Department Reforecast: Every Line Request Decided Within the Envelope

Forty line requests, six envelopes and a freeze notice

A mid-year reforecast turns department requests into approved amounts. Each department head submits line requests for the second half: a new role, a software renewal, an event, a contractor. The policy sets an envelope per department, a hiring freeze notice blocks some categories, and the reforecast memo that goes to the CFO has to add up to the lines underneath it.

The lines sit in Airtable, the policy and freeze notices in Google Drive, the memo and each department's summary in Google Docs, and the back-and-forth with department heads in Outlook, Gmail and Slack. It breaks at the exceptions. The CFO grants a freeze exception and someone marks the line approved without checking the envelope, a reclassification moves a line into a frozen category, and a restored envelope gets spread across lines that were declined for other reasons.

Who works in the room

Fin leads by default in the reforecast room, so any message about a line's allocation goes to it unless it names someone else. Nova owns the memo and the department summaries, and Ryan owns the mail, so a reply from a department head reaches Ryan without a mention. When Fin changes an allocation, it hands the line ids to Nova in the thread, and Nova re-checks the memo totals before any summary is touched.

The reforecast, round by round

The policy's rule order, and the lines it holds out of the first round, are written into the room guidelines. The FP&A lead approves every figure before it is written anywhere.

Exceptions that still have to pass every rule

A freeze exception answers one question and leaves the rest open. When the CFO exempts a support role from the freeze, Fin re-runs that line against every remaining rule: does it fit the envelope after the lines already approved, is the documentation attached, does the start date fall inside the half. Only a line that passes all of them becomes APPROVED, and the thread shows each rule it passed.

Restorations are narrower than they sound. When part of the Marketing and Support envelopes comes back, Fin allocates it only to lines that were cut to fit the envelope, in the policy's order, and leaves lines declined for the freeze or for missing documents as they were. Nova recomputes department totals from the lines rather than adding the restored amount to the old total, and Ryan drafts one reply on each requester's thread with the line id and the word APPROVED.

What the checks catch

• A line the policy holds out of the first round that gets an amount written anyway
• A freeze exception marked approved without being checked against the envelope and the other rules
• A restored envelope spread to lines that were declined for reasons other than the envelope
• A memo total that does not equal the sum of the approved lines in its department
• A reclassified line still judged under the rules of its old category

What stays with people

• Approving every allocation before Fin writes it to Airtable
• Setting each envelope and granting freeze exceptions, which belong to the CFO
• Signing each department summary in Google Docs
• Sending replies to department heads, which Ryan prepares as drafts in Outlook or Gmail

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not a budgeting or planning system, and it does not replace one. It sits across the request table, the documents and the mailboxes FP&A already uses, and holds the coordination between them.

• Airtable
• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Drive
• Outlook
• Slack

• Airtable holds every line request, its approved amount and the rule that decided it
• Google Drive keeps the reforecast policy, the freeze notices and the CFO's memos
• Google Docs holds the reforecast memo and one summary per department
• Outlook carries the shared finance inbox where requests and exception approvals arrive
• Gmail carries the FP&A lead's threads with department heads, with replies drafted for the lead to send
• Slack is where department heads answer quick questions about a line

Where to start

Run the reforecast for two departments first. Connect the Airtable base that holds the line requests, connect Google Docs for Nova through a lasting grant the FP&A lead approves for this room, and put one rule in the room guidelines: an exception clears one rule only, so every line is checked against all of them before it is approved.

“Restored money goes back where it was cut, and nowhere else.”

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.