Should team leaders have visibility into and control over their own budgets, or should budget ownership stay centralized with finance?

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

Processes that control small employee spending cost more than the spending they prevent

Routing a $30 scanner purchase through a purchasing department costs more than $30 and wastes days, versus buying on Amazon and being reimbursed immediately

61:41 20VC: The $5BN Company Built from the Belgian Countryside | The Story of Odoo: The Company with No Plans to Sell, IPO & Their Billionaire Founder Who Does Not Care About Money with Fabien Pinckaers, Founder & CEO @ Odoo

Eléonore Crespo · May 9, 2025

Processes that slow the company for no reason — overly complex procurement and expense policies — should be removed immediately at Pigment's stage

Everybody at the company should be spending pretty much all of their time with customers

Scope: at their current stage

30:23 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

Budgets should sit with the CFO and finance team and not be shared with teams, directors or team leaders

The budget only needs to answer whether they can recruit and how much; team leaders and directors should only worry about making their team more efficient

24:09 Budgets should stay with finance and not be shared with team leaders

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

Giving teams a budget makes them spend it irresponsibly; withholding budgets forces case-by-case rational thinking about whether an investment is worth it

If you give people a budget they will simply spend it without taking responsibility; without one they have to justify each purchase, which teaches team leaders responsibility

24:45 Withholding budgets forces rational case by case spending decisions

Jason Lemkin · Jan 13, 2023

The right response to the downturn is to give sales and marketing leaders a fixed reduced budget and trust them to optimize it, not to cut spend to zero.

Most companies must extend runway, but empowered leaders working to a number produce far more pipeline than blanket cuts; teams also need ops and finance support to plan within a budget.

14:31 Give leaders a fixed reduced budget and trust them to optimize rather than cutting to zero