# Flight plan

One row per week of one line of spend. The media plan says what is being
bought; this says when it lands, at what weight, and which week you have
already agreed to make a decision in.

Fill it in after the media plan is approved and before anything is built in an
ad account. Re-read it every Monday against what the accounts actually spent.

## How to use it

1. Copy this file, or the CSV version if you would rather work in a sheet.
2. Write one row per week per line of spend. A line that runs for five weeks
   is five rows, because the weight and the creative set change across them.
3. Give every phase a start week and an end week, and name the phase on every
   row inside it.
4. Leave `Share of flight budget` and `Budget (minor units)` blank until the
   weight has been agreed against a plan you have. Both numbers are yours.
5. Sum `Budget (minor units)` per currency, never across currencies.
6. Put a decision point on the last row of every phase, and write what the
   decision is in the cell rather than leaving it to memory.

## The columns

**Flight** (Text). The named campaign period this row belongs to: a launch, a season, a quarter of always-on spend. Name it even when there is only one, so two flights can be read side by side afterwards.

**Phase** (Text). Where in the flight this week sits: tease, launch, sustain, peak, wind-down. A phase is a run of weeks with one intent, and the name is what makes a chart of weekly spend readable without a legend.

**Channel** (Text). The platform the line runs on, one per row, spelled exactly as it is in the media plan so the two documents reconcile by eye instead of by lookup table.

**Campaign** (Text). The campaign name as it will read inside the ad account. Write it here the way you will write it there, and a week of spend can be traced to a row without anybody guessing.

**Week starting** (Date (YYYY-MM-DD)). The Monday. Weeks rather than days, because a day-level plan is a schedule nobody keeps, and a month-level plan averages over the two weeks that decided the flight.

**Share of flight budget** (Percent). What proportion of the whole flight this week is meant to carry. Read down the column and you can see the shape: front-loaded, flat, or held back for a peak. Blank in the file on purpose.

**Budget (minor units)** (Integer). The week's budget for this line, in the smallest unit of its currency: 150000 is 1,500.00. Integers, because a column of decimals drifts by a cent a row and the total is then wrong for a reason nobody can find.

**Currency** (ISO 4217 code). The code the ad account bills in rather than the one the business reports in. Two currencies in one column, with no codes, cannot be added together, and a sheet that adds them is wrong without announcing it.

**Creative set** (Text). Which set of assets is in market this week. Naming it is what lets you say afterwards whether the week moved because of the weight or because of the work, rather than arguing about both.

**Dependency** (Text). The thing outside the ad account this week needs and does not yet have — a page, a feed, a shoot, an approval — with the date it is due. The least glamorous column and the one that saves the most money.

**Decision point** (Text). What is being decided at the end of this week, written as a question. Every phase carries at least one. A flight with none runs to its end whatever the numbers say, because stopping was never anybody's job.

**Owner** (Text). The person who answers for the row. A plan with no owner per row gets edited by everybody and read by nobody, and nobody is surprised by a week they never owned.

**Notes** (Text). What the next person needs and cannot infer: why the weight steps up here, the holiday this week runs into, the dependency that already slipped. Also the place to say plainly that a number is a guess.

## The flight

| Flight | Phase | Channel | Campaign | Week starting | Share of flight budget | Budget (minor units) | Currency | Creative set | Dependency | Decision point | Owner | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

## The phases

One row per phase, so the shape of the flight can be read without adding up
the weeks.

| Phase | First week | Last week | Share of flight budget | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |

## Totals

One line per currency. Do not add a grand total across currencies without
saying which rate you used and the day you read it.

| Currency | Budget (minor units) | Weeks |
|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |

## Before the flight starts

- Every week of every line has a row, including the quiet ones.
- Every phase names its first week, its last week and its intent.
- Every share is a proportion of the same flight, and the shares sum to one
  whole per line.
- Every budget is an integer in minor units, and every row names its currency.
- Every dependency has a due date that falls before the week that needs it.
- Every phase has at least one decision point, written as a question.
- Anything that is a guess says so, in `Notes`, in words.