The Playbook on Budget Management for Non-Finance Operators

Step 1: Learn the Holy Trinity (Plus Three) 🔼

Before you can ask smart questions, you need to understand six key numbers. Don't worry about calculating them perfectly - focus on understanding what they mean and why they matter.

The Holy Trinity:

• Burn rate - How much money you're spending each month

• Revenue - How much money is coming in each month

• Runway - How long you can last if everything stays the same (revenue and burn)

The Supporting Cast:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - How much it costs to get a new customer

• Lifetime Value (LTV) - How much a customer is worth over their entire relationship with you

• Churn rate - How fast you're losing customers (and their money)

You don't need to calculate these from scratch. You need to understand what they tell you about your business and how they connect to each other.

Step 2: Reframe Finance as Strategic Questions 🤔

Instead of getting lost in spreadsheet formulas, approach budget discussions with these business questions:

Revenue Questions:

• Where are we making the most money today?

• Where have we underinvested that could drive more revenue?

• How much money would we need to make to demonstrate sustainable or explosive growth?

Expense Questions:

• Where are we spending money that doesn't make sense long-term?

• What things will help us make more money, either by increasing revenue or decreasing expenses?

• Are we overpaying for anything significant?

Growth Questions:

• What does our customer acquisition strategy cost us, and is it working?

• How long do customers stick around, and what's that worth to us?

These questions will naturally lead you to your forecast, but in plain English rather than financial jargon.

You may have to learn some finance-related hard skills like month-end closing, creating and reading P&L statements, and so on, but there are plenty of resources online and videos on YouTube that can teach you these things. And there are plenty of tools that you can use to help make these easier.

If you need to learn something quickly, I recommend reading one of my previous issues of Force Multipliers where I cover The Playbook on Learning Anything Fast.

Step 3: Take Inventory Based on Your Company's Stage 👩‍💻

Your first week-one action item is understanding what matters most to your company right now.

If you're in growth-at-all-costs mode: Get a clear financial snapshot of how much runway your current funding buys you, and where you should focus financial efforts to extend that runway while hitting growth targets.

If you're in sustainability/profitability mode: Study your burn rate and identify where spending doesn't make sense. I once coached a company that extended their runway by literally one year just by cutting $1M in wasteful spending. Not because they were running out of money, but because the COO knew it was time to audit finances after more than a year of not looking closely.

Questions to ask yourself:

• When did we last do a thorough spending audit?

• What are our three biggest expense categories, and do they align with our current priorities?

• If we had to cut 20% of our spending tomorrow, where would we start? 

Step 4: Prepare for Budget Meetings Like a Pro ✏️

Walk into budget discussions armed with context, not just spreadsheets.

Before the meeting:

• Review the previous quarter's burn rate and revenue trends

• Identify the top 3-5 expense categories

• Come with 2-3 specific questions about spending that doesn't make sense to you

• Know your customer metrics - how much it costs to acquire customers and how much they're worth

During the meeting:

• Take notes on decisions and their rationale, not just numbers

• Ask "help me understand" questions when something doesn't click

• Focus on the business logic behind budget allocations

Sample questions that make you sound smart:

• "What's driving the increase in our customer acquisition costs this quarter?"

• "How does this spending decision support our path to profitability?"

• "If we're optimizing for growth, shouldn't we be investing more heavily in X instead of Y?"  

Step 5: Know When to Call in the Big Guns 🔫

You need to hire a CFO the moment your expenses and revenue become complicated enough to require dedicated finance expertise. Until then, you should know enough to handle essential CFO functions.

Signs it's time for a real CFO:

• You're spending more than 20% of your time on financial analysis

• You have multiple revenue streams or complex pricing models

• Investors are asking for detailed financial projections you can't confidently create

• You're preparing for fundraising or considering an acquisition

Until then, you can handle:

• Monthly budget reviews and variance analysis

• Basic cash flow forecasting

• Expense category oversight and approval processes

• High-level financial planning tied to business strategy

And if you’re reading this - you're already ahead.

Because you know where to find the stuff that’s actually good. Like my templates and resources, and this newsletter.

Want more operational content?

Check out Coaching Founder for over a dozen free, downloadable Notion templates to use at your company, and tons of write-ups on how to level up your execs, your teams, and yourself.

About Regina Gerbeaux

Shortly after her role as Chief of Staff, then COO, she opened her own coaching practice, Coaching Founder, and has worked with outrageously talented operators on teams like Delphi AI, dYdX, Astronomer, Fanatics Live, and many more companies backed by funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

Her open-sourced write-ups on Operational Excellence and how to run a scaling company can be found here and her templates can be found here.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, daughter, and Formosan Mountain Dog, and can be found frequenting 6:00AM Orangetheory classes or hiking trails nearby.