A finance manager was on her third version of the same forecast when I caught her on the phone last week, and it wasn't yet lunchtime.

She laughed about it, in the way people do when the alternative is something less polite. But she wasn't exaggerating for effect. Plenty of finance teams are rebuilding the numbers faster than anyone can sign them off, and EY's latest figures point the same way.

London-listed businesses issued 65 profit warnings over the summer, up from 59 the quarter before, according to EY data reported by City AM. It is the highest count in almost two years. Nearly one in five UK-listed businesses has issued a profit warning in the last twelve months. And that is only the companies obliged to say so out loud.

Most of the finance leaders we work with don't sit on a plc board, but they work in the same weather.

Why are profit warnings climbing right now?

Profit warnings are climbing because geopolitical shocks, cost pressure and fast policy change are all hitting forecasts at once. More than half of the warnings blamed geopolitical uncertainty, and 38% pointed to the Middle East conflict, according to EY. EY restructuring lead Jo Robinson says conditions no longer follow a conventional cycle, because supply disruption, energy shocks, tariffs and geopolitical risk move results much more than they once did.

Others cited cancelled or delayed contracts and weaker consumer confidence.

Fast policy change makes it worse, because plans go stale before the ink is dry, and nobody wants to be the person who presented last week's numbers.

Housebuilding shows how sharp it can get. Housebuilders issued six warnings in the period, taking their total for the year so far to 14, which EY's data shows is more than the ten issued at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. Construction and household goods together produced the most warnings of any sector, with eight.

What does constant re-forecasting do to a finance team?

Constant re-forecasting leaves a finance team permanently catching up. A delayed order, a new energy price or a tariff change sends the model back for rework, usually to the same two or three people who also run the month end and the audit prep. And a team in that position has little time to ask whether the assumptions themselves are any good.

The work doesn't shrink, it just slides into the evenings.

You can see it in the briefs that reach us.

Not long ago a finance director would ask for a financial controller who could close the books cleanly and keep the auditors happy. Increasingly the brief says something different. They want someone who can build the scenario, not just report on the last one.

It matters most in owner-managed businesses, where the forecast often belongs to a finance manager who is also doing four other jobs.

What could the Budget add to the workload?

The Budget could add another full round of rework to any finance team advising an owner-managed business. Budget day is 28th October, and City AM, citing a Telegraph report, says the Chancellor is reportedly considering charging income tax rather than capital gains tax when owners pass a company to their children. Capital gains tax is charged at 24% for higher-rate taxpayers, against 45% for income tax.

But nothing is confirmed, and the reporting gives no thresholds or start dates, so treat it as a warning shot rather than a plan.

And for a family-owned business planning succession, the numbers behind that decision could change overnight. Somebody in the finance function has to model both versions. And if the rumour turns out to be wrong, they get to model a third. Meanwhile the rest of the month-end pile does not get any smaller.

EY's restructuring team makes a point worth borrowing here. Boards that act early, rather than waiting for conditions to settle, keep more options open as the Budget approaches.

What does a finance team need when the forecast keeps moving?

A finance team needs three things when the forecast keeps moving. Clean data comes first, so a changed assumption flows through in minutes rather than days. Next is one person whose actual job is the forecast, not a side task squeezed between deadlines. Last is a finance lead with the commercial confidence to challenge the assumptions rather than just calculate them.

Often that last person is a senior analyst or a finance business partner who can sit next to the sales director and ask what the pipeline really looks like, a conversation a ledger-focused team rarely has time for.

For many mid-sized firms, hiring an FP&A manager is the cleanest way to give the forecast an owner. FP&A is short for financial planning and analysis, and the person in that seat spends their days on scenarios, variances and what-ifs rather than on the ledger, which is exactly the shift a business needs when the ground keeps moving.

Is it a bad moment to add finance headcount?

Not if the hire is aimed at the forecasting gap rather than at general capacity. Costs are tight almost everywhere, but the businesses issuing warnings mostly got there because costs, demand or contracts outran their plans. A forecasting hire targets exactly that problem.

We covered the budget-meeting version of this argument earlier this month in the case for a finance hire when costs are climbing.

Timing is the catch, and it is the part people underestimate.

A strong planning and analysis person is rarely sitting on the market, and they will have a notice period to serve before they can start. With the Budget nine days away, the realistic aim is to have someone in place for the next shock rather than this one. Waiting for the dust to settle only moves the same problem into November.

That finance manager's third forecast before lunch was not a failure of effort. It was a sign that nobody's whole job was keeping the forecast honest.

If that sounds familiar, our finance recruitment page explains how we approach searches like this one, and you are welcome to get in touch when you are ready.