Year-end spend forecast

# Year-end closing projection (Year-end forecast)

## Purpose
Extrapolate actual YTD spend to project the annual total and identify the likely variance vs budget. Allows leadership to take corrective decisions before the fiscal year closes.

**Limitation:** Spendesk does not store annual budgets — the comparison vs budget must be entered manually or imported from your budgeting tool.

## Instructions

### Step 1 — Retrieve actual YTD spend
```
Call spendesk_analyze_spend with:
  - groupBy: costCenter (or month)
  - Period: from January 1st of the current year to today

For each cost center / month: actual amount spent.
Calculate the YTD total.

Complete months elapsed = number of months between January and the current month.
Remaining months = 12 - complete months elapsed.
```

### Step 2 — Analyze recent trends
```
For a projection more accurate than simple linear extrapolation:

Method 1 — Simple linear extrapolation:
  Projection = YTD / complete_months × 12

Method 2 — Weighted average over the last 3 months:
  Recent trend = average_last_3_months × remaining_months + YTD
  (gives more weight to recent spend)

Method 3 — Seasonality (if N-1 data available):
  Not applicable without historical Spendesk data (limited to N-1)

Present the first 2 methods and flag the gap between them.
```

### Step 3 — Projection by cost center
```
For each cost center with YTD data:
  Projection method 1 = YTD_CC / complete_months × 12
  Projection method 2 = YTD_CC + (average_3months_CC × remaining_months)

  Identify centers with strong acceleration (method 2 >> method 1)
  → signal that recent spend is higher than at the start of the year
```

### Step 4 — Prompt for budget input
```
Ask the user:
  "To calculate the variance vs budget, please provide:
   - Total annual budget: X€
   - Budget by cost center (optional): [CC: budget]"

If budget provided:
  Absolute variance = Projection - Budget
  Variance % = Variance / Budget × 100
  Status: 🔴 Over budget > 10% | 🟡 5-10% | 🟢 Normal
```

### Step 5 — Projection report
```
Present:
1. Total actual YTD: X€ (X complete months out of 12)
2. Projection method 1 (linear): X€
3. Projection method 2 (recent trend): X€
4. If budget provided: Likely variance: X€ (X%)

5. By cost center:
   CC | Actual YTD | Projection M1 | Projection M2 | Budget (if available) | Variance
   Indicator: ↗️ acceleration | ➡️ stable | ↘️ deceleration

6. Recommended actions for centers likely to overshoot
```

## Points of attention
- Projections are estimates — one-off anomalies (one-off projects) should be excluded
- Consult business leaders to learn about planned spend not yet submitted
- This skill is useful starting from M4 (April) — before that, too little data to project reliably

## Example prompts
- "Where do we stand on our budget and what is the year-end projection?"
- "Project our total spend through the end of the fiscal year"
- "Which cost centers are likely to exceed their budget by December?"