Before you start
- Connect your AI client. Read access is enough to review the plan; saving changes also requires write access.
- Identify the budget, companies, financial year, currency, and months to update. Specify which months must remain exactly as originally budgeted. Keeping budget values unchanged is different from replacing them with actual results.
- Have the hiring plan, sales forecast, and approved planning assumptions available. Identify any amounts already included in the baseline so they are not added twice.
See an example
The recording uses illustrative figures and assumptions. Its sales probabilities and timing are examples, not rules to apply to your own forecast.Review one change at a time
1. Compare the baseline with actual results
Compare the same accounts, companies, periods, and currency. Separate recurring changes from one-off expenses and seasonal movements. Do not assume that the first half of the year represents every remaining month. Ask for a proposed monthly forecast showing the original value, revised value, reason for the change, and effect on profit. Review this proposal before creating or updating a budget version.2. Create a separate version
Ask the client to copy the original budget only if its available tools support that action. Confirm the new version’s identity and check that its starting values match the original, including the protected months. If the client cannot create the copy, create it in Control and give the client that version to work with. Do not let it update the original instead.3. Add the hiring assumptions
Specify start dates, salaries, employer costs, and part-time arrangements. Review related expenses such as software seats, equipment, and recruiting separately: they may start at different times and may already be included in the plan. Require the client to show which accounts change, the calculation for each account, and any assumptions that still need a decision.4. Add the sales forecast
Agree on the probability assigned to each deal and check for overlap with revenue already in the baseline. Set revenue timing from the expected service period and your approved planning policy—not automatically from the deal’s close month. Keep expected cash receipts separate from revenue. Review the weighted, month-by-month revenue table before saving it. Leave uncertain dates or probabilities visible rather than substituting invented values.5. Review related costs and save approved changes
Check whether additional revenue or hiring affects delivery costs, commissions, recruiting, or taxes. Use an approved rate or documented assumption; an unsupported estimate should remain a question for review. Before each write, confirm the exact budget version, months, account mappings, currency, and proposed values. For budget-value updates, keep each batch to 240 values or fewer. Preview withdryRun: true, then submit the same approved values with dryRun: false. For unified budgets, pass the preview’s contentRevision as expectedRevision and include a stable clientMutationId when committing or retrying the same request.
Process batches in order, obtaining a fresh preview and revision for each batch after the previous batch commits. If a revision conflict occurs, read the current budget, preview again, and obtain approval for the updated preview before retrying. Never discard the revision check or overwrite another person’s changes. A changed payload requires a new review and approval.
Read back the saved values and reconcile the account totals and profit impact. Check that the original budget and protected months remain unchanged. Omitted values do not mean zero.
Try it in your workspace
Start with a read-only proposal:Review Example Corp’s 2026 budget in EUR. Propose updates for September through December using actual results through August. Keep January through August exactly as originally budgeted. Show the original and proposed monthly values, the evidence for each change, and the profit impact. Do not create a version or save changes yet.Then review additional layers:
Use the attached hiring plan to propose staff costs and related expenses. State start dates and employer-cost assumptions, and identify anything already included in the baseline. Do not save changes.
Compare the attached sales forecast with revenue already in the budget. Show deal probabilities and monthly revenue using the agreed service-period assumptions. Do not assume revenue starts in the close month, and do not save changes.Approve each save separately once the proposal is correct.
If the forecast is wrong or incomplete
Protected months changed
Compare the revised version with the original and identify the exact affected cells. Review a correction that restores those values; do not rerun the whole forecast or overwrite unrelated changes.Sales revenue landed in the wrong months
Check the approved probabilities, service dates, and baseline overlap. Review the corrected monthly table before saving it. A deal’s close date alone does not establish when revenue should be planned.A write failed or completed only partly
Read back the target version to find which values were saved. Do not replay the entire adjustment blindly. Retry only the unchanged request when its retry identifier makes that safe; otherwise review the outstanding changes as a new proposal.The total changed without a clear explanation
Reconcile the revision against the original account by account and attribute differences to the baseline, hiring, sales, and related-cost changes. Keep unexplained differences visible until resolved.Related workflows
Create a budget from scratch
Prepare an initial plan from actual results.
Import a budget
Bring in a plan that already exists in a workbook.
Compare budget with actual results
Review differences using consistent periods and account mappings.
Plan and review a budget
Compare versions and review the plan in Control.