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Prep for a Budget Review

When to use this

A budget review forces trade-offs. Someone wants more headcount. Someone wants a cut reversed. You decide what gets funded and what waits.

Use this before you walk in. The goal is to know the trade-offs cold, so the calls you make are yours.

This isn't a single prompt. It's a back-and-forth. You feed the AI the numbers, it surfaces the tensions, and you work toward the asks you'll defend.

A prompt to start

Open the loop with something like this, then keep going turn by turn:

You're helping me prepare for a budget review. I'll paste my budget below.

Don't just summarize it. Find the trade-offs. Where are two things competing for the same money? Where is spend growing faster than the work behind it? Where would a cut hurt least, and where would it hurt most?

List the 6–8 sharpest trade-offs first, then wait. I'll work through them with you one at a time.

My budget:
[PASTE YOUR BUDGET OR THE KEY LINES]

Work through it step by step

  1. Surface the trade-offs first. Read the list before you react to any one item. The tensions you didn't see coming are where this prep pays off.
  2. Find what you'd cut, and what it costs. Pick a line and ask: if I cut this, what breaks? Push for the second-order effect, not just the saving. A cheap cut with a hidden cost is the one that bites later.
  3. Pressure-test each ask. For every increase you want, have it play the skeptic. Make it ask why now, why this much, why not later. If your reason wobbles, fix it here, not in the room.
  4. Prep your answers. Walk through the questions you'll get on the hard lines. Say the answer out loud, then refine it until it holds up.
  5. Decide your asks. Now name what you're actually walking in to defend. The list is yours: what you'll fund, what you'll cut, what you'll fight for.

What stays your call

The allocations are yours. Full stop. The AI can lay out the trade-offs and press on your reasoning. It can't decide what your business needs next quarter.

It doesn't know which cut you can live with, or which bet is worth the risk. Use it to see the trade-offs clearly. Then make the calls yourself, and own them.

Watch out for

  • Never trust it to restate a number. AI will misread or miscopy a figure and say it with total confidence. Check every number it repeats against your source before you carry it in.
  • The trade-offs are a map, not a verdict. It will rank what to cut as if it knows your priorities. It doesn't. The ranking is your decision, not its suggestion.
  • Keep sensitive lines out of a tool you don't control. Unannounced cuts, specific salaries, anything confidential — work those through offline or in general terms.