If you’re working for a startup, and you’re trying to build the perfect budget......stop. Right now.

Let me save you a good chunk of time, energy, and heartache: perfection in budgeting is a myth in startup life. And chasing it will either burn you out or turn your budget into a museum piece tidy, impressive, and completely irrelevant by month three.

If you’re coming from audit, corporate, or even larger scale-ups, this might sound counterintuitive. You’ve probably been praised for accuracy, precision, and detail. But in startups, that same level of rigour can actually hold you back.

Personally, my Fractional CFO company has been hired to replace large and complex budgets by starting from scratch.

Here’s why working for a startup and trying to perfect the budgets doesn't work, and what to do instead.

Start-ups Change....Fast

One of the most difficult transitions when working for a startup is shifting your mindset around planning. Startups pivot.  Sometimes often. Founders take on big bets. New revenue streams appear from nowhere, and expenses scale up faster than hiring plans can catch up. What you map out in January might be laughable by May.

A “perfect” budget assumes stability. Startups are the opposite of stable. So that painstaking 5-tab headcount forecast? It won’t matter if the business decides to launch in the US in Q3 or close a funding round that adds 18 hires overnight.

The Budget’s Job Is Direction, Not Certainty

As a finance leader, your role isn’t to be a human spreadsheet. It’s to give clarity and direction, even if the numbers are approximate.

The budget isn’t gospel. It’s a guide. It should help the founder and leadership team make decisions quickly and confidently. If they have to wait three weeks for you to perfectly reconcile and model a new plan, they’ve already moved on.

Your job is to deliver a version that’s good enough to inform strategy, simple enough to adapt, and flexible enough to evolve.

Your Time Is Better Spent Elsewhere

This is where aspiring CFOs get stuck.

They spend 70% of their month on trying to “perfect” the budget… instead of using their seat at the table to ask questions like:

• Are we using this budget to hit growth goals or just ticking a box?

• What will this plan look like if revenue drops by 30%?

• Are we forecasting enough cash runway to support the next fundraise?

Those are the questions that make you a leader, not a number cruncher.

A Startup CFO Builds the Budget with the Business

If you want buy-in, don't build it in isolation. Get input from sales, marketing, tech and ops. Understand what the product roadmap looks like. What’s likely to change? What bets are being placed?

A budget built purely in finance won’t survive. But a budget built with the business? That hwill get buy-in. It also means fewer budget vs actual battles down the line because everyone’s aligned on the assumptions.

Stop Stressing Over the ‘Final’ Version

There is no final version.

Startups need rolling forecasts. Live models. Agile finance. That doesn’t mean messy or sloppy, keep your version control clean and your assumptions transparent but don’t be afraid to change the model mid-year if the business moves.

Your budget should reflect what’s happening in the business, not be something the team is scared to change.

Working for a Startup Means Leading Through Uncertainty

If you're stuck in budgeting hell right now, remind yourself:

✔ The goal is clarity, not precision
✔ The founder needs fast insight, not a perfect spreadsheet
✔ You’ll never get it 100% right, and that’s OK

What’s not OK? Spending all your time chasing perfection while the business races ahead without you.

Want to learn how to build budget models that actually work in a startup? That’s exactly what we teach in the Financial Leadership Fundamentals course & book because great finance leaders don’t just build numbers, they drive the business forward.

Want to be a confident and skilled Finance leader in 12 months?  Then follow these steps:

• Sign up to our next free workshop.

• Access the FLF Book that gives you an overview of the FLF Framework. 

• Work with me in the Financial Leadership Foundations course  for indepth training to become a confident & skilled finance professional in 12 months.  Includes regular Q&A sessions, networking with other finance professionals & the Advanced Management Accounts course.