Finance & Operations

My new COO has banned budget reforecasting mid-year and I’m genuinely worried about July’s halfway mark

Niyi Sarkar · 26 Jul 2026

We’ve always run a light-touch Q2 reforecast to catch drift before it turns into a Q4 panic, but our new COO’s called it sandbagging by spreadsheet and stopped it entirely. Now we’re heading into July with frozen budgets set last November, raw material costs up 18%, and three department heads quietly admitting their numbers are already shot. I get the argument that constant tinkering erodes accountability, but watching a slow-motion miss feel avoidable is doing my head in, am I being too precious about forecasting, or is set it and forget it genuinely daft in this economy?

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4 replies

Faris Byrne · 26 Jul 2026

Given we're now 6 months into the financial year, I'm concerned about the impact on our rolling 12 month EBITDA forecast, which is tied to our executive bonus scheme, and using tools like Anaplan to model this out is going to be essential. Our finance team will need to get creative with some what-if scenarios, like a 10% cost saving plan, to mitigate the risk of a significant variance come year end.

Adjei Ali · 26 Jul 2026

I am with you on this one, our old CFO used to do a similar reforecast in Q2 and it really helped us avoid surprises at the year end, we used to use Excel to model out the changes and it was a pretty straightforward process. We have seen raw material costs go up by around 15% in the past and not accounting for that can be a recipe for disaster. I think your new COO might be misunderstanding the purpose of the reforecast, it's not about sandbagging but about being realistic about the numbers.

Nehal Carter · 26 Jul 2026

That's a tough spot to be in. Are you planning to raise this with your new COO as part of your regular financial review or wait for a more significant variance to emerge?

Ghulam Sharma · 26 Jul 2026

Fresh from a meeting with our auditors, I'm not convinced a mid year reforecast is always the best approach, it can create a culture of undercommitting to avoid missing targets. Our teams might be tempted to lowball their forecasts to make it easier to hit their numbers, which isn't exactly what you'd call a healthy approach to financial management. Perhaps it's time to look at how we're setting those initial budgets in November, and see if we can't build in a bit more flexibility to account for the kind of changes you're seeing now.