Read the conditions before committing the financial number

Charging activity produces an understandable revenue story, but the cost account has to reflect the actual site agreements. I ask which electricity charges depend on energy delivered, which arise from the relevant demand arrangement and which fixed or network costs continue at lower utilisation. Those distinctions are specific to the reviewed contracts and operating context; they are not a tariff rule for every Indian site. Our 2019 model failed because a material cost category was absent from the contribution calculation I had supported. Correcting the arithmetic was necessary, but the leadership consequence was to withdraw the expansion recommendation until the model could carry it. I expect finance to identify its cost boundary explicitly, reconcile it to the supporting agreements and show central overhead, financing and tax separately when they sit outside the displayed contribution.

A bank balance does not by itself describe the resources available for the next payment programme. I separate contractual restrictions, approved operating headroom and the timing of obligations before recommending a funding action. In the 2023 exercise, ₹18 crore within a ₹42 crore balance was reserved under the relevant financing arrangements. Of the ₹24 crore unrestricted balance, management needed to preserve ₹8 crore for operations, leaving ₹16 crore against ₹26 crore supplier payments. The resulting ₹10 crore gap required an authorised facility draw after its conditions were verified. I would not describe the restricted reserve as permanently inaccessible in every circumstance, nor assume it could be redirected because the payment need was urgent. Treasury, legal and approval owners must establish what the particular arrangement permits and when.

A charging site’s operating life can end before every associated obligation is settled. I ask finance to work with engineering, property and legal owners to understand restoration responsibilities, their timing and the uncertainty in the available cost evidence. The 2025 review distinguished thirty-four leases with an understood planning scope from two still unresolved. A cash plan for eight nearer-term sites did not extinguish the later obligations on the other twenty-six. Nor did a funding schedule decide when or how an accounting liability should be recognised. Qualified accounting review remained a separate requirement. My contribution is to ensure that expansion and site-exit decisions retain those future commitments, including the unresolved cases, instead of treating an incomplete estimate as zero or a phased cash allocation as the complete financial answer.

The CFO can organise evidence and recommend action without personally owning every permission that the action requires. I distinguish my function expense from company capital, facility limits from authorised drawings and management cash planning from professional accounting conclusions. That distinction matters when a board paper moves quickly from identifying a gap to proposing a solution. The responsible owners should be visible, along with conditions that remain unmet and the decision that must wait. I want colleagues to challenge my assumptions before a recommendation becomes an operating instruction. The same discipline applies to an outside-board role: I would scrutinise the financial argument and the assurance around it, while leaving preparation, contract interpretation and execution with management and its advisers. Clear authority improves the usefulness of a recommendation rather than reducing the CFO’s accountability for it.