Approved is not released

The annual budget was approved before the holidays. The money does not exist yet.

Those two sentences sit together in every January I have worked, and the second one decides the year. An approval is a slide with a number on it and a set of initials. A release is a transaction: a cost centre opened, a purchase order raised, a signature at each threshold, and every one of those steps runs at the speed of a department with its own queue and no view of the media calendar.

With Ramadan expected around the middle of February, the deadlines that matter now belong to other people. Print is being booked. Broadcast and platform commitments are being confirmed against payment terms. All of it wants a purchase order number, and a purchase order number is the one thing an approved budget does not give you.

So the same thing happens annually. The plan is right, the money is agreed, and the first quarter goes on chasing a form. Then the shortfall gets explained as a market condition.

It repeats because approval feels like the finish line. It arrives with congratulations, it is free to give, and it costs the person giving it nothing until somebody tries to spend it. Free things are handed out generously, and they are worth roughly what they cost.

What I do now is dull and it works. In the first fortnight of January I get it in writing: what has to happen for the first riyal to leave the account, who raises it, how long each step took last year. That list is the plan.

The budget slide is a statement of intent, and intent has never bought a print slot.