Budget vs Actual Tracking

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.

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.

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.

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.