Here’s the truth no one wants to admit: most 13-week cash flow forecasts are just glorified guesswork. We treat them like gospel because they’re standard. Safe. Palatable. But if you’ve ever had to explain a sudden shortfall to your CEO or board, you already know: Thirteen weeks is not a crystal ball. It’s a snapshot. […]
Let’s start with a blunt truth most leaders don’t want to admit: You’re not going to predict the future. Not with that pristine forecast. Not with that 50-tab spreadsheet. Not even with your new AI-powered tool that’s supposed to “learn” the business. And that’s okay. Because scenario planning isn’t about guessing right. It’s about being […]
Let me be honest: budgets are broken. At least, the traditional kind. You know the one: twelve-months-in-advance, set-it-and-forget-it, rooted in last year’s numbers, built to please the board rather than steer the business. I’ve built those. I’ve torn them apart, too. Rolling forecasts, when done right, aren’t just a better planning tool—they’re a better way […]
I used to think we could scale our finance team with grit, hustle, and spreadsheets. And for a while, we did. Forecasts were living documents (in five tabs). We tracked cash burn on whiteboards. The budget was something I explained out loud more than I ever wrote down. Eventually, I realized that if we were […]
I remember the moment I realized our FP&A team had become a reporting machine. It was a Tuesday. 7:43 p.m. I was still in the office. Someone from ops had just Slacked me asking for a version of the Q2 forecast that accounted for a 5% shift in headcount timing. I was on version 17 […]