A decision and execution layer for firms that sell projects.

One forecast across sales, delivery and finance, built from your own systems. Then everything that can be shown won’t hold comes off it, each reason named, each with a fix and an owner. What is left is Expected: the number to run the quarter on.

Talk to us How Expected works

Q3 revenue, an example

Q3 is expected at $11.0M against a budget of $12.0M, $1.0M short. The forecast says $12.4M.

Forecast, if every assumption holds$12.4M
Booked over approved leaveRe-plan the weeks · Delivery lead−$0.3M
A fixed fee burning hours faster than its scopeRe-scope with the client · Practice lead−$0.4M
Clients billing less than they are scheduled forClose the billing gap · Finance−$0.2M
Won work nobody is staffed on yetStaff it or move the start · Resourcing−$0.5M
Expected$11.0M

$1.0M short of budget

Illustrative numbers.

Four numbers. One of them is new.

Budget

What the firm committed to.

Forecast

What the numbers say if every assumption holds, built up from pipeline, projects, people and schedules.

Expected

The forecast, minus everything that can be shown won’t hold.

Actual

What happened.

Most forecasting tools put the forecast next to the budget and tell you you’re fine. Petalo puts Expected next to the budget. The gap between them is made of named reasons: rules your firm can read and switch on or off, such as people booked over their approved leave, a project burning hours faster than its scope, clients that bill less than they are scheduled for, and won work nobody is staffed on yet.

Expected is never the forecast multiplied by a confidence factor. It is worked out again against what your people, your contracts and your clients can actually do, and each reason carries its own fix.

The same five steps, every week.

  1. Forecast

    One forecast across pipeline, projects, people and finance, built from the systems you already run.

  2. Brief

    Where the quarter is off and why, in sentences worked out from the numbers.

  3. Decide

    Leadership takes or declines each proposed move. A move that is taken gets an owner and a date.

  4. Execute

    The moves and their tasks go to the people who own them.

  5. Learn

    When the month closes, each decision is scored against what actually happened.

What leadership sees.

Screens from Petalo, showing a fictional sample firm. Every client, person and number in them is invented.

Every project, with the reason it is off

Projects by client, each with its status and its worst reason in plain words, such as “a fixed fee worth less by the hour every week” or “bills less than the schedule says”.

Petalo’s Projects screen: a sample firm’s projects grouped by client, each with a status mark and its worst reason in plain words

What the firm could do about it

Proposed moves grouped by the lever they pull, with the value at stake, in the order the firm has said matters most. Each one is decided, watched, followed through and, in the end, given a verdict.

Petalo’s Plays screen: proposed moves grouped by lever, such as scope burn, bill rate and over-booked hours, each with the value at stake

Petra, beside every screen

Her panel opens next to whatever is on the screen and starts from it: here, how much of their scheduled time each person actually delivered.

Petra’s panel open beside the People screen’s realization table, with suggested questions and a box to ask by text or voice

Ask why, in plain words.

Petra answers questions about the firm’s numbers in sentences, by voice or text, and shows where each number came from. She never calculates a number herself. The engine does, and she explains it.

Why is Q3 expected below budget?

Petra

Q3 is expected at $11.0M against a budget of $12.0M. Most of the gap is won work nobody is staffed on yet ($0.5M) and a fixed-fee project burning hours faster than its scope ($0.4M). Staffing the won work before it starts would close half of it.

From the Q3 forecast and its four named reasons.

An example, using the numbers at the top of this page.

Not a dashboard. Not a chat window on your data.

Any firm can now point an AI model at its CRM and ask it questions. What it can’t ask is what the firm believed three weeks ago, or whether last month’s decisions worked. Nobody kept that. Petalo keeps it from the first week.

Expected, with its reasons shown

The forecast minus only what can be shown won’t hold. Each reason is a named rule your firm can read, switch on or off, and act on.

What the firm believed, week by week

Petalo keeps the schedule, the pipeline and the forecast as they stood each week, which most source systems overwrite. So you can see what moved, and how good the forecast has been.

Decisions measured against what happened

Every move has an owner, a date and, once the month closes, a verdict. Over time that record becomes the firm’s own track record.

The AI reads only governed numbers

One definition for each number, reconciled to your source files at every close. Restricted data, such as pay, stays out of the assistant’s reach.

It compounds

Every week a firm runs Petalo adds to a history that cannot be recreated later.

Built for firms that sell projects.

Partner-led consulting and systems-integration firms first, especially those selling fixed-fee or outcome-based work, where a missed quarter hurts most.

It is built for the CEO or managing partner, the head of delivery, practice leads, the head of sales and finance. It reads exports from the systems you already run for delivery, sales, finance and people, and replaces none of them.

  • Will we hit the quarter?
  • Where is margin leaking?
  • Can we staff what we sold?
  • What should we do this week, and who owns it?

See the forecast Petalo would run for your firm.

Tell us about your firm and we will set up a conversation. Or write to info@petalo.ai.