OKRs for Finance Teams

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) help finance teams move beyond the task-service mentality by setting collaborative goals. By aligning day-to-day operations to company strategy, finance OKRs optimize process to drive real results.

Learn more about what OKRs are and how to use them

While finance operations are about managing the company’s cash flow, expenses, and revenue, finance team OKRs are not a management methodology. 

OKRs help finance teams solve their biggest challenges — creating focus beyond everyday tasks and connecting to strategic priorities. 

Focus and alignment are the missing elements for finance teams stuck in the day-to-day cycle — OKRs for finance departments have two distinct responsibilities:

1. Objectives, which align to the company's strategic goals, lay the foundation for business-as-usual work
2. Key results continue this focus, leveraging the finance team’s high KPI and metric-aware goals to monitor progress and drive adaptation

With focus and alignment at the forefront, finance team OKRs help teams improve workflows. Add in automation for key results and tasks through an OKR tool like Quantive, and finance teams have even more time to do what they do best: optimize. 

Setting a finance OKR and setting a sales OKR have similar predicaments — your company depends on these teams to reach all their goals. 

Business-as-usual finance tasks like payroll, budgeting, and collections can’t be compromised. Finance OKRs are meant to be ambitious, but not at the risk of endangering the company.

While task-focused OKRs, like setting a budget or creating reports, are common, OKRs for the finance department shouldn’t be treated like a glorified to-do list. 

By ensuring alignment between objectives and the strategic goals of the company, you can do more than check off boxes.

Finance team OKRs are commonly top-down, with leadership bridging the day-to-day operations to the organization’s overarching objectives. 

OKRs require trust from both parties: leaders must trust team members to focus on “how” to progress the finance OKR, and individuals must trust leaders to motivate and guide them with the “why." 

OKRs for finance teams can focus on business-as-usual operations or stretch initiatives to enhance team performance. A few areas of focus for finance OKRs are:

• Taxes and accounting OKRs
• Accounts payable/receivable OKRs
• Budgeting OKRs
• Financial strategy OKRs
• Invoicing and crediting OKRs
• Inventory management OKRs
• Payroll OKRs
• Asset management OKRs
• Revenue and profit OKRs

Check out all our finance OKRs examples below.

Let's look at some examples of OKRs for finance teams.

OKRs for taxes and accounting

Finance OKR example 1

• Objective: Successfully pass external audit
• Key result 1: Reduce number of audit findings to <5
• Key result 2: File 100% of customer and vendor contracts in appropriate Dropbox repositories
• Key result 3: Reduce time of audit from 6 weeks to 4 weeks

Finance OKR example 2

• Objective: Prepare accounting records for the move to the new ERP system
• Key result 1: Identify and fix core reporting issues for the new ERP tool
• Key result 2: Find or development 5 reporting equivalents in the new system  
• Key result 3: Analyze 10 expense types to identify cost saving opportunities 

Accounts payable/receivable OKR examples

Finance team OKR example 1

• Objective: Simplify and improve internal procedures
• Key result 1: >85% of invoices have expense-type categorization
• Key result 2: Reduce late primary document reporting from 40% to 15%
• Key result 3: Half payment processing time from "application" to "paid" from 12h to 6h 

OKRs for budgeting

Finance OKR example 1

• ‍Objective: Improve our annual budgeting process
• Key result 1: Review & train on 5 Department heads on new process
• Key result 2: Review every department's budget proposals before mid-Q3
• Key result 3: Get sign off for the final budget from all leads

OKRs for financial strategy

Finance team OKR example 1

• Objective: Improve our financial reporting process
• Key result 1: 5 new financial department hires
• Key result 2: Move 50% of books to the cloud-based version of QuickBooks
• Key result 3: Close 100% of our financials within 2 weeks of the end of quarter

Finance team OKR example 2

• Objective: Make the quarterly analysis process more efficient
• Key result 1: Define top 3 quarterly improvements for reporting
• Key result 2: Host 3 workshops on reporting with >90% attendance
• Key result 3: Build and implement 5 reporting templates 

OKRs for invoicing and crediting

Finance OKR example 1

• Objective: Balance the team workload to better serve customers
• Key result 1: Increase processed transactions per team member by 20%  
• Key result 2: Reduce average transaction pending time from 24 hours to 18 hours
• Key result 3: Conduct 4 “best practices” coaching sessions 

OKRs for inventory management

Finance team OKR example 1

• Objective: Improve warehouse inventory record management
• Key result 1: Reduce average inventory check time from 14h to 6h
• Key result 2: Automate 5 critical processes
• Key result 3: Reduce bookkeeping discrepancies to 3%

OKRs for payroll

Finance OKR example 1

• Objective: Make payroll errors obsolete
• Key result 1: Reduce failed payroll error resolutions to zero
• Key result 2: Reduce payroll error rate to less than 0.25%
• Key result 3: Reduce manual payroll input processes by 25% 

OKRs for asset management

Finance team OKR example 1

• Objective: Improve expense management to increase profitability
• Key result 1: Identify 5 highest expense areas
• Key result 2: Sort out 200 payment areas with transparent expense tags
• Key result 3: Cut monthly expenses by 25% 

OKRs for revenue and profit

Finance OKR example 1

• Objective: Shift remote work emphasis to reduce office expenses
• Key result 1: Reduce office maintenance budget from $15000 to $7500
• Key result 2: Cut employee travel expenses from $12000 to $3000
• Key result 3: Secure a $7,500+ lease for renting out office space

Quantive is your bridge between strategy and execution. Founded on the objectives and key results (OKR) methodology, our Strategy Execution Platform is where businesses plan successful strategy, focus and align teams to it, and stay on the leading edge of progress.

As your company looks to achieve the best possible results using finance OKRs, you need a modern approach to run your business and change your business. The Modern Operating Model brings strategy, teams, and data together to help make decisions faster, optimize operations, and drive better business outcomes.

Whether you’re a large enterprise facing competitive disruption or a small business leading the innovative charge, Quantive helps get you where you want to go.

Ready to achieve the best possible? Start using Quantive for free.