It’s been so fun sharing all this planning stuff with you.

If there’s one thing I know, it's that both your budget and my budget will both be “wrong” at the end of 2024.

I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to hear that after four banger posts on this planning thing we do. But demz the facts.

It’s really a matter of who’s “less wrong”.

I always tell my teams that budgeting for anything that’s in hyper growth mode is really, really hard. I mean, try to predict anything in your life that’s literally doubling each year - it’s like a bad carnival trick where they spin you around, blind fold you, and ask you to throw a dart at a board that’s also moving.

And planning for 2024 will be even more difficult. Although we might be taking a bit of heat off our fastball when it comes to top line growth next year, you’ve got a lot more to pay attention to. Much like you can’t build a house with expensive windows and no roof, you can’t present an operating plan to your board that isn’t solid at both the top and bottom of the P&L.

A quick recap of what we covered in the four prior lessons, and then five parting tips.

(And if you want to hear more verbally, I’m lucky enough to speak with the fine FP&A folks at Abacum today during their “CFO Days” about this crazy budgeting game we play.)

Part I: The Kickoff

  • Who’s involved in annual planning?

  • Bottoms up vs tops Down forecasting

  • Guiding questions and guardrails

Your Complete Guide to Annual Planning (Part 1): The Kickoff

Our five part series on Annual Budgeting for Tech Startups

www.mostlymetrics.com/p/kicking-off-the-annual-planning-season

Part II: Building sales capacity

  • Modeling out rep ramp time

  • Pod ratios: Business Development Reps, System Engineers, and Sales Managers

  • Quota deployment and over assignment (shhhh!)

Your Complete Guide to Annual Planning (Part 2): Building Sales Capacity

Our five part series on Annual Budgeting for Tech Startups

www.mostlymetrics.com/p/your-complete-guide-to-annual-planning

Part III: Designing a marketing budget

  • Modeling Pipeline Coverage and understanding the marketing funnel

  • Working with your CMO to develop a “GL pick list”

  • Programs vs People cost split

Your Complete Guide to Annual Planning (Part 3): Marketing Budget

Our five part series on Annual Budgeting for Tech Startups

www.mostlymetrics.com/p/your-complete-guide-to-annual-planning-666

Part IV: Costing out the P&L

  • Modeling headcount as an input, and a driver

  • Forecasting non-people costs

  • Developing a mutually exclusive list of expense types

Your Complete Guide to Annual Planning (Part 4): Costing out the P&L

Our five part series on Annual Budgeting for Tech Startups

www.mostlymetrics.com/p/your-complete-guide-to-annual-planning-f87

Part V: Bringing it all together (This post!)

  • Modeling P&L by cost type vs P&L by department

  • Checking your outputs: CAC Payback, ARR per head, cash runway

  • Five year plan tie in

OK, and to put a bow and ribbon on this series, here are five tips for planning your operating plan in an uncertain economic environment.

They aren’t for the faint of heart.

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