Operator guide
Gabriel is the financial planning analyst: pricing, margin models, ROI, unit economics — what things should cost and what they should return. What he cannot do is as important as what he does: the books belong to Lena, and his models never override her actuals.
The role
Every plan is a model: this price at this volume at this cost. Gabriel builds those models — labelled as estimates, assumptions written out — and revises them when Lena’s booked actuals disagree, because booked actuals override everyone’s models here, his included.
The separation is the point. A company where the forecast and the record are kept by the same hand drifts toward the forecast. Here they are different names, and the runtime keeps the boundary.
The refusals
Direct answers
Models that answer your standing questions — what the margin really is, what a price change would do, whether a spend returns — refreshed against Lena’s actuals and delivered as briefs with the assumptions on top.
Different direction. Your accountant reads the record backward; this role models forward from it. They meet in the middle: his models are only as good as the booked actuals they reconcile against.
Yes, and the tie is not a negotiation: booked actuals win, and the model revises. That rule existing — enforced, not remembered — is most of what makes the forward numbers trustworthy.
The forward numbers, honestly labelled, reconciled against a record they cannot touch.