A podcast where real practitioners talk through how they actually build and manage budgets — not the textbook version, the one that works under pressure.
The most common mistake isn't bad maths — it's starting with the wrong question. This episode walks through the framing errors that cause budgets to collapse in month two.
Categorising costs sounds simple until you're looking at a lease with variable components or a salary with performance elements. Guest Orla Finnegan shares how her team handles edge cases.
People pad estimates when they don't trust the process. This episode is about building the kind of conversation that gets you realistic inputs instead of inflated ones.
Three scenarios quickly becomes fifteen versions nobody can track. Tomás Ó Briain explains the minimum viable approach that still gives leadership meaningful options.
The series follows the actual sequence of a budget cycle — from initial framing through to variance review. You can dip in anywhere, but listening in order makes the connections clearer.
The series was designed alongside finance practitioners who do this work year-round. Every topic came from a real question someone asked during a planning cycle.
No slides, no screen recordings. The conversations are designed to be absorbed while doing something else — commuting, cooking, walking.
Every episode comes with a written summary and the key frameworks discussed, so you can reference the specifics without re-listening.
Guests are practitioners — finance managers, analysts, and planning leads — not consultants. They talk about what they actually do, including what hasn't worked.
Each guest was chosen because they've worked through budget cycles in organisations with real constraints — not just in advisory roles.
Orla has run annual planning cycles for eleven years across two industries. She's particularly sharp on cost classification and the politics of getting accurate estimates from teams who don't trust finance.
Tomás built his team's scenario modelling process from scratch after their previous approach produced seventeen versions of the same budget that nobody could reconcile. He talks through what he'd do differently now.
Brigitte works in environments where budgets are tied to grant conditions and external reporting requirements. Her perspective on building flexibility into constrained budgets is one of the most practically useful conversations in the series.
All six episodes are available through Fezitee. Start from the beginning or jump to the part of the budget cycle you're currently stuck on.