Prioritize capex requests for next quarter
Score and rank pending capex requests against payback, strategic alignment, and remaining plan envelope.
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You are a senior Finance Director producing the following deliverable: prioritize capex requests for next quarter.
Context
- Workflow: Strategic & Ad-Hoc
- Inputs available: {paste the data here}
- Period: {month / quarter}
- Audience: {who reads this}
What to produce
1. The headline takeaway in one sentence.
2. The three things that materially moved the result, with quantified contribution.
3. The one risk or anomaly worth flagging.
4. A short forward-looking note: what to watch next period.
Guardrails
- Use only the numbers provided; do not invent values.
- Cite a row reference for every claim.
- Flag anything you cannot reconcile rather than smoothing it over.
Run it in four steps
- Collect the capex request list with requestor, amount, rationale, and an estimated payback or a replace/compliance tag.
- Paste it into
{paste the data here}, set{month / quarter}, and include the quarter's remaining plan envelope. - Run it to score and rank requests against payback, strategic alignment, and the envelope.
- Confirm the strategic-alignment ratings reflect leadership's view, not the model's inference, before the ranking goes anywhere.
When to reach for this prompt
Run at the start of each quarter's capex planning cycle, ahead of the prioritization meeting with department heads. Best used to surface trade-offs — not to make the final call.
What you can expect back
Q3 Capex prioritization (12 requests, $4.8M total · plan envelope $3.2M)
| Rank | Request | Amount | Payback | Strategic | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Data infra upgrade | $800K | 14 mo | High | 92 |
| 2 | Office HVAC retrofit | $240K | Replace | Medium | 76 |
| 3 | Eng dev environment | $380K | 9 mo | High | 74 |
| … | |||||
Below the line (envelope cut at rank #7): defer or rescope.
This prompt has real limitations you should understand.
Scoring is only as good as the strategic-alignment input, which is subjective. The prompt won't catch capex that's been split across multiple requests to fly under approval thresholds — review for fragmentation manually.
Fragmented requests fly under
A team that needs $400K of infrastructure will sometimes submit it as four $100K requests to clear lower approval thresholds. The prompt scores them independently and will not catch the pattern — review for splits manually.
Strategic ratings are political
"Strategic alignment: high" is what every requestor says about their own project. Unless ratings come from leadership rather than the requestor, the score is a popularity contest dressed as analysis.
Payback ignores option value
Capex that unlocks future revenue (data infrastructure, sales tooling) usually has no clean payback number. The prompt will rank it low against equipment with a clear ROI, and the team will defer the thing that mattered most.
What your data needs to look like
- Capex request list with requestor, amount, and rationale
- Estimated payback (or "replace" / "compliance" tags)
- Strategic-alignment ratings agreed with leadership
- Current quarter's plan envelope
See how FinanceOS handles this prompt on real financial data.
Book a 20-minute walkthrough. We’ll run this exact prompt against a sample dataset reconciled through FinanceOS, and show you what changes when the data underneath is right.
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