Why Finance Teams Should Learn SQL—And Where to Start

This is something I’m personally very passionate about. Over the years, I’ve seen first-hand how learning even basic SQL can completely change how finance teams work—from cutting hours of manual reporting to unlocking insights that would have been impossible in Excel. I’ve taught this to colleagues, built solutions around it, and watched people go from “I don’t do SQL” to “I can’t believe I used to wait for this data.” If you’re even a little curious, I promise it’s worth your time.

Finance teams today are drowning in data—but most still rely on spreadsheets to make sense of it. While spreadsheets remain an essential tool, they are no longer enough. As businesses move to cloud-based data warehouses like BigQuery, Snowflake, and Redshift, finance professionals who know how to query data gain a serious advantage.

Learning SQL (Structured Query Language) is one of the most high-leverage skills a finance team can develop. It’s fast to learn, very powerful, and increasingly essential for modern finance.

SQL Is the New Excel

Spreadsheets are familiar, flexible, and often the fastest way to test a financial model or prepare a quick report. But the flexibility comes at a cost: manual copying, version control issues, and hidden logic buried in cells can slow down workflows and introduce errors—especially when working with larger or more complex datasets.

SQL brings structure to the chaos. With it, you can access real-time data from your company’s central systems, create repeatable queries, and feed dashboards that update automatically. It’s the foundation for automation—and a critical stepping stone toward AI-powered finance workflows.

The Top Benefits of Learning SQL in Finance

Faster, More Reliable Reporting

With SQL, you can query exactly the data you need—when you need it. No more waiting for monthly extracts or manually filtering massive spreadsheets. Once built, SQL queries are reusable, version-controlled, and easy to audit.

Access to Full, Granular Data

Finance teams often work from pre-aggregated exports provided by other departments or BI teams. But SQL lets you access source data directly—from transactions to cost centers to sales line items. That opens the door to deeper analysis and richer insights across functions.

Automation

Most spreadsheet work is manual. Many financial professionals go through the same download, copy-paste and formula dragging workflows and manual checking of results every time they produce a report, even if they do the same thing every month, week or even every day! Data work that entails getting data from one or more sources, then combining, transforming, filtering, aggregating and otherwise manipulating it, before delivering it for analysis, is perfect for automation using SQL.

Better Collaboration with Data Teams

Finance often depends on IT or BI teams to build dashboards or run one-off queries. Knowing SQL removes that bottleneck. You can prototype your own analysis, request exactly what you need, or collaborate more effectively with data engineers by speaking their language. I have seen the speed of development increase 10x or more when one and the same person, the finance professional: 1) knows the business processes and data, 2) knows the end user and use case, and 3) has the technical skills to develop the data and dashboard or analysis independently, compared to the traditional back-and-forth between finance and a data or BI team.

Imagine how inefficient it would be to have finance people who didn't know how to use spreadsheets, and had to rely on a separate team to extract and analyze data for them based on their instructions – if that sounds absurd when considering spreadsheets as the tool, why should SQL be any different?!

Career Growth and Future-Proofing

SQL has become a must-have skill for finance roles in tech, SaaS, and data-driven industries—and it’s quickly spreading to industrial and traditional sectors. Hiring managers increasingly expect finance professionals to be comfortable pulling their own data.

Common Objections (and Why They Don’t Hold Up)

“It’s too technical.”
SQL is actually easier to learn than most people think—especially for anyone familiar with Excel functions like VLOOKUP, SUMIFS, or pivot tables. The logic is straightforward and consistent.

“I don’t have time.”
Start small. Even 10 minutes a day adds up. You don’t need to master every function—just knowing how to write a few basic queries can transform your daily work.

“That’s not my job.”
It didn’t used to be. But finance is changing. Teams that learn SQL gain more control over their data, reduce delays, and drive smarter decisions. That is your job now.

Where to Start

If you’re ready to begin, here’s a simple roadmap:
1. Get access to your company’s data warehouse. Ask your BI or IT team for read-only access to a safe dataset (e.g., financial actuals or sales orders).
2. Learn basic SELECT statements. Focus on SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, and ORDER BY. These will cover 80% of real-world use cases.
3. Practice with real business questions. For example: What was revenue by product line last quarter? How many open POs do we have by supplier? Which cost centers had the biggest increase year-over-year?
4. Use browser-based tools like the Google BigQuery Console. You don’t need to install anything—just open your browser and start querying.
5. Keep going. Build your own small library of queries. Over time, this will grow into a powerful toolkit you can reuse, adapt, and build on.

Final Thoughts

Learning SQL might feel like a leap at first—but it’s one of the fastest ways to level up as a finance professional. It makes your work more accurate, more scalable, and more valuable to the business.

You don’t need to become an engineer. You just need to get started.

In the next post in this learning path, I’ll walk through how to write your first finance-focused SQL queries. Subscribe to email updates so you don’t miss it!