{"id":"fpa-bva-four-line-math","audience":"fpa","category":"finance-work","track":"finance","technique":"grounding","level":"intermediate","title":"Write budget-vs-actual lines with the math and the right COGS","free":false,"task":"You're the FP&A analyst for October. Write a prompt for exactly four plain-text lines, no table and no intro, starting \"Revenue:\", \"Gross profit:\", \"Opex:\" and \"Operating income:\". Each shows actual vs budget, the dollar variance, the percent variance of budget (one decimal), and FAV or UNFAV. Use the corrected figures. State the variance only and don't guess at causes. Under 70 words. No bullets or numbering.","materialLabel":"October P&L: budget vs actual (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"Northgate Supply Co. - October 2026 P&L, budget vs actual (preliminary, as of Nov 3)\n\n                 Budget       Actual\nRevenue         1,200,000    1,134,000\nCOGS              480,000      472,000\nGross profit      720,000      662,000\nOpex              500,000      489,000\nOperating inc     220,000      173,000\n\nCorrection posted Nov 4 by the controller: October COGS actual is $482,000, not $472,000. The $10,000 was a freight invoice that was missing from the preliminary run. Revenue and opex actuals are unchanged.\n\nSales leadership comments: \"Revenue miss is because Q3 deals slipped.\" Operations comments: \"COGS is up because of freight rates.\" Neither has been confirmed by the controller.","rules":[{"type":"plainText"},{"type":"maxWords","max":70},{"type":"maxBullets","max":0}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Lists the four lines","patterns":["revenue:","gross profit","opex:","operating income"]},{"label":"Asks for variance in dollars and percent","patterns":["percent","dollar","one decimal"]},{"label":"Applies the correction","patterns":["correct","482,000","nov 4"]},{"label":"Bans causes","patterns":["(do not|don'?t|no).*cause"]},{"label":"Caps length","patterns":["\\d+\\s*words","plain"]}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Using the preliminary COGS","why":"The AI reads the table and uses $472,000, giving gross profit $662,000.","fix":"Say: \"Use the Nov 4 COGS correction ($482,000) and recompute.\"","checks":["r1"]},{"title":"Dividing by actual","why":"The AI computes percent of actual, not budget.","fix":"Add: \"Percent variance is of budget.\"","checks":["r0"]},{"title":"Repeating unconfirmed causes","why":"The AI explains the misses with the leadership comments.","fix":"Add: \"State variances only. Do not give causes.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Markdown extras","why":"The AI adds bold labels, headings and a closing note.","fix":"Say: \"Plain text, no bold. Output only the lines asked for.\"","checks":["plainText","maxBullets"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"AI is bad at counting and runs past word limits.","fix":"Ask for fewer words than the real cap and keep each line short.","checks":["maxWords"]}],"hint":"The table is out of date by one footnote. Say which figure to use, how to compute percent, and to leave out causes.","rubricLabels":["Has exactly four lines starting Revenue:, Gross profit:, Opex: and Operating income: (no table or intro), and the Revenue line shows $1,134,000 vs $1,200,000, -$66,000 (-5.5%) UNFAV","Gross profit and Operating income lines use the corrected COGS: gross profit $652,000 vs $720,000 (-$68,000, -9.4%, UNFAV) and operating income $163,000 vs $220,000 (-$57,000, -25.9%, UNFAV)","Opex line shows $489,000 vs $500,000, $11,000 (2.2%) FAV, and no line states a cause (deals slipping, freight rates) as established"]}