Your 10-Point Playbook: What UK Finance Teams Must Do Before FY2027

FY2027 planning is under way, and the usual instruments a CFO relies on are all moving at once: interest rates holding but not settled, inflation still above target, an Autumn Budget that remains unconfirmed and payment fraud that keeps rising. A static spreadsheet and last year’s assumptions won’t hold up in these conditions.

This playbook is written for whoever owns cash and banking relationships in a UK mid-market business, whether that’s the CFO, the FD or the Head of Finance. It brings together ten practical tactics, grouped into three pillars:

• Macro factor defence: stress-test your debt against rate moves, map your EUR and USD exposures before year-end, and secure alternative credit lines before pricing shifts after the Budget.
• Operational optimisation: replace the static spreadsheet with real-time visibility across every bank and entity, stress-test seasonal cash peaks and troughs, automate reconciliation, and protect high-value payments with dual authorisation and cooling-off periods.
• Long-term resilience: start with AI on repeatable tasks like cash application and anomaly detection, train your team on data interpretation before adding more tools, and move from a single annual forecast to rolling scenarios with documented assumptions.