Budgeting and forecasting, plus the operational planning that feeds them – headcount, sales, demand, supply chain, projects. One model finance owns and runs, rather than a folder of workbooks.
Most lines are last year plus a percentage, and nobody’s quite sure where some of the others came from.
Budgetholders build their numbers in good faith, then get them back with “it needs to be 10% less”.
The CEO asks a what-if question, and the answer is a week away – or a gut feel.
End the version-control era.
The budget, the forecasts, and the operational plans behind them.
Budgets and reforecasts
One model for the budget and every reforecast after it, so a reforecast is an update rather than a rebuild. Actuals come in by themselves, so the year so far is always the real one.
Driver-based planning
Budgetholders plan in what they actually manage – deals, visitors, hires, units – and the pounds are worked out from there. It’s easier for them, and a number that doesn’t make sense is much harder to hide.
Budgetholders own plans
They put their numbers straight in, with the expected total at the top, and spreads, dropdowns and checks that make a good number the easy one to enter. Nothing emailed, nothing rekeyed.
Headcount and workforce
Person by person, from HR or payroll. A new hire brings their recruitment, equipment and training costs with them, and a pay rise turns up everywhere it should.
Sales, demand and operations
Targets, pipeline, sales capacity and the marketing funnel side by side, so the gaps show early. Plus the demand, supply chain and project plans that drive the numbers.
Scenarios and all three statements
Scenarios you can copy, change and pull back into the budget a piece at a time. And a balance sheet and cash flow off the back of the P&L, without asking budgetholders for anything more.
How it goes
Fixed fee. Agreed before anything starts, including the templates, the reports and bringing in the history you want to compare against.
Weeks rather than quarters. Something live and usable quickly, then built on.
Budgetholders involved early. We talk to a few of them before building their templates, not after, because they’re the ones who have to use them.
Written down and handed over. The model, its drivers and its assumptions are written down, so none of it depends on one person remembering.
Out in the open. Everything runs through our project platform that you have access to, and calls are recorded and transcribed.
The Finance Check: Planning is a few minutes of multiple choice questions about how the budget and forecasts get made. You get a score, where the time is going, and three things to do without us.
At the end, if you’re based in the UK or Ireland, you can pick one area for a free hour of consulting time, such as a review of a budgeting template that’s giving you trouble. If you’re a charity, it’s two hours.
No call required. Nobody rings you afterwards unless you ask them to.
Not always. A lot of what makes a budget round painful is the process rather than the tool, and fixing that first is often the cheapest improvement you’ll make. When a planning tool is the right answer, we’ll say so, and why.
Can you plan the balance sheet and cash flow too?
Yes, and it’s less work than most people expect. Budgetholders plan the P&L as usual; the balance sheet comes from a few assumptions on top, such as how quickly customers pay, and the cash flow comes off the balance sheet movements.
What about predictive or AI forecasting?
It has its place, but for most organisations it isn’t a replacement for the budget – businesses change too much from one year to the next. If you want to try it, we’ll help you run it alongside the usual process for a while and compare the two.
Who looks after the model afterwards?
You, if you want to – the model, its drivers and its assumptions are written down and handed over. If you’d rather not own the admin, we can keep it ticking over instead.
We can work with whatever tooling you use today. When a new platform is the right answer, we implement Vena – it lets you keep Excel, but lose the headaches. Why we chose Vena
No obligation, and no follow-up unless you want one
Start with a conversation that has a scope.
Thirty minutes, free, and you’ll know by the end whether there’s anything here for
you. Most of the organisations we speak with aren’t looking to buy anything right
now – we’re happy to educate and inform, for when the time is right.
