# Budget allocator

A budget allocator is one row per destination and one argument per row. A destination is wherever the money can go — a channel, a phase, a segment, a market — and the row records what its share is, what the share is argued from, the least and the most it can usefully hold, and what has to be true before money moves.

That is the whole shape. Everything else on this page is about what belongs in each column, and about why the two columns most allocations leave out, the floor and the reallocation rule, are the two that decide whether the split survives contact with a bad week.

## How to use it

1. Copy this file, or the CSV version if you would rather work in a sheet.
2. List the destinations first, at the level the argument is actually being had.
3. Write the basis for each row before the number, and keep measured performance, bets and commitments in separate rows.
4. Set floors before shares: a destination that cannot clear its floor should not be in the split at all.
5. Fill Share of total so the column sums to one whole, per currency.
6. Write the reallocation rule now, while nothing is going wrong.
7. Re-argue each row on its own cadence, and record what changed and why.

## The columns

**Allocation name** (Text). What this split is called and the period it covers, in the words the team will use. The same name goes on the review, so a decision can be traced to the argument that produced it.

**Destination** (Text). What the share goes to: a channel, a campaign, a phase, a segment, a market. One destination per row, at whatever level the argument is actually being had.

**Basis** (Text). What the share is argued from: measured performance, a strategic bet, a fixed commitment, or a floor somebody insisted on. The four are not the same and should never be blended silently.

**Share of total** (Percent). This row's proportion of the whole budget. The column that makes the split visible as a shape rather than as a list of numbers, and the one a reviewer actually reads.

**Amount (minor units)** (Integer). The share as money, in the smallest unit of its currency: 150000 is 1,500.00. Whole numbers, because a column of decimals drifts a cent per row and the shares then fail to sum to the total they describe.

**Currency** (ISO 4217 code). The currency the destination bills in, not the one you report in. Shares are proportions of a total in one currency; two currencies in one allocation need two totals.

**Floor (minor units)** (Integer). The least this destination may hold and still be worth running. Below a floor a line stops learning and starts producing noise, and the floor is where that judgement is written down.

**Ceiling (minor units)** (Integer). The most this destination can absorb before the money stops buying anything new: a saturated audience, a capped inventory, a finite list. Blank where you genuinely do not know.

**Reallocation rule** (Text). What has to be true for money to move into or out of this row, and how much may move at once. Written before it is needed, so the decision is not made under pressure.

**Review cadence** (Text). How often this row is re-argued: weekly, monthly, at the end of a flight. A row with no cadence is a row that will be re-argued whenever somebody is unhappy.

**Evidence** (Text). What the share rests on, named: a baseline window from your own account, a contract, a test result, a stated assumption. A share with no evidence is an opinion with a decimal point on it.

**Owner** (Text). The person who answers for this row. Not the person who spends it — the person who defends the size of it when somebody asks why it is that big.

**Notes** (Text). What the next person needs: the assumption behind a bet, the commitment that cannot be unwound this quarter, the number that is a guess. Say plainly which is which.

## The budget allocator

| Allocation name | Destination | Basis | Share of total | Amount (minor units) | Currency | Floor (minor units) | Ceiling (minor units) | Reallocation rule | Review cadence | Evidence | Owner | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

## Before you commit it

- Every row names a destination, a basis and an owner.
- Shares sum to one whole per currency.
- Every row has a floor, and no row is funded below it.
- Every row has a reallocation rule written before it was needed.
- Every share names the evidence it rests on.
- Measured performance, bets and commitments sit in separate rows.
- Anything that is an assumption says so, in Notes, in words.