← The FP&A libraryPractice · 3 questions → Build my 2027 budget →Meet your AI CFO →
Budgeting & planning
The annual operating plan
The year's plan by month: revenue, costs, headcount, capex, and cash, built from drivers and agreed with the leaders who own each line. The baseline every month's actuals are compared to.
Owned by: Senior analystTest band: Senior analyst
In practice
Build it bottom-up from drivers, then top-down as a sanity check. If the two disagree by more than a few percent, one of them has a bad assumption.
More in budgeting & planning
Free · no account · no card
Get your 2027 budget built from your QuickBooks — P&L, balance sheet and cash flow, in Excel.
Knowing the method is half of it. Wauvel runs it on your QuickBooks, every day.
$99/mo, everything included. Free for 14 days, no card.