Budget vs Actual Tracking
Set revenue and cost budgets in AskBiz and track actual performance against them in real time — so you always know where you stand against plan.
Setting up your budget
AskBiz allows you to enter monthly budgets for revenue and key cost lines. These become the benchmarks against which actuals are measured.
To set up a budget:
1. Go to Finance → Budget → Create Budget
2. Select the budget period (full year, or a specific quarter)
3. Enter monthly revenue targets by channel (or as a total)
4. Enter monthly cost budgets by category (COGS, marketing, payroll, overheads, etc.)
5. Save — the budget is now live and actuals will be tracked against it automatically
You can edit budget figures at any time. If your plan changes mid-year, update the forward months — AskBiz will show the original budget and the revised budget so you can track both.
Reading the Budget vs Actual dashboard
Go to Finance → Budget → Budget vs Actual to see your current month and year-to-date performance against budget.
The dashboard shows:
- Revenue: actual vs budget, with variance in £ and %
- Gross Profit: actual vs budget
- Key cost lines: each major cost category, actual vs budget
- EBITDA: the bottom-line result
Variances are colour-coded: green for favourable (revenue above budget or costs below budget), red for adverse. Click any line to drill into the underlying data — for example, clicking Revenue shows variance by channel.
Understanding variance analysis
A variance is the difference between actual and budget. Variances can be:
- Favourable (F): actual revenue above budget, or actual costs below budget
- Adverse (A): actual revenue below budget, or actual costs above budget
Not all variances are problems — a revenue miss in a month where you deliberately reduced a low-margin channel is a planned strategic decision, not a failure. Context matters.
AskBiz generates an automatic Variance Commentary for variances above 10% in any line. Click the variance figure to read the AI-generated explanation, which cross-references your connected data to explain the cause.
Year-to-date tracking and re-forecasting
Monthly variances accumulate. AskBiz tracks your year-to-date (YTD) position against budget alongside the monthly view.
If you are running consistently ahead or behind budget, you may want to re-forecast rather than keep measuring against a budget that is no longer realistic. Go to Finance → Budget → Re-forecast to update your forward months based on current actuals and trends — without changing your original budget (which is preserved for reference).
The re-forecast becomes your new operational target while the original budget remains as the baseline for year-end board reporting.