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FPAC Part I study materials
FPAC Part I study resources

FPAC Part I: Technology and Data

FPAC Part I · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Technology and Data

Core concepts

This domain tests how financial professionals use systems and data rather than deep programming. Expect coverage of the finance technology stack (ERP, general ledger, EPM/consolidation tools, data warehouses, BI and visualization layers), data governance and quality dimensions (accuracy, completeness, timeliness, consistency, validity, uniqueness), the data lifecycle (capture, validation, storage, transformation, reporting, retention), and controls over spreadsheets and automated interfaces. Understand master data vs. transactional data, ETL/ELT concepts, system-of-record thinking, segregation of duties in systems, audit trails, and the risks of manual overrides and shadow spreadsheets. Familiarity with analytics concepts - descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive - and with data visualization pitfalls (truncated axes, misleading scales, aggregation hiding outliers) is also fair game.

Traps to watch

  • Automation does not eliminate control risk; it shifts it to access rights, interface mapping, and change management.
  • A system of record is the authoritative source - reconciliation should trace back to it, not to a downstream report.
  • Correlation is not causation, and a clean-looking dashboard can rest on poor-quality source data.
  • Retention and privacy obligations apply to financial data even when stored in third-party or cloud systems.
  • Reconciliation differences should be investigated by root cause (timing, mapping, duplication), not simply plugged.

Worked example

A monthly close shows the subledger total of $1,240,000 against a GL balance of $1,236,500, a $3,500 gap. Rather than posting a plug, classify the items: a $3,000 invoice posted to the GL but not yet interfaced (timing), and a $500 duplicate interface record (data quality). The timing item clears next cycle; the duplicate is reversed and the interface rule is corrected. Rule of thumb: every reconciling item should be explainable by a named cause and an owner, and recurring causes should trigger a control fix, not a recurring journal entry.