Planning for 2026, no crystal ball required

The start of every year is when finance teams are asked to do two things at once: lock in the plan for the next 12 months and immediately start reconciling it with reality.

That’s why we recently teamed up with Thrive Capital to bring together a group of finance leaders for a Ramp Community breakfast. This was a chance to step away from dashboards and inboxes and have candid conversations about defining goals, resetting planning assumptions, and using modern budgeting to make better decisions as plans inevitably change.

Here are a few takeaways that finance and accounting leaders are using right now to drive clarity and accountability across their organizations:

Realize that budgeting and planning can be a motivating, unifying force

With transparency and clear objectives, budgeting becomes a tool for alignment rather than a limitation. This approach helps teams understand exactly what the company is trying to achieve and how their decisions connect to those goals.

One customer shared that budgeting works best for her team when it isn’t purely top-down or bottom-up, but a mix of both. Clear direction from leadership sets priorities and guardrails, while bottom-up input from teams closest to the work ensures plans reflect reality and avoids major oversights.

When finance teams get this right, they can spend less time enforcing limits and more time clarifying priorities and tradeoffs across the organization. Which brings us to…

The art of the ‘yes, but’

Finance has long carried the reputation of being the “department of no,” or as Dave Wieseneck from our team jokes, the “CF-NO.” Several leaders shared that the way out of this trap isn’t loosening controls or saying yes to everything — it’s changing how finance shows up in the conversation.

Leading with “yes, and” or “yes, but” helps finance show up as a partner rather than a gatekeeper. “Yes, and” opens the door to collaboration. “Yes, but” sets clear guardrails without shutting ideas down. In both cases, finance maintains discipline while not blocking other teams’ momentum. In practice, this means guiding teams through tradeoffs rather than acting as an approval bottleneck.

By giving department heads ownership over their tradeoffs — whether that’s new software, additional headcount, or delaying spend — teams feel more in control, and finance deals with fewer fire drills.

When plans change, clarity beats perfection

The hardest part of midyear change isn’t adjusting the plan. It’s communicating the “why”.

Several teams shared that clearly explaining what’s changed, what hasn’t, and why decisions were made helps maintain alignment. Rather than framing budget updates as a failure of planning, teams described treating them as a sign of responsiveness and shared ownership.

One perspective Dave shared from Ramp: “Difficult conversations get easier when you lead with the problem, not the answer. Invite people into the tradeoff rather than mandating the solution.”

When teams understand the rationale behind change, they stay focused — even when the plan looks different from how it did in January.

Rethinking budgeting

The standout takeaway from our conversation is that by treating budgeting as a living process and showing up as partners in decision-making, finance teams can create alignment and confidence, even as plans evolve throughout the year.

Priorities will shift. Budgets will change. The teams that will succeed aren’t the ones with the most rigid plans — they’re the ones that build clarity, accountability, and trust into the process from the start.