$370,780top of the range in New York · middle $166,570 / yr
AI augments this role
Financial Managers in the United States earn a median of $166,570 a year. Pay starts near $94,310. Pay reaches $370,780 at the top of the range in New York, the best-paying state for this work among those with at least 500 people in the job.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Financial Managers, SOC 11-3031). Last checked 9 September 2026.
Entry level
$94,310
Top of the range · New York
$370,780
Education
Bachelor's degree in Finance
Wages — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (Financial Managers). Top of the range is the highest state-level figure among states with at least 500 people in the job. AI-impact rating is PayCrunch's editorial assessment. Updated September 2026.
🆕 New & Trending AI Tools for Financial ManagerReviewed September 2026
We track new AI-tool launches every week and refresh this list — here’s what’s gaining traction for Financial Manager work right now.
NumericNEWPaid / see site
AI-driven month-end close, reconciliation, and reporting.
How a Financial Manager uses it: automate reconciliations and close the books faster
HebbiaNEWEnterprise / see site
AI that reads and analyzes large financial documents and filings.
How a Financial Manager uses it: pull answers out of contracts, filings, and reports in minutes
NotebookLMNEWFree / $7.99 mo
Google tool that answers questions grounded only in the documents you give it — with citations.
How a Financial Manager uses it: load your own manuals, policies, or PDFs and ask questions that stay accurate to the source
MindBridgeEnterprise / see site
AI that scans transactions for anomalies, errors, and fraud risk.
How a Financial Manager uses it: flag risky or unusual entries across the whole ledger, not just a sample
Vic.aiEnterprise / see site
Autonomous accounts-payable and invoice processing.
How a Financial Manager uses it: let AI code and process invoices with minimal manual entry
RampFree core / paid
Finance platform with AI that automates expenses and spend controls.
How a Financial Manager uses it: auto-categorize spend and catch policy issues in real time
Power BI Copilot$10+ mo
Microsoft analytics with AI that builds dashboards and explains trends.
How a Financial Manager uses it: ask questions of financial data and get charts and forecasts back
ChatGPTFree / $20 mo
The most-used AI assistant — writing, analysis, research, and images from a plain-language chat.
How a Financial Manager uses it: draft emails and documents, summarize long files, and get instant answers to on-the-job questions
ClaudeFree / $20 mo
AI assistant known for careful writing, long-document analysis, and coding.
How a Financial Manager uses it: analyze big reports or spreadsheets and turn messy notes into clean, finished writing
You are the person the general manager calls when a customer wants terms the company has never offered, and the person the chief executive calls when the bank wants a covenant the company has never signed. The accounting team will close the books. Your week is about what the organization can do with the numbers after they exist: how much cash is truly free, which project deserves capital, what the lender will accept, and what the board should hear before it votes. That is the financial manager this career describes. Treasury, the finance lead for a business unit, and the track toward chief financial officer are the work. The monthly package is one input, not the occupation.
Picture a Tuesday in treasury. The cash position is drafted before the operating meeting. You know which receipts are cleared and which are still promises, which payroll will hit, which tax payment is dated, and which revolver borrowing would trip a definition the credit agreement actually uses. A plant manager wants to buy equipment this quarter. You can say yes, yes later, or yes if the vendor will take a schedule that matches collections. The skill is saying which of those is true, and writing it so the plant manager and the lender would recognize the same facts.
Picture a different Tuesday, inside a business unit. The general manager has a forecast that assumes a price increase and a hiring plan. You sit with the operations lead and rebuild the forecast from volume, price, labor, and the contracts already signed. When the margin slips, you want the reason in a sentence the general manager can repeat to the executive team. You are not there to scold the unit for missing a spreadsheet. You are there to make the next decision cheaper to get wrong.
Cash, capital, and the unit you answer for
Treasury work is a relationship business with a numerical spine. You keep the bank group, the deposit accounts, the investment of surplus cash, and the debt schedule. You forecast liquidity far enough out that a surprise is a miss in your model, not a surprise to the chief executive on a Friday. You read covenants before a draw, not after a default notice. You know the difference between cash in a sweeping account and cash that is pledged, trapped, or simply slow. When the company considers a dividend, a buyback, or a large prepayment, you are the person who shows what remains for payroll and for the capital plan.
The business-unit finance lead lives closer to operations. Pricing a bid, staffing a new shift, opening a warehouse, or walking away from a customer are finance decisions even when sales owns the relationship. You build the case, name the assumptions, and stay in the room when the assumption breaks. A good lead can explain a variance without hiding inside jargon, and can tell a general manager that a beloved product is absorbing cost the forecast never admitted. The monthly results matter because they confirm or embarrass the forecast. They are the scoreboard. The occupation is the set of decisions the scoreboard is for.
On a chief financial officer track, the audience widens. Board materials have to be short enough to be read and specific enough to support a vote. Financing conversations have to be honest about collateral, about what the company will look like if volume drops, and about which promises are already made to existing lenders. You may lead a small team: a treasury analyst, a planning analyst, and a partner in accounting who owns the ledger. Your job is to keep those people aimed at the decision, to protect their time from decorative reporting, and to carry the uncomfortable conclusion into the room yourself.
Risk sits in the same chair. Customer concentration, a single-source supplier, a floating-rate loan, a foreign-currency receipt, an earnout from an acquisition: each one is a sentence in a memo if you do the job, and a crisis if you leave it as a feeling. You do not have to pretend to be the general counsel. You do have to know when a number depends on a legal term you have not read, and you have to go read it. The managers who last are curious about the contract, the plant, and the customer, and precise about the cash.
Degrees and the letters after the name
A bachelor's degree in finance or accounting is the ordinary start. It proves you can read statements, build a forecast, and talk about the time value of money without improvising. Employers treat it as the ticket into analyst and senior-analyst seats that later become the manager role. The degree is preparation for that path. A licence to sign an audit opinion, or to hold client money out to the public, is a separate grant from a state board.
A certified public accountant licence, granted by a state board of accountancy, proves you met that state's education, examination, and experience rules. It is especially useful when the seat sits close to technical accounting, acquisitions, or a board that wants one person who can both plan and explain the ledger. Many treasury and unit-finance careers proceed without it. If you want it, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy will point you to the board in the state where you will practice. Study while you work, on a calendar that respects the close and the board cycle, and say on your resume which state and how far along you are.
The Certified Treasury Professional credential is the one treasury hiring managers recognize by name. The Association for Financial Professionals grants it. It proves you have worked through the treasury body of knowledge that association maintains and that you have met its experience expectations. People prepare with the association's materials and with the cash work they are already doing: forecasts, credit agreements, and bank relationships. It does not replace judgment on a live covenant. It tells a recruiter you took the craft seriously.
The CFA charter, granted by the CFA Institute, shows up when the seat faces investments, a treasury portfolio, or a corporate development conversation that speaks the language of markets. The charter proves completion of the institute's program, the required experience, and a commitment to its ethics code. An MBA from a university is common on the chief financial officer track because it proves graduate study in management, not because a statute demands it. Choose the letter that matches the seat you want. A treasury desk reads the treasury credential first. A board-track seat at a company with complex reporting often reads the accounting licence first. Collecting every credential while avoiding a decision is a stall.
What the hiring manager is listening for
Postings for this title are uneven, and the first screen is whether the posting means treasury, unit finance, or a deputy to the chief financial officer. Mirror the posting in the first lines of the resume. If they want a revolver, a thirteen-week cash forecast, and a banking group, lead with those. If they want a unit forecast, a pricing model, and a monthly business review, lead with those. A generic list of software and a line about being strategic will lose to a candidate who names the decision they improved.
Interviews often walk through a live problem. You may be asked how you would fund a seasonal buildup, how you would explain a margin miss to a general manager, or what you would put in front of a lender before a waiver request. Answer with the documents you would open and the order you would open them. Name the cash effect. Name who else has to agree: counsel, the plant, the board. Admit the fact you would not invent in the hallway. Hiring managers in this chair have been burned by confident fiction, and they reward the person who can say "I would check the definition in the credit agreement before I promised that."
References should be people who saw you carry a number into a decision, not only people who liked your spreadsheets. A treasurer you supported, a general manager you challenged, a lender who found you prepared: any one of those is stronger than a stack of adjectives. If you are moving from public accounting or from a pure reporting seat, translate the work. "I owned the cash reconciliation" becomes "I can tell you what is collected, what is trapped, and what the forecast was pretending." That translation is the whole interview.
The market hires all year, with a bulge when companies replace a chief financial officer and the new leader rebuilds the bench, and another bulge when a financing or an acquisition creates a treasury seat that did not exist. Internal promotion is the most common path into the manager title. External hires happen when the company has outgrown the person who learned on the job, or when a lender, a board, or a transaction requires a kind of experience the building does not have. Be ready to talk about scale: the revenue, the debt, the size of the team, and the decision you actually owned. Scale that you only observed should be described as observation.
Toward the chief financial officer
A workable path starts in analyst work that touches cash or a unit forecast, moves to a senior seat that owns a forecast or a banking relationship, and then reaches a manager title with a team or a clearly owned decision. From there, people become treasurer, vice president of finance for a division, or assistant chief financial officer. The chief financial officer chair is the one that holds the board relationship, the external narrative, and the final call on what the company can afford. Skipping straight to that chair from a single technical skill is rare, because the chair is a bundle of skills the board has usually seen in pieces.
What moves you is a record of decisions that turned out to be legible. Keep a private file, with confidential figures removed, of the memos you are willing to discuss: a liquidity plan, a capital request you supported or refused, a covenant conversation you prepared, a unit forecast you rebuilt. In the next interview you will be asked for one of them. Also keep a record of people you taught. A manager who cannot point to an analyst who got better is asking a company to bet that leadership will appear on the first day of the new title.
Some careers stay in treasury on purpose and become the best cash officer in the industry rather than the chief financial officer. That is a full career. Some move from a unit finance lead into general management, because they already understand the operation. Either path is easier to explain if you stop describing yourself as "someone who likes numbers" and start describing the decision you are trusted to make. The companies that pay at the top of this occupation are paying for that trust.
Bring these figures into the compensation talk
Use Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025, for the occupation Financial Managers. The national median is $166,570. Entry pay is $94,310, and the gap from entry to the median is $72,260. If you are stepping into a first manager title from a senior-analyst seat, $94,310 is the lower reference and $166,570 is the market midpoint for the occupation as a whole. An offer near the entry figure for a seat that already owns a revolver, a unit forecast, and a board appendix is an offer you can question with those two anchors, politely, by asking which parts of the job the company believes are still analyst work.
State medians are typical pay, a different statistic from the high end of a published range. New York's median is $219,880, which sits $53,310 above the national median. Virginia's median is $185,220, the District of Columbia's is $188,880, New Jersey's is $199,110, and Massachusetts's is $206,760. A move into any of those markets should be negotiated against that state's median, with housing and tax named out loud. The national midpoint hides the local market. The lowest median in the published set is Puerto Rico at $90,660. The gap from New York's median down to that Puerto Rico median is $129,220. A shared title across those places still leaves pay far apart. Quote the place you will work.
New York is where this chart's published range reaches $370,780, because the workforce there was large enough for a high end to be released. From the national median up to $370,780 is $204,210. Use $370,780 when you are already a treasurer or a chief financial officer candidate in that market, with a record a board can diligence, and when you are discussing total cash compensation at the top of what the Bureau published. Using it to open a first manager negotiation will end the conversation. Match the figure to the season: entry or median for the new manager, the relevant state median for a move, and the New York high end only when the seat truly sits there.
The top of Financial Manager pay — and how to get there with AI
$370,780what Financial Manager pay reaches in New York
Highest state-level top-of-range annual wage for Financial Managers, among states with at least 500 people in the job. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
And the role it leads to — Chief Executives — reaches $772,840 in Oregon.
$94,310entry$166,570middle$370,780top end
Managers in the middle of this range work in whatever systems they inherited; near the top, a financial manager decides what the firm buys, what it retires, and what the change is going to cost in year three.
Presenting fund performance and fee structures, responding to regulatory inquiries, monitoring whether portfolios sit inside their risk goals, directing execution of trades: everyone at this level does this work. What differs is who chose the tools it happens in. Reporting, portfolio monitoring and compliance response are all sold as products now, and the choice between them is usually made by whoever attended the demo. Running that decision properly, with weighted criteria and your own data in the trial, is unglamorous, highly visible, and almost never contested by anyone else.
Your playbook, by where you are now
Just startingLearn what the current stack costs
List every finance system in use, what it cost last year, who administers it, and what it was originally bought to do.
Find the three places where figures are re-keyed between Microsoft Dynamics, Intuit QuickBooks and a spreadsheet, and price those hours.
Rebuild one painful report in IBM Cognos Impromptu or Alteryx, to establish whether the problem is the tool or the underlying model.
Ask a model to draft a requirements list from your notes, then delete every line you cannot tie to a task a named person performs.
What proves it: A one-page inventory of finance systems with costs, owners and duplication clearly marked.
Realistic span: the first eighteen months
A few years inRun an evaluation that deserves the name
Write weighted scoring criteria before you see a single demonstration, weighted by the actual work: trade execution, regulatory reporting, performance presentation, risk monitoring.
Make every vendor run your data through their product, never their prepared sample.
Call references the vendor did not supply, which is the only kind worth the phone time.
Price the exit alongside the entry: migration, retraining, and what leaving costs once the contract renews.
Write the recommendation including the option you rejected and the reason, so the decision can be audited later.
What proves it: A written evaluation, with scoring and rejected options, that a purchase was made on.
Realistic span: years two through six
ExperiencedHold the decision and the consequence
Take the budget line for finance systems and the authority that should come attached to it.
Set how tools are evaluated across the whole firm, and review other people's decisions against that standard.
Present product risks, fees and fund performance to investors out of the system you selected, and be accountable when it falls short.
Monitor regulatory and tax changes for their effect on the tooling, not only on the accounts, since that is where compliance costs hide.
Pay peaks in New York, and the chief executive route is the usual one from this seat.
What proves it: A system decision you owned, still in place three years later, with the costs where you said they would be.
Realistic span: from year seven
The next 90 days
Spend ninety days producing the inventory nobody has. Walk the finance function and write down every system in use, including the spreadsheets that are really systems. For each one record what it cost last year, who administers it, what it was bought for, and what it is actually used for now. Then find the three worst re-keying points between them and put an hourly cost on each. That single document does two things at once: it makes the case for a change, and it makes you the only person in the building who can describe the current state accurately. Whoever can do that ends up running the next selection.
Wage figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. The playbook is PayCrunch editorial guidance, not a guarantee of pay or placement.
Every figure is the national median from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS) shown on that role’s own page.
Never used AI before? Start here (2 minutes).
Start where the numbers already live. Turn on Copilot in Microsoft 365 (Excel and PowerPoint) or the AI features in your FP&A platform (Datarails, Workday Adaptive Planning, or Planful) and point them at one recurring task — the monthly variance analysis or the board pack. Let AI produce the first draft; you check every figure against the source. The goal is to reclaim the hours you spend formatting and reconciling.
For analysis, memos, and communication, use an enterprise plan of Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, or Claude — never a consumer tool with real financials. You bring the business context and own every number; AI accelerates the building, the writing, and the scenario math.
The one rule, forever: Never paste confidential financials, employee compensation, customer data, or non-public results into a consumer AI tool — use enterprise agreements with data-retention controls, or tools that run inside your ERP and BI stack. Every AI-built forecast, reconciliation, or report is a draft you own and verify before it informs a decision or reaches an auditor; the accuracy and the judgment are always yours.
The plays — exact steps, exact prompts
Do these in order. Each one is copy-paste ready. You do not need to know anything about AI going in.
1
Close the books and variance reporting faster
Why this pays: The monthly close and variance analysis eat days of senior finance time every period. Compressing them with AI-assisted reconciliation and reporting frees you for the forward-looking work that influences decisions — which is what gets a financial manager promoted into higher-paid scope.
BlackLineFloQastMicrosoft Excel (Copilot)
1
Automate reconciliations and close-task tracking with a close-management platform (BlackLine or FloQast) so the mechanical matching stops consuming your team's month-end.
2
Draft the variance narrative from your numbers, then have AI turn it into a crisp explanation.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as an FP&A analyst. Here is this month's actuals-vs-budget variance data by line item: [paste anonymized figures and percentages, no confidential detail]. Write a concise variance commentary for a management report: for each material variance, state the driver, whether it is timing or permanent, and the likely full-year impact. Flag the 3 variances leadership should focus on.
Verify every figure and driver against your source system; AI drafts the narrative, you own the explanation.
What you'll haveA faster, cleaner close with commentary management actually reads — and days of senior time redirected to analysis that moves your career.
2
Build scenario-rich forecasts and budgets
Why this pays: A financial manager's value is forward-looking. AI-native FP&A tools let you build driver-based forecasts and run scenarios in minutes instead of days, so you can answer 'what if' for leadership on the spot — the analytical influence that separates a reporting role from a strategic one.
DatarailsWorkday Adaptive PlanningPlanful
1
Move recurring forecasts into an FP&A platform (Datarails, Workday Adaptive Planning, or Planful) so scenarios and rolling forecasts update from actuals automatically instead of by hand in a fragile workbook.
2
Use AI to structure the assumptions and sensitivities behind a forecast.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as an FP&A lead. I'm building a 12-month rolling forecast for a [SaaS / manufacturing / services] business with revenue of [$X]. List the key drivers I should model (e.g., pipeline, churn, headcount, unit costs), the top assumptions to make explicit, and three scenarios — base, downside, upside — with the variable ranges to flex for each. Note which assumptions to sanity-check with the business owners.
Use it to structure the model; the numbers and assumptions come from your business, not the AI.
What you'll haveDriver-based forecasts and instant scenarios that let you answer leadership's 'what if' in the room — the strategic influence that carries pay toward the top of the band.
3
Turn financials into a board and exec narrative
Why this pays: Numbers only move a business when leadership understands them. AI that drafts the executive summary and board deck from your results — then lets you sharpen the story — makes you the finance voice leadership relies on, which is what earns bigger scope and pay.
Microsoft PowerPoint (Copilot)Power BIClaude
1
Build the recurring reporting in Power BI so the visuals refresh themselves, then draft the narrative with AI and make it your own.
2
Turn a month of results into a tight one-page executive summary.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a finance chief of staff. Turn these monthly results into a one-page executive summary for a board: [paste high-level, non-confidential KPIs and variances]. Cover performance vs plan, the three things that changed, the cash-position trend, the key risks, and what we're doing about them. Confident, plain-English, no jargon, one page.
Keep confidential specifics out of consumer tools — use an enterprise plan, and verify every number before it goes to the board.
What you'll haveBoard and exec reporting that lands — the communication that makes you leadership's trusted finance partner and widens your mandate.
4
Strengthen cash flow and working-capital management
Why this pays: Cash is where a financial manager most visibly protects the business. AI-assisted 13-week cash forecasting and working-capital analysis turn cash management from a fire drill into a discipline — the risk control that earns leadership's trust and a bigger mandate.
Microsoft Excel (Copilot)Power BIOracle NetSuite / SAP (embedded AI)
1
Build a rolling 13-week cash forecast and let AI flag the drivers, swings, and shortfalls before they become surprises.
2
Turn the cash data into a ranked set of levers.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a treasury analyst. Here is my 13-week cash forecast data — opening balance, expected collections, payroll, AP, and other outflows by week: [paste anonymized figures]. Identify the weeks with the tightest liquidity, the largest swing drivers, and five levers to improve the position (collections, payment timing, financing). Rank them by speed and impact.
Validate against your real AR/AP aging before acting; the forecast is only as good as the inputs you feed it.
What you'll haveCash management run as a discipline, with liquidity risks caught early — the control that makes leadership trust you with more.
5
Automate cost, margin, and spend analysis
Why this pays: Finding margin is one of the most valued things a financial manager does. AI that digs through cost and spend data to surface the drivers and the savings turns you from a scorekeeper into someone who improves the P&L — the contribution that gets rewarded.
Power BITableauMicrosoft Excel (Copilot)
1
Pull cost and margin data into Power BI or Tableau, then use AI to interrogate it for drivers and outliers instead of eyeballing pivot tables.
2
Ask AI to turn the data into specific, testable savings ideas.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a cost analyst. Here is [department / product-line] cost data over [period]: [paste anonymized figures]. Identify the biggest cost drivers, the lines growing faster than revenue, and five specific, testable cost-reduction or margin-improvement opportunities ranked by impact and feasibility. Note which need business-owner buy-in.
Pressure-test each idea against operational reality before proposing; not every cost is waste.
What you'll haveMargin and savings opportunities surfaced with evidence — the P&L impact that separates a strategic financial manager from a scorekeeper.
6
Lead finance's AI adoption and step into Director/VP scope
Why this pays: The top of the band is a Director or VP of Finance who owns a bigger P&L and a team. Being the person who safely brings AI into finance — with the controls auditors accept — makes you the obvious candidate for that scope and the raise that comes with it.
Microsoft CopilotClaudeChatGPT Enterprise
1
Draft the finance-AI usage policy and a practical rollout plan for your team.
Copy-paste this prompt
Act as a finance controls advisor. Draft a practical AI-usage policy for a corporate finance team: which tools and data classes are approved, the rules on confidential financials and PII, the human-review and sign-off requirements for AI-generated reports and reconciliations, and an audit-trail standard. Practical and enforceable, aligned to SOX-style controls, not legalese.
Have internal audit and compliance review before you publish; this is a starting framework, not final policy.
2
Benchmark your scope and comp deliberately, and make the case for Director/VP scope based on the function you now run and the efficiency you've delivered.
What you'll haveA finance team that adopts AI safely, and the leadership case for Director/VP scope — the path from the middle to the top of the band.
Your 12-month sequence to the top of the range
How the plays above stack into a path from median pay toward the $370,780 tier.
Month 1
Turn on Copilot or your FP&A platform's AI on one recurring task — the variance pack or board summary. Verify every figure.
Months 2-3
Move a core forecast into an FP&A platform and build base, downside, and upside scenarios.
Months 3-6
Automate the close and reconciliations; redirect the reclaimed time to forward-looking analysis.
Months 6-9
Bring AI to cash-flow and cost/margin analysis; surface liquidity and savings levers to leadership.
Months 9-12
Draft and roll out a finance-AI usage policy with audit-ready controls; lead the team's adoption.
Year 2
Use the efficiency and influence you've built to step into Director/VP of Finance scope toward $370,780.
Gear for this job
As an Amazon Associate, PayCrunch earns from qualifying purchases. Links to books and tools are for the job on this page; we only recommend what we’d use in the work.
Same live current GAAP desk reference already on accountant / auditor. This page’s first play is Close the books and variance reporting. Not leftover CIA (that is internal-auditor), not CISA (that is it-auditor), and not QBO Dummies as the close-the-books text.
Next steps for a Financial Manager
Some links below are affiliate or partner links. PayCrunch may earn a commission if you enroll or subscribe through them, at no extra cost to you. Wage figures on this page still come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not from these programs.
Financial Manager work is specific enough that a stamped 'check out these courses' block would be noise. BLS files this work as Financial Managers (SOC 11-3031). O*NET Job Zone 4 is typical: a bachelor's degree, so the honest next credential is a professional certificate or bachelor's-level coursework — not a random catalog dump.
The occupation's listed knowledge area is Economics and Accounting, which is what the course searches below actually query.
Financial Managers in this dataset list Alteryx software among the tools in use, so a program that names that stack is a better fit than a survey course.
Coursera search for economics and accounting — a professional certificate or bachelor's-level coursework that lines up with management, not a generic professional-development aisle.
FlexJobs screens remote, hybrid, freelance, and flexible listings so you are not wading through unverified ads. This is a job-board search for Financial Manager work, not a claim that they list a counted SOC 11-3031 inventory.
Write a Financial Manager resume, or one aimed at Chief Executives, instead of a blank template. Resume Now is a resume builder; we are not claiming a counted template set for this SOC.
A Financial Manager resume that names the actual tasks on this page, or the step-up title Chief Executives, beats a blank template when you apply.
What Financial Managers earn by state
These are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own figures for Financial Managers, state by state — not a cost-of-living adjustment applied to the national number. Only states employing at least 500 people in the occupation are shown, because a state median drawn from a handful of workers is noise rather than a signal.
New York
$219,880
highest of them · +32% vs the national median
Puerto Rico
$90,660
lowest of the 52 states and territories that qualify · -46% vs the national median
The same job pays $129,220 more a year at the median in New York than in Puerto Rico — 143% higher. That gap is what the Bureau measured, before any question of what it costs to live in either place. New York also carries the top of this job’s range, $370,780 — the figure quoted at the head of this page.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 11-3031. 52 states and territories clear the 500-employee reporting floor for this occupation; those below it are left out rather than shown with a wide error band.
Free data. Use any of it.
PayCrunch publishes verified, BLS-sourced salary + AI-playbook data on 1,000+ professions — free, no signup.
No. AI can draft a forecast or a reconciliation, but it cannot own the numbers to an auditor, exercise judgment under uncertainty, design controls, or hold the leadership relationships that decisions run through. What it changes is what you're measured on: less time formatting and reconciling, more time on forward-looking analysis and influence. The financial managers who make that shift pull ahead.
Is it safe to use AI with company financials?
With the right tools, yes. Use enterprise agreements with data-retention controls or AI that runs inside your ERP and BI stack, never a consumer tool with real financials or PII. Verify every AI-produced number against the source and keep an audit trail. The risk isn't the tool — it's using an unapproved one or trusting output you didn't check.
Which AI tools should a financial manager learn first?
Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint, plus the AI features already in your FP&A platform (Datarails, Workday Adaptive Planning, Planful) and BI tool (Power BI). Start where the numbers already live and attach AI to one recurring task, rather than adopting a whole new system at once.
Do I need to learn to code?
No. The leverage is in spreadsheets, FP&A and BI tools, and well-structured prompts, not programming. What matters more than coding is understanding your data quality and your controls — because AI will confidently build on bad inputs if you let it.
How does AI actually raise a financial manager's pay?
By converting reclaimed time into influence. When AI handles the close, the variance tables, and the first-draft forecast, your hours go to scenario analysis, cash and margin insight, and clear reporting that leadership acts on — and to leading the team's AI adoption. That visible, forward-looking value is what earns Director and VP of Finance scope at the top of the band.
Methodology & sources
Salary (median, 10th, top of the range) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS.
By state — the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own state medians, limited to states employing at least 500 people in the occupation. No cost-of-living arithmetic is applied to a wage anywhere on this page.
The plays — PayCrunch's own step-by-step guidance using publicly available AI tools. Tool names/URLs are real and current as of August 2026; prompts written to work as-is. Verify any professional output before relying on it.