FP&A Clinic- Edition 2

Liran: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and thank you to everyone watching the recording right now. 

We encourage you to use the community as a method for engagement. The main difference between this type of room and a LinkedIn or Webex event is that this is a bidirectional conversation. This is part of the idea behind the FP&A Clinic, but it is also about building this community, so everything is coming together very nicely. 

Definitely use the chat box. You can also unmute yourself, ask questions, and introduce yourself. 

If anyone would like to unmute and introduce themselves before we start, that would be amazing. We are not going to be a huge group today, but at least those who join and want to listen and participate can engage with us. 

Again, if you want to introduce yourself by writing something in the chat or simply unmuting yourself and saying something, that would be great. 

If nobody feels comfortable doing that right now, that’s completely fine. There will be plenty of opportunities to get engaged later. 

Ramya, I’ll move to you to introduce a very relevant topic for this time of year for most companies: budgeting. 

Ramya: Thanks, Liran. 

Again, welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining the session. 

As Liran mentioned, this is not a session where we are trying to explain a concept or teach a particular idea. We are simply picking up a topic that is relevant to the industry based on the business cycle that is happening. 

We are bringing in what we are seeing, and the discussion can go in any direction that you want to take it. You can bring up your problems, and we can talk about them and try to resolve them as a team together. 

So this is absolutely not a webinar where you’re going to be taught a concept. 

With that being said, today we picked up the topic: Where Should Budgeting Begin? 

The reason I was very interested in this topic is that this is exactly the conversation I’m having with a lot of my customers because everybody is preparing for the budget for the next year. I thought this would be a good conversation starter. 

So let me set the preamble of what I’ve been seeing, what I feel could have been better, instead of what is currently happening. 

Let me share my screen. 

Ramya: Do you hear any noise from my side, Liran? 

Liran: There is some sort of noise. 

Ramya: There is a flight-training facility near our community, so you may be hearing that. 

Liran: Oh, wow. I think I’m hearing an airplane or something like that. 

Ramya: Really? Okay. You should have been telling me to come and try my flying skills! 

Do you see my screen properly? 

Liran: I think you’re sharing the same screen. Maybe it’s better to share just the PowerPoint or a different screen. 

Ramya: I’m trying to pick that up. 

Okay, I’ll share the PowerPoint. I can’t see the people for some reason, but please help me here, Liran. Do you see this properly now? 

Liran: Yes, I think that’s okay. 

Ramya: Great. 

I’m curious from the audience side: how many of you are involved in the budgeting process in one way or another—either by collecting the numbers, doing the templates, or explaining the numbers? 

How many of you are involved, either currently or in the past? 

Ramya: Okay, Paul, I see you. 

Charlie as well. Okay, a lot of people. That’s interesting. 

So typically, what is the first thing that happens whenever the budget cycle starts? What is that first thing that happens in your organization? 

There is really no wrong answer. What’s the first thing that happens when budgeting kicks off? Anybody interested in sharing? 

Liran: I think if you raise your hand to share, you can either unmute yourself or write something in the chat. 

What we want to hear from the community members is how you start your first steps of budgeting. Where does it start? In your department? In the executive office? 

Ramya: Let me share some of the things that I keep hearing when I have conversations with customers. 

It’s always about: What is last year’s actual? What template are we going to use? What dimensions are going to come in? What formula changes need to happen? Are the numbers going to reconcile between these two sources? 

These are the most typical conversations that I hear. 

Is it true for everybody too? If it is different, please come up and say so. Otherwise, I assume these are probably the current status quo. 

Liran, what do you think? Where do you think the budget typically starts? 

Liran: I think the only problem with that question is the word “typically.” 

There is nothing typical. Every organization works a little bit differently, and that’s probably why we enjoy what we are doing on a day-to-day basis. It’s never very consistent. 

So I don’t think I can say something like “typically.” 

But I think the overall motion is that budgets, in most cases, start with focusing on the current year. If we’re talking about companies with a calendar fiscal year, the budget process usually starts around this time, anywhere between July and September. 

We usually start with, “Let’s look first at the current year. How is that going to end up before we start thinking about the next year?” 

That would probably be the typical approach. 

But then I think it is interesting to ask whether that’s actually the right approach. 

It’s traditional. I’ve seen organizations doing that over the past 20 or 30 years. But with everything changing around us, is it still the right approach? Do we still need to do what we have always been doing? 

Ramya: Right. I like your answer because the reason I used “typically” is exactly what you said: there is nothing called typical. Every organization is very different. 

Why is every organization different? 

Because somebody might be focused on growth. Somebody might be increasing profitability. There could be various things that they are focusing on. 

So where budgeting should start can be very different from one year to the next depending on what the organization is focusing on. 

I completely understand your point. 

What you said is largely about how organizations approach the budget and how they start building it. 

But if there are different starting points and every organization can start in different places, one question worth asking is this: 

If you bring all the people together in an organization and ask, “What decision does this budget help us make in the next year?” 

If people can answer that question, then probably that’s the right place where budgeting starts. 

Typically, the answers could be growth, hiring, profitability, expansion, or cash. It could be multiple things depending on the stage of the organization and where it is focusing. 

If you notice, none of these answers involve a number. 

There is no number involved. 

It’s always about the business—what the business is trying to do and where the business is trying to move forward. 

So the budget actually starts much before we start collecting the numbers and aligning the templates. 

That’s my understanding and realization. 

Once we know what we are trying to achieve, who we are trying to help, what decisions are being made, and who is making those decisions, it becomes easier. 

Analysts know what numbers they need to collect. 

Finance managers know what assumptions they need to make, why they are making those assumptions, and what kind of assumptions they need. 

Controllers know why certain numbers are important. Should something reconcile with the ERP number or the operations number? 

And the CFO also knows what he or she is focusing on. It’s not simply about giving a target. It’s about explaining what the organization is focusing on and understanding whether the budget is giving the information needed to materialize that focus. 

Previously, I used to start the conversation with, “What is your target?” Then we would discuss how to calculate it top-down and how the bottom-up process would produce those numbers. 

But as we have been working on this, my biggest realization has been that even before we start talking about the numbers, we should start talking about what decision we are trying to make. 

One typical example was a big discussion about hierarchy and how everything should roll up. 

Suddenly, the management decision changed, and they said the responsibility was no longer with the department. It was going to be with the line of business. 

That’s a big shift. 

It doesn’t mean the technology was wrong. It was about the fact that there was no clarity around what the business was trying to achieve and where it wanted to focus. 

We jumped ahead before having that conversation first. 

Liran: Yes, and I think, Ramya, I want to get back to my answer and take your introduction here to give some insight around that. 

Some organizations are still thinking about the budget as a tactical or even almost technical process. 

They say, “Here is my 9-plus-3 template. This is my forecast. Now I need a new template for the next year, so let’s call that the budget.” 

That’s a huge missed opportunity. 

Budgeting is not about creating a 12-month template instead of a 9-plus-3 forecast. It’s an opportunity to think about the business through a different lens. 

How do we reallocate the resources we have? 

If we are in a very successful area, how do we keep investing? 

If we are in a challenging market, how do we save a little bit more? 

What are the decisions that we are trying to make? 

Then we need to put those decisions in place to create a reasonable budget that supports them. 

It’s not simply about saying, “We’re going to end the year at X,” or “How do we get to X plus or X minus?” 

It’s about what we are really trying to achieve with the business. 

That’s the real opportunity—to rethink the business plan rather than just thinking about the numbers. 

If we’re thinking only about the numbers without connecting them to the real strategic direction, then we are missing the opportunity that budgeting gives us. 

Ramya: You’re absolutely right. 

That is going to show up in multiple ways when we are doing our day-to-day activities. 

Can you change the assumptions? 

Can you redo the template? 

Can you give me a different version of the budget? 

After everything has been given, someone says, “This is not the number I was expecting.” 

If we keep facing these situations, those are symptoms that tell us we probably did not have alignment in the beginning. 

One interesting conversation I had yesterday was while we were preparing for the budget. 

The conversation started with: “Should we take the data from Databricks or NetSuite?” 

But actually, the question was not whether we should take the revenue number from Databricks or NetSuite. 

The question was: What are we trying to use that number for? 

We were talking about creating a metric and understanding the trend of that metric in the past. That would give the operations team a guideline to decide what the metrics should be for the future so that they could calculate costs and everything else. 

That was the intention. 

Then came the question: there is a revenue number coming from Databricks and another revenue number from NetSuite, and they don’t match. How do we sync these two numbers? 

There is no reason to try to sync them because Databricks is carrying the sales number, while NetSuite is an accounting system that includes accounting adjustments such as accruals and credits. 

So first we need to understand the purpose. 

We have to step back and say, “Let’s not talk about how to reconcile the numbers. Let’s talk about what we are really trying to achieve here.” 

This was for an operations purpose, so this was going to be an operations template. 

Let’s clarify in that template that this is a number from operations. Don’t try to match it with NetSuite. 

Once that clarification is made, people stop worrying about how they are going to reconcile the numbers. 

Then comes the technology question: How are you going to make it? 

Are you going to take it directly from Databricks? Will there be a manual upload? Are there formula changes? 

All of those technology conversations come after that. 

The initial idea was to jump directly into the solution: “How do we reconcile these two numbers? Should we put an adjustment in place?” 

That was quite unnecessary. 

This was a very interesting conversation we had with one of the customers while preparing for the budget. It may sound trivial, but it points us directly back to the fundamentals. 

Liran: You’re on mute, Ramya. 

Liran: Sorry. I missed it, but I definitely see some people in the chat writing comments. 

I see some confirmation that people are starting with target and goal setting and setting up a top-down target, which is great. 

These are strategic decisions. 

I also see Paul raising an interesting point around the differences between ARR and revenue-gap information. It’s an interesting conversation about how people can tweak between those numbers. 

But those are different conversations. They are tactical conversations, not necessarily strategic ones. 

This is where organizations sometimes get confused. 

If I want to increase my ARR, that’s fantastic, but I need to focus on ARR rather than trying to compare ARR with my revenue-gap line. They probably won’t be aligned unless the business is overly simplified. 

Ramya: That’s right. 

Another conversation in the same line also happened yesterday. 

When you’re talking about intercompany reconciliation in actual reporting, particularly in a company with multiple entities and intercompany transactions, intercompany elimination comes into the picture. 

Then that same concept came into the budget conversation: Is it even required? 

The CFO gave an example. 

If Canada is selling something to the US, the salesperson is not credited for the intercompany sales. So it doesn’t even come into the picture. 

Canada budgets only the third-party sales, and the US budgets its third-party sales. 

The US might procure from Canada, but FP&A will accommodate the cost based on the transfer price for the portion they procure. 

Canada will accordingly put in the relevant cost. 

So there is no fixed rule that because intercompany elimination exists in actuals, it must also go into the budget. 

There are companies that do include it in budgeting because they use it for production-line capacity and other purposes. They may need to accommodate internal procurement and external procurement. 

But in this particular scenario, it was not necessary to budget for intercompany sales because the salesperson was not credited for those sales. 

Again, these are small conversations, but they go back to the basics of what we are actually trying to achieve. 

Liran: We have an interesting question from Seyda. 

The question is: How do we set up the budget for startup companies? 

That’s an amazing question. I’ve worked with many different startups, and I’m sure you have that experience as well, Ramya. 

How do we set budgets for startup companies? 

We cannot start with a forecast. It makes no sense. 

We can definitely start with the strategic direction, but what do we do next? 

Ramya, you have more startup experience than I do, so I’ll hear from you. 

Ramya: My first answer would be that it really depends on the stage of the startup and the resources that the startup has. 

Let me take a step back and explain how my approach would be to planning in a startup, and then I’ll explain a little bit about those stages. 

The main problem I have seen with successful entrepreneurs, startups, and also companies that have not been so successful is that we’re mixing up a lot of different components of how to build the startup. 

My approach—and every consultant or expert may say something different—is that the core and most important piece for startups is product-market fit. 

And this is not necessarily only for technology startups or companies dealing with AI. It could be a service startup or any other small company. 

Product-market fit is the first and most important piece to make sure exists before the budget. 

Product-market fit means understanding who is going to buy from you and what exact service or product they are buying. 

For mature companies, that may seem obvious. But for a startup, it is not always obvious. 

If I’m bringing a new system that helps retailers calculate or optimize discounts, who are actually my buyers? 

Do I get a commission from the retailer, the manufacturer, or the end customer who wants to get a better deal? 

There are many questions. 

Who is really paying for my service, and how? 

That’s the starting point, and it needs to be identified. 

A lot of entrepreneurs say, “We can sell to everyone. Everyone will buy our service.” 

If that’s the mindset, it’s very difficult to succeed. 

It’s very rare that you can sell to everyone, especially as a startup. You don’t have the resources for that. 

So product-market fit—who is going to buy from me and for how much—is the first piece. 

That needs to be identified not as an Excel exercise or a budget exercise, but as part of the business plan. 

Once that exists, you can move into the tactical and operational plan of the startup, and that’s where you can put the budget together. 

Usually, a startup will have a business plan that they present to investors. 

Let’s say they say, “I need to make my first million dollars within the next six months.” 

To me, the budget starts there. 

If I need to bring in $1 million and I know I’m going to sell subscriptions to a unique service, how much is each subscription? 

If it’s $1,000, that means I need 1,000 transactions within six months. 

Is that realistic? 

Assuming yes, let’s take one step backward. 

How do I make 1,000 transactions of $1,000 each? 

When will my first transaction come? Is it today? Is it a month from now? Is it three months from now? 

Then I build the revenue ramp to make sure I can meet the goals committed to in my business plan. 

Once I have that, I build the resource plan. 

How much will this cost me? 

Do I need salespeople? 

Do I need technology? 

What fees will I have to pay to different brokers or intermediaries? 

So there is definitely a top-down approach similar to what larger organizations do. 

But the first piece is product-market fit, followed by the revenue breakdown by month, and then the resources needed to deliver it. 

In many ways, it’s not very different from a large organization, just at a much smaller scale. 

The main difference between a startup and a large enterprise is the experience and complexity. 

But the stages are the same: 

What are the goals? 

Who is going to pay us? 

How are they going to pay us? 

And how much is it going to cost to bring those sales and deliver the services? 

Liran: Stella, go ahead. 

Stella: Thank you so much for the explanation. I was also a financial controller in one of the startup companies, and it was really challenging for us to build the revenue and budgeting for the first time. 

We also had long-term planning, including five-year planning. 

In that case, we were looking at the overall market. If there were competitors, we would look at them and understand their pricing, what they were doing well, what they were not doing well, and the pros and cons of the competitors. 

We could use that as something to investigate and learn from. 

I would like to hear your perspective on that. 

Liran: Maybe just to answer that, although we’re in a recorded session and I may not want everyone to hear everything I’m going to say, I will still say it. 

A five-year plan for a startup is great as a marketing pitch for investors. 

But anyone in this market knows that it is mainly showing ambition. 

If I’m an investor, I’m not really looking at that as the most important thing. 

Of course, if the startup is already mature, it’s a different story. But for an early-stage startup, it doesn’t matter as much. 

What matters is literally what is going to happen within the next three to six months. 

And the next question is: Can you stand behind your commitment for the next three to six months? 

Let’s say it’s a completely new startup and you haven’t been selling anything yet. 

You have an assumption that you can recruit 10 customers and each will pay $5,000 for your service. 

After three months, can you actually execute against that? 

That’s the biggest question. 

If you cannot make a plan that is specific enough and small enough to say, “This is what I’m going to do, and this is what I’m going to execute,” then to me, that plan is worthless in a startup. 

If you cannot be very specific about what you’re going to do in the next three months and stand behind it, then something is wrong. 

And if after one month you realize you’re on the wrong path, it’s better to change direction after one month than wait three months and then say, “I failed.” 

It needs to be specific for the next three months. 

If it’s not happening within three months, something is wrong. 

Startups can be different if they are heavily focused on R&D or very large projects, but for many startups today, if you cannot sell or demonstrate traction, that’s a problem. 

I want to take this one step further, outside the budgeting conversation. 

In my other role in a product company, we tried to change the approach and literally not develop features that were not being requested by customers. 

How would you develop a product today if you don’t have customers who are already using it? 

Sometimes it may be better to have non-paying customers who are actually using your product rather than potential customers who might pay in the future. 

That’s also a big question for startups. 

Is the budget really revenue-driven, or is it operationally driven? 

Maybe initially you need to focus on how to onboard the first couple of customers and allocate resources to onboard them rather than focusing entirely on revenue. 

Ramya: I’m just retrofitting what you mentioned to my own startup journey. 

Ours is a very boutique EPM services company. 

The first thing, you’re right, was identifying the product and service market. We knew we were going to sell to the small and medium segment. 

All of those things were identified. 

The biggest realization for me, even though I’m an accounting and finance person, was that when you’re running a company, you don’t necessarily focus on getting your books properly structured until you reach a stage where it really makes you think about it. 

The first thing I had to do was segregate what I was actually doing based on how I wanted to grow the business. 

If the focus is the small and medium segment, do I have the books recorded according to the type of customers I’m working with? 

Maybe I have all the customers together. Am I classifying them as enterprise customers, small and medium customers, and so on? 

Then there are different types of services that we provide. 

So first, getting the books right. 

Once I had that actual information, it gave me clearer visibility. 

In the initial three years, my whole business was concentrated around a particular relationship, which was the biggest risk to me. 

That’s where you’re right, Liran. When you mentioned three to six months, that’s a plan we should be looking at. 

This was very true in my journey. 

I had to identify the biggest risk and ask: How are we going to change that over the next two or three months? 

Am I going to diversify by 5% in the next three months and 10% in the next six months? 

That was the lens we had to put on. 

Then we also looked at whether the work was development work or support and maintenance. 

Is it recurring revenue or one-time revenue? 

That’s another kind of risk to the business. 

Diversification from that side also needed to be a focus. 

That’s my experience, and I think it fits into the framework you explained. 

Liran: Exactly. So it’s really about focusing on the customer. 

Make sure you have customers even before you have the revenue. 

Liran: Let me just check that I’m not missing some other questions. 

There is another question or comment around analyzing direct competitors’ financial results and whether that would be reasonable to use as a benchmark for revenue and expenses. 

The question is essentially: Do we want to use benchmarks when we’re doing our own analysis? 

I think anyone who says no would probably make a mistake because the whole market and stock exchange market work with benchmarks. 

Even when we’re looking at successful companies such as Microsoft, Google, or Apple, it’s all benchmarking. 

How much money do they have? How profitable are they? 

We cannot ignore benchmarks. 

But there is a fine line between the benchmark you need to show in your financial results and your operational method and strategy. 

I think the benchmark is mostly through the KPI and the results of the company. 

Is the company more profitable? 

Is it more profitable because it has more customers? 

Or because it has fewer but more profitable customers? 

The benchmark is more relevant for the bottom line and where you want to be, but not necessarily for your strategic and operational method. 

That really depends on the advantages each company has. 

Let me give an example. 

I was working, more than a decade ago, with two types of car dealerships. 

Both dealerships were pretty large, and each had a huge network of service centers and shops. 

One dealership treated all the brands similarly. It had one sales manager for all the different brands. 

The other dealership had four different brands and four different sales managers. They were looking at everything vertically. 

One was looking at KPIs by brand, while the other looked at everything as an aggregated business. 

What is the best approach? 

I don’t think there is a single best approach. 

It depends on the nature of the company and how it wants to operate. 

If the company thinks it is best to have salespeople specialized in a specific brand, that makes sense, especially if you have luxury cars versus more common cars. 

If the cars are more similar and a salesperson can sell each of them, that can help with capacity planning and effectiveness. 

Both approaches can be good enough. 

The bottom line is: which business is better? 

If those two companies are in the stock exchange market, you eventually want to see which one is more profitable, which one has more cash in the bank, and so on. 

It doesn’t really matter how they achieve that. 

It doesn’t matter whether they use more Salesforce or dedicated salespeople for each brand. 

That’s the operational method they use to achieve their goals. 

So the benchmark, to me, is about how you get to the bottom line correctly. 

I wouldn’t try to fit my sales approach to another company’s sales approach. 

I would build the sales approach that fits my company, my resources, and the talent within my company. 

Ramya: Liran, if we put the same benchmark in the context of a startup, what would you recommend? 

It all depends on what stage the startup is in. 

The software benchmark may not be directly applicable. 

If we take competitors as a benchmark, how would you approach that if, for example, I’m in a growth phase while my competitor is slightly more stabilized? 

Liran: Honestly, in an early-stage startup, I wouldn’t even look at the benchmark. 

The only KPI I would look at in a startup is cash. 

It’s the fuel. 

How many months can I survive with my current cash? 

From a finance and even strategic perspective, that’s the only KPI I would focus on in the early stage. 

If I have enough money to hire five or fifty people for three months, I know that after three months that money is going to be gone. 

I need to make sure that whatever I’m doing within those three months is using that fuel to get me to a place where I can refuel in three months. 

That’s why, in the early stage, cash is the key KPI. 

Even if the founder’s plan is to find 100 customers who pay $100 each, but instead they find only two customers willing to pay $5,000 each, that’s okay. 

But if they end the three months with no cash for the next milestone, it doesn’t matter. 

So, in an early-stage startup, you can look at the market and how the market reacts as a sanity check for your plan. 

But that is not necessarily your KPI. 

The KPI is: How do you use your cash flow to survive until the next milestone? 

You don’t want to be surprised when the money ends and suddenly you don’t know what to do. 

Be prepared for that and make sure everything you are doing is based on a clear understanding of the cash position. 

One thing I really love about founders and entrepreneurs is that they always say, “Everything will be fine. We’ll get there.” 

But I think our responsibility in finance is to say, “Absolutely, everything will be fine. But here is the reality check.” 

And the reality check is cash. 

If you need a loan, take the loan. 

But the loan needs to come when you can go to your banker with strong numbers and a great projection—not when it’s too late and you have no money and no plan. 

It’s better to know that you need those funds when you can still show success and show your plans. 

Don’t wait until you’re broken and then ask for funding. 

The timing of funding is also part of the plan. 

Liran: And again, that cash conversation was mostly for early-stage startups. 

If you’ve passed that early stage and already have customers or good investors, that’s a different story. 

Then I would say the commitment is really to the operational plan. 

How many customers need to be onboarded? 

How much churn is expected? 

What is the growth? 

What is the profitability? 

If it’s a technology startup, how do you stay up to date with technology without spending too much compared with what you earn? 

It’s more about how solid your plans are from a finance perspective, including gross cost and related factors, and less about cash. 

If you’ve already been funded and you’re ready for the next stage, stand behind your plans and your commitments. 

Even if you run over your cost right now, there needs to be a way to cover it. You shouldn’t simply create a situation where all the cash is being consumed along the way. 

Liran: Good. I’m trying to see if we missed any comments or questions. 

Is there any other comment or question for Ramya or me? 

Ramya: When we initially started this conversation, you talked about how we typically start with the 8-plus-4 or 9-plus-3 forecasting. 

I think that’s an interesting conversation we can have as a separate topic. 

At the beginning of the year, the question is: What are we committing to for this year? 

That’s the budget. 

In the middle of the year, the question becomes: How have things changed? 

That’s more of the forecast. 

Before we start the following year, the typical question is: How are we expected to end the year if we continue on the same path? 

That’s more of an LBE. 

But LBE and forecast are often used interchangeably. 

I’m seeing that nuance and distinction across different companies. Some companies are very particular about the distinction. 

That’s an interesting conversation to have in another session. 

Liran: Right. 

And I also think another interesting conversation is around people starting with setting goals top-down. 

I definitely misspoke earlier when I said that was a mistake. I’m not sure there are big mistakes here; there are different approaches. 

But I really think it is usually not the best practice to start the budget bottom-up. 

What we see in many organizations is that they start bottom-up, numbers are aggregated, they reach the CFO or CEO, and the leadership immediately rejects them. 

Then everyone who worked on the bottom-up process becomes frustrated because their numbers weren’t approved. 

If instead you start by saying, “Here are the expectations. Now try to align with them,” that is a much better approach. 

So definitely, I think starting the budget with a top-down direction is one insight from today. 

And the second insight is that this top-down direction should not simply be a financial target. It needs to be aligned with the overall business plans and goals the organization wants to achieve. 

Ramya: Right. 

Liran: Amazing. 

I think we’re getting close to the top of the hour. 

Ramya, would you like to give a short summary or perhaps a final question to the team? 

Ramya: Sure. 

This is one of the biggest takeaways for me from our recent conversations. 

Generally, the better first week of any budget cycle is not spent talking about which template, which version, or which hierarchy. 

The conversation is much more effective if we first understand: 

What is the intent? 

What are we trying to achieve? 

What decision should this budget support? 

A target by itself doesn’t tell you what you are trying to achieve. 

For example, there may be a 10% revenue target and a 5% cost target, but the real focus might be cost control or profitability. 

Those are the things we need to understand first. 

What are we trying to achieve? 

What decisions should the budget support? 

Should we hire more people or fewer people? 

Should we focus on cash? 

What decisions do we need to make? 

Once we understand that, it automatically drives the information we need. 

That’s where the bottom-up process comes in. 

Where should I go? 

What information should I collect? 

Should it be operations information or accounting information? 

Those questions become much easier to answer. 

I’ve found that this conversation makes the budgeting process much more effective and helps us avoid a lot of rework. 

Of course, there will always be rework. There will always be changes. Once we have clarity, it doesn’t mean nothing will change. 

But we can reduce it significantly. 

And we can avoid a lot of the late nights and weekends that typically come with budget season. 

Liran: Absolutely. 

So maybe, again, I would like to thank everyone here, and especially you, Ramya. 

Are there any questions or comments? We still have a few moments to share more ideas. 

And if there are other topics the team would be interested in, we’d love to bring them up and talk about them. 

As you can see, each person has a different point of view. One person doesn’t necessarily have the single answer or solution for everything. 

If there is another topic you have in mind that would be interesting to bring up in the clinic, you can put it in the chat or come up and talk about it. 

Liran: Absolutely. 

For anyone listening to the recording, and for everyone who joined this call, thank you. 

There is a chat assigned to every session, so you can use that chat. If you have a question for the broader audience, you can always use the discussion group. 

That’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve here. 

If you have a specific question for Ramya or me, or a specific request for our next clinic session, please ask. 

The idea behind this community is to serve each other and make sure that we can come up with relevant topics. 

Ramya and I will always be happy to come together and create these helpful conversations. 

I think these conversations don’t necessarily just help with a specific tactical need today. They are part of the professional journey of every one of us—to hear about other companies’ challenges and be ready for whatever is changing in our businesses and careers. 

Liran: Great. I don’t see any more questions coming up, so I think we’ll close at this point. 

I want to thank you again, Ramya, for participating, arranging the session, and thinking about the topic. 

I also see that Vishnu is here and has been helping with setting this up, so thank you both for making these efforts. 

And thank you everyone for participating, asking questions, or simply listening and enjoying the session. 

Ramya: Thank you, Liran. Thanks, everyone. 

Liran: Have a good day. Thank you.