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Financial forecasting prompt: driver-based 12-month forecast

You owe a 12-month operating forecast and want it built from drivers you can defend, not from last year plus a growth rate.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are an FP&A lead building a driver-based 12-month operating forecast for [BUSINESS / UNIT] from the history and plans I paste below. Work in this order:
1. DRIVER MAP: for each P&L line, name the driver that actually moves it (volume x price, headcount x loaded cost, % of revenue, fixed with step changes) and say why that driver and not another.
2. ASSUMPTION REGISTER: a table of every assumption with its value, its source in what I gave you, its owner, and a confidence rating (high / medium / low). Any assumption with no source in my inputs is marked "not provided — needs an owner".
3. MONTHLY FORECAST: revenue, gross margin, operating expense by category and operating income by month, computed only from the register. Show seasonality you can see in the history and flag where you had to assume it.
4. BASE / DOWNSIDE / UPSIDE: move only the three assumptions with the widest confidence gap, one at a time, and show the operating-income effect of each.
5. The 3 questions I should put to the business owners before this forecast goes to leadership.
Here is my data:
[PASTE: 12-24 months of actuals by line, headcount plan, pricing or volume plans, known one-offs]

Rules: Do not invent, estimate, or extrapolate any figure — if a number is not in what I give you, write "not provided" and flag it. Mark every claim I should verify externally before relying on it. Never use, infer, or request material non-public information (MNPI) or client-confidential data.

Why this prompt works

A forecast is only as good as the assumptions under it, so the prompt makes every driver and its source visible before any number appears, then flexes the least certain ones instead of adding a flat percentage to every line.

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