Annual Planning for 2026 is Here. Are You Prepared?

If the thought of annual planning has you groaning, you’re not alone. Lots of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams feel the same way. And for good reason. All too often, plans start collecting dust after a couple of months have passed.

That’s why we created this post. We know that the annual planning process can fall apart if the goals aren’t clear, if different departments aren’t aligned, or if the Finance team is stretched too thin. We also know that stale annual planning is especially costly for organizations where increased business complexity, growth ambitions, and cross-functional needs demand a collaborative, agile planning process.

Read on for our top annual planning tips. We’ve got best practices for crafting a winning annual plan, a real-world example that proves strategic annual planning pays off, and our annual financial planning checklist.

As companies grow in size and complexity, their Finance teams face new pressures:

• Cross-functional alignment among more stakeholders
• Data consolidation across multiple systems
• The need for greater agility in rapidly shifting markets

From scenario planning for expansion opportunities to M&A activity and market entry strategies, Finance teams at larger scales are expected to be strategic partners who provide decision makers with real-time insights—all while managing multiple systems and maintaining the financial discipline that drives scalable growth.

How do they do it? By using systems and processes that can handle this complexity while maintaining the agility of a smaller organization.

An understanding of last year’s performance

First, analyze last year’s plan against actuals to ground your annual plan on realistic expectations that reflect shifting conditions. This will shape your goals and strategies for the upcoming year.

Clear business goals and strategic objectives

What are the big-picture outcomes your company needs to achieve next year? Is the focus on launching new products? Is there a market expansion planned? Break down these overarching goals or plans into specific, measurable objectives.

Thoughtful investments and resource allocation

Determining how to fund those objectives is a balancing act. It requires thoughtful collaboration to redistribute resources while ensuring teams understand the impact of these investments and resource shifts. This is especially important when managing multi-location operations or M&A activity.

Build cross-functional alignment from day one

Finance can’t plan in isolation. Include key stakeholders that represent functions across the business, such as:

• Budget managers
• C-suite executives
• Team leads across Sales, HR, and Marketing

Cross-functional alignment is more critical than ever as AI changes how organizations operate and plan for the future. Collaboration with HR is especially important since AI is quickly reshaping the types of roles and skills companies need.

Planful’s 2025 survey, The Next Era of Finance, found that while 96% of organizations report moderate to high FP&A involvement in workforce planning, strategic alignment between Finance and HR is lagging. Without shared data, timelines, and goals, plans are based on assumptions and lose credibility fast.

For companies with multiple systems, distributed teams, or regional cost centers, aligning workforce plans with business strategy is fundamental to operating with confidence at scale.

Define your success metrics

While financial metrics are at the core of annual planning, it’s just as important to capture overall business performance and strategic growth milestones. This means tracking data from areas like Customer Success, Sales, and HR, including:

• Employee headcount
• Repeat business
• Regulatory impact
• Pipeline conversion

By maintaining a single source of truth on company-wide metrics that tie back to strategic objectives, leaders across the organization can reference it to consider the entire business landscape in their decisions.

Create a living, responsive plan

Your annual plan isn’t something you just create, set aside, and hope it’s useful. It needs to be dynamic. In fast-moving markets, a static 12-month plan becomes outdated quickly, so you need to be ready to pivot if things aren’t going to plan.

Rolling forecasts keep plans aligned with actual performance and market conditions—that’s why top-performing Finance teams are using them to make proactive adjustments instead of relying on reactive cuts.

Invest in the right technology

The most effective FP&A teams use cloud-based financial performance management (FPM) platforms that:

• Allow budget owners to contribute quickly and efficiently
• Have built-in workflow processes to manage tasks and deadlines
• Are powered by finance-owned AI that streamlines workflows and detects anomalies
• Scale with your team as you grow in size, complexity, and planning maturity
• Let your teams update and revise plans anytime, from anywhere (even offline)

Manual processes become a major bottleneck when there’s a large volume of data to wrangle and analyze. FPM platforms with built-in automation allow Finance teams to focus on collaborative, strategic planning that’s backed by real-time data and drives the business forward.

With a large portfolio of construction projects—some with budgets reaching nearly half a billion dollars—Orion couldn’t afford to let manual processes and a lack of timely information impede decision-making or limit scalability.

“Orion has a fairly complex forecasting, planning, and consolidation process,” explained Barrett Gilley, Orion’s VP of Finance. “We have a fantastic team that is very good at using Excel and running complex processes, but it creates a single point of failure. It’s also hard to manage volatility, make new scenarios, and change assumptions quickly.”

Orion chose Planful for its user-friendly configuration, out-of-the-box data integrations, and comprehensive planning features, including AI-powered insights. The results were transformative:

• Dramatically reduced planning time: What used to take five days of sending spreadsheets back and forth via email now happens in real-time with integrated data from ERP and CRM systems.
• Faster onboarding: Bringing new analysts up to speed used to take six to nine months, but can now be done in a matter of weeks.
• Enhanced leadership insights: Executive leadership receives data-driven insights faster, driving more value across the organization.
• Improved scalability: The platform supports Orion’s continued growth trajectory without creating bottlenecks.

“Planful lets me get into the weeds in a lot more detail than I could in the past,” Barrett noted. “That makes me more powerful as a leader because now I have the time to really help my team.”

Read more: Orion Uses Planful to Cut Days from Monthly Planning, Drive Better Financial Insight, and Help Guide Business Growth.

Creating a successful annual plan requires thoughtful preparation, continuous monitoring, and the right tools to keep everything on track.

For FP&A teams balancing scale, complexity, and cross-functional growth, annual planning is your opportunity to align Finance with business strategy and enable faster, more confident decisions across the organization.

• Annual planning is a living, collaborative process: Your plan isn’t a static document but a dynamic roadmap that requires ongoing engagement and cross-functional collaboration. Include key stakeholders from across the business to ensure alignment from the outset.
• The right technology transforms planning efficiency: Modern FPM platforms eliminate the bottlenecks that plague manual, spreadsheet-driven processes. With real-time data integration and AI-powered insights, teams can focus on strategic analysis rather than data gathering.
• Success metrics should extend beyond financial KPIs: While financial performance is crucial, effective annual planning incorporates metrics from all business functions — from customer satisfaction scores to employee engagement — to provide a complete picture of organizational health.

 

---

Ready to take your annual planning to the next level?

Download our free Annual Financial Planning Checklist to get started.

 

---

 

What’s the biggest mistake companies make during annual planning?

The most common mistake is treating annual planning as a finance-only exercise. Successful planning requires input and buy-in from all key business functions. When departments plan in silos, you miss opportunities for alignment, make faulty assumptions, and often create unrealistic expectations.

How often should we revisit and update our annual plan?

While it’s called an “annual” plan, it should be reviewed and updated at least quarterly, with regular check-ins on key metrics. Market conditions are changing rapidly, and your plan needs to be flexible enough to adapt while maintaining strategic focus.

What role does AI play in modern annual planning?

AI can significantly accelerate the planning process by automating data gathering, identifying trends and anomalies, generating scenarios, and providing predictive insights. This allows Finance teams to spend more time on strategic analysis rather than manual data gathering.