Marlow & Finch Logistics: a budget cycle in one place
Marlow & Finch Logistics is a fictional freight company with 60 cost centres. Budgeting meant sixty spreadsheets emailed back and forth. This blueprint gives each owner a planning board, a submit and approve workflow, and spend tracked against budget once the year starts.
Blueprint: this model is fully designed and documented, and the live demo is being built next. The company and figures are fictional.
The problem
What wasn't working
Owners planned in their own spreadsheets, finance consolidated by hand, and versions got lost. Once the year started, nobody could see spend against budget until the month-end pack.
The design
How the model is built
- Each cost centre owner plans by account and month on their own board, seeing only their cost centres.
- A status per cost centre moves from draft to submitted, reviewed and approved. Approved budgets lock automatically.
- Headcount cost comes from the workforce model, so owners plan only non-people spend.
- Actuals load weekly and compare with the locked budget and the latest forecast.
Inside the model
What planners work with
Owner boards
A guided sequence for owners: last year's actuals, this year's run rate, then their plan with comments.
Review queue
Finance sees every cost centre's status and can return a submission with notes.
Allocations
Shared costs such as IT and rent are allocated to cost centres by driver.
Variance
Spend against budget and forecast by cost centre, with commentary captured in the model.
Decisions that matter
Why it holds up
Workflow in the model
Status and locking live in Pigment, not in email, so finance always knows where the cycle stands.
People cost from one place
Headcount cost comes from the workforce model so it is never planned twice.
Lock on approval
Approved budgets are read-only and snapshotted, so variance is always against the signed plan.
What the client gets
A budget cycle with no emailed files, clear status for every cost centre, and weekly spend against budget for every owner.
More work
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