Goal-Based Budgeting: Stop The ‘Safe’ Budget That Kills Your Scale-Up

Goal-Based Budgeting is the antidote to the incremental lie that cripples scaling businesses. Too many £1M–£10M enterprises rely on last year’s numbers plus a percentage, but this approach starves ambition.

The Year-End Reckoning: Part 1

It’s late November. The Christmas planning has begun, the office party logistics are underway, and every founder I speak to is doing the same thing: staring into a grim spreadsheet, desperately trying to finish the budget for the new year.

And frankly? This annual routine is crippling your business.

The vast majority of businesses generating £1M to £10M—especially those scaling in Tech, Media, and Creative sectors—are committing the cardinal sin of budgeting: the Incremental Lie. They take last year’s spending, add 5%, subtract 3% from Marketing because the CEO is nervous, and call it ‘strategic.’

I call it a death sentence disguised as diligence. If your ambition is to merely survive, carry on. But if you want to double revenue, launch a disruptive product, or break into a new market, your traditional budget is not just useless—it’s actively holding you back.

🛑 The Story of ‘Phantom Costs’

Let me tell you about a brilliant design agency we took on. It was consistently profitable, hitting about £4M revenue. Every year, their finance manager would add 5% to all cost lines. Why? “Because that’s what we did last year.”

When we did our review, we found they were still paying for a project management system they stopped using two years ago after switching to a better one. We found five high-level enterprise software licenses that only one person occasionally logged into.

These were the Phantom Costs—dead money rolling forward, untouched, year after year. Total savings? Over £60,000per annum. This £60,000 was enough to fund a specialist Head of Strategy hire, which was the exact strategic goal the CEO had shelved because he ‘couldn’t afford it.’

The Incremental Lie doesn’t just waste money; it starves your ambitions.

🚀 The Solution: Goal-Based Planning (The WrightCFO Way)

At WrightCFO, we don’t just budget; we use Goal-Based Budgeting to align every cost with your strategic objectives. This approach, built on the principles of Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB), ensures that every pound spent drives meaningful growth.

It’s about throwing out the ‘Last Year + 5%’ mindset and starting from a Zero Base.

Your 3-Step “How-To” Guide to Goal-Based Planning:

1. Define Your Radical Outcomes, Not Just Revenue:

Instead of saying, “We want £6M revenue,” define the strategic levers that get you there.

Example Goal: Achieve 30% revenue from IP/licensing (instead of 5%) by Q4 2026.
Actionable Question: What are the non-negotiable activities to hit that? (e.g., Hiring a specialist lawyer, £X for developer time to productise the IP, attending two specific industry events).

2. Justify Every Single Pound from Zero:

Imagine your bank account is at £0.00. Every single cost line for 2026—from your team’s salaries to the new coffee machine—must be tied directly to a strategic outcome.

If your finance software licence doesn’t directly enable your finance team to achieve the goal of “Reducing debtor days by 20%,” then why are you paying for it? (The exercise forces justification and eliminates Phantom Costs.)

3. Prioritise and Fund the “Must-Haves”:

Once you have your costs mapped to your goals, you can see exactly where the money is going. If you still have a shortfall, you don’t cut the marketing budget arbitrarily—you look at the lowest-priority goal and defer its resource allocation.

This ensures your working capital is concentrated on the 3-5 things that will genuinely transform your business, rather than being spread thinly across a dozen ‘nice-to-haves.

🔗 Further Reading

If you’re serious about making 2026 a breakout year, stop letting last year’s inefficiencies dictate your future. Start planning with purpose.

For a deeper dive into Goal-Based Planning, you can read more here:

Need a Strategic Reckoning for 2026?

If the thought of tackling this mammoth task on your own fills you with dread, or if you simply lack the internal expertise to conduct a truly forensic, zero-based review: We can help.

WrightCFO specialises in these strategic year-end planning projects, helping ambitious businesses like yours shift from incremental drift to strategic, goal-based resource alignment.

Drop us a direct message or reply to this post and let’s get your 2026 funding the ambition you actually deserve.

This article was originally published here on LinkedIN on November 19th, 2025.