP&A and Forecasting: What The Shortlist Report Finds
10 firms lead, appearing in 10.9–15.3% of 229 AI responses. The sample cannot separate them, so we do not pretend it can.
No clear leader
No single firm dominates this question. Ten come up regularly and they specialise in different things, so the firm worth calling is the one that fits your situation rather than whoever sits highest.
TILT35 of 229
QX Global Group33 of 229
Handles high-volume AP/AR processing and enterprise accounting outsourcing for mid-market and large organizations.
Catalyst CFO32 of 229
Simion Advisory Partners31 of 229
Provides fractional CFO and FP&A services including budgeting, forecasting, board reporting, and cash management.
Deloitte29 of 229
Offers full finance-function outsourcing, automation, controllership, and transformation for mid-market and enterprise clients.
+5 more, tiedin the table
Based on 229 ChatGPT responses to this question, collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026. Firms are counted once per response. How we measure.
The ranking
| Firm | Responses | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 10 firms, 10.9–15.3% | |||
| TILT | 35 of 229 | 15.3% | |
| QX Global GroupHandles high-volume AP/AR processing and enterprise accounting outsourcing for mid-market and large organizations. | 33 of 229 | 14.4% | |
| Catalyst CFOcatalystcfo.ai | 32 of 229 | 14.0% | |
| Simion Advisory Partnerssimionadvisory.comProvides fractional CFO and FP&A services including budgeting, forecasting, board reporting, and cash management. | 31 of 229 | 13.5% | |
| Deloittedeloitte.comOffers full finance-function outsourcing, automation, controllership, and transformation for mid-market and enterprise clients. | 29 of 229 | 12.7% | |
| MyExecmyexec.coOffers fractional FP&A services from analyst through director level, including forecasting, reporting, and board materials for growth companies. | 28 of 229 | 12.2% | |
| Paroparo.aiOperates a marketplace of fractional finance professionals for startups through mid-market companies. | 27 of 229 | 11.8% | |
| Countsycountsy.comProvides scalable outsourced accounting and finance departments with fractional CFOs and integrated back-office teams for startups. | 25 of 229 | 10.9% | |
| Plametrixplametrix.comOffers outsourced FP&A including budgeting, forecasting, and KPI dashboards for PE-backed and high-growth companies. | 25 of 229 | 10.9% | |
| Satinwood Talentsatinwoodtalent.comEmbeds dedicated finance operators with ecommerce brands for Amazon, Shopify, inventory, and COGS management. | 25 of 229 | 10.9% | |
Key findings
- No firm answers “Who builds budgets, forecasts and board reporting?” reliably in ChatGPT. The most-named, TILT, appeared in 35 of 229 responses (15.3%) collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026, and 9 other firms scored close enough that the sample cannot put any of them in order.
- TILT, QX Global Group and Catalyst CFO were named most often, in 32–35 of 229 responses. All 10 firms in the leading group are listed with their counts in the table below.
- 10 firms cleared the reporting threshold on “Who builds budgets, forecasts and board reporting?” in ChatGPT as of October 1, 2026; the full table with response counts is below.
- Deloitte appears in 6 of the 14 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms reports published by The Shortlist Report, the widest coverage of any firm named on this page.
- No firm paid to appear in this ranking; placement cannot be bought, and the counts come from ChatGPT responses rather than from submissions.
Why the tiers fall where they do
Tier 1 holds TILT, QX Global Group, Catalyst CFO, Simion Advisory Partners, Deloitte, MyExec, Paro, Countsy, Plametrix and Satinwood Talent, named in 25 to 35 of the 229 ChatGPT responses. They are grouped rather than ranked because the gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size — one extra mention would reorder them, so an order would be reporting noise as a finding.
The test is McNemar’s at 95%, applied against the same 229 responses for every firm. The full reasoning, and what happened when we ranked one-to-N instead.
What the sample shows
10 firms lead this question: TILT, QX Global Group, Catalyst CFO, Simion Advisory Partners, Deloitte, MyExec, Paro, Countsy, Plametrix and Satinwood Talent. They appear in 10.9–15.3% of the 229 responses. The gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size, so they are listed together rather than ranked against each other.
167 firms were named at least once across the sample. 10 of them cleared the threshold of 2 responses and appear above; the rest were named once and are inside the noise.
How to read this
Firms are grouped into tiers, not ranked one to fifteen. A tier holds every firm whose 95% confidence interval overlaps the leader's, which is a long way of saying the sample cannot tell them apart. Order within a tier is arbitrary — read the counts, not the position.
Share is the percentage of responses that named the firm — not a quality score. A firm scoring low here may be excellent and simply under-written about online, which is a finding about its visibility rather than its work.
The same question was asked repeatedly because AI assistants do not answer identically twice. A single response would tell you almost nothing.
What this measurement does not tell you
- It is not a quality ranking. Share reflects how much has been written about a firm online, which is what an AI assistant reads. A capable firm nobody writes about scores low here.
- It is a reading from a date range, not a permanent standing. This sample was collected August 11, 2026–October 1, 2026; models change and so do their answers.
- It covers ChatGPT only. Other assistants answer differently, and we do not extrapolate across engines we have not measured.
- Order within a tier is arbitrary. Read the counts, not the position. Why we use tiers.
Cite this report
The Shortlist Report. (2026). Outsourced FP&A and Forecasting: What The Shortlist Report Finds. The Shortlist Report. https://www.shortlistreport.com/article/outsourced-fpa-and-forecasting
Underlying counts: CSV · JSON. Every answer they were counted from: plain text · JSON. All reusable under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.