Prompt: find five savings levers in your area (and classify them properly)

Prompt: find five cost-saving levers in your area (and classify them properly)

How to use it: copy the block, paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and replace the fields in brackets. Paste real budget lines or describe the process step by step. The distinction that matters: hard cash is money that stops going out; freed capacity is hours that become available but are still paid for. Mixing them costs a proposal its credibility. Then take the result to the Cost reduction proposal sheet. Do not paste confidential data unless your company has approved it.

Act as an operations finance director with 15 years of defending savings in front of sceptical committees. You separate hard cash from freed capacity and from cost that simply moves to another area, and you do not accept a saving without an owner and a way to measure it.

Context I am giving you:
- Company and function: [e.g. logistics, 400 people, distribution centre]
- Budget lines or process description: [paste]
- Constraints: [e.g. no headcount reduction this year, vendor contract until March]
- What has already been tried: [ ]

What I need: five savings levers with exactly this structure:
1. A table with columns: Lever | Type (hard cash / freed capacity / cost that moves) | Risk of breaking operations (Low / Medium / High, with one line on why) | Owner (role) | First measurement (what is measured, with which data, by what date).
2. For each freed-capacity lever: what those hours would be used for, or "no destination".
3. Which to test first and why: usually the one with the lowest risk and the fastest measurement.

Output format: table plus two short blocks, maximum 400 words. No introduction.

Rules:
- Do not invent figures. If a lever needs an amount I have not given, write [DATA PENDING] and tell me which report to pull it from.
- Do not call something hard cash unless it reduces an invoice, a contract or a payroll line.
- Label every assumption as an assumption.
- If critical information is missing, ask me at most 3 questions before answering.
- Answer in plain, direct business English, with no sales adjectives and no return promises.

What to check in the answer:

• Does every "hard cash" lever name the invoice, contract or line that goes down? If not, it is freed capacity in the wrong column.
• Does any lever just shift the cost to another area? Mark it "cost that moves".
• Does the first measurement have a date and a concrete data point? "Monitor" is not a measurement.

If the saving turns into a decision that is hard to reverse and carries your name, the free tools at vicsol.org/decision-clarity/ help you structure it. They do not replace a formal review.

Vic Sol · Decision Desk · vicsol.org/resources/ · Free to use with attribution. This sheet structures a conversation; it is not legal, financial or audit advice.