The budget, measured against every close

The budget starts from the company's own drivers and planned changes, and adds levers and changes of its own: billable and overhead FTE, utilisation, the growth figures, and hires or cost changes for the plan alone. The forecasts never read them, so plan and forecast stay apart.

A budget is shaped as a draft on the operator app's Budget screen and rebuilt with every change. Locking it fixes it for good; a change after that is a new version, with the locked one as its parent and a reason. A budget made after its year has started is labelled reconstructed wherever it appears.

Once a budget is locked, every build compares the year with it:

Each variance is read as favourable or adverse in words, and colour marks only the ones large enough to matter.

The full-year outlook is the actual to date plus the EBITDA forecast's remaining months, held against the full-year budget.

Two memo rows show the same year with the remaining months at the team's capacity.

A locked budget for the coming year shows as the plan year before its first close: its months, its capacity and the outlook against it.

The variance bridge runs from budget EBITDA to actual EBITDA for the year to date, as a waterfall and a table. Its steps are headcount, hours per FTE, utilisation and rate, then the revenue outside billed hours and the three cost lines: personnel, external services and other operating expenses.

The steps add up to the difference to the cent. Where hours or headcount are missing, revenue is one step and the page says why.

The group report compares EBITDA: the entities' locked budgets, each month converted at the rate of its actual. An entity without a locked budget is named on the group P&L.

The budget stays out of the data room until the company discloses it. Then the P&L workbook carries the budget columns and a Budget sheet with the version, its months and the bridge, and a locked budget for the coming year gets a workbook of its own.