Explaining your budget numbers

A budget you can defend in a room full of owners needs more than a column of figures. Three views sit alongside the grid: a record of why each number is what it is, a three-year history, and a breakdown of what is actually driving the fee increase.

Switch between them with Grid, History, Attribution, and Scenarios at the top of the budget editor.

Record why a number is what it is

Every budget line can carry an explanation. Open a line and fill in as much as you have:

• Explanation: what changed and why, in your own words.
• Budget Basis: what the figure rests on, such as a signed contract, a quote, or a trailing average.
• Evidence Date: when that basis was current.
• Confidence: how firm the number is.

None of it is required. The point is that when someone asks about a line six months from now, the answer is on the line instead of in your memory.

Group headers show how many of their lines are evidenced, so you can see at a glance where the thin spots are before a board meeting rather than during one.

This is internal. Residents cannot read budget explanations, bases, or confidence levels. Those fields are visible only to staff, building managers, board members, and PMs.

Compare the years side by side

The History view puts every line's whole story on one row: what the account did last year, what it is budgeted and forecast to do this year, what you are proposing for next year, and the two variances between them.

The year figures and both variances.

The same row then continues with the four evidence fields from the section above: Explanation, Budget Basis, Evidence Date and Confidence. So one row answers both "what are the numbers" and "why should I believe them", which is the point of reading it before a meeting rather than during one. A line with nothing recorded reads No data, so the thin spots are obvious.

Above the table, URBI tells you what the forecast is standing on, as a count of formally closed fiscal months. A forecast built on two closed months deserves less weight than one built on nine, and this saves you working that out.

Current Year Forecast is calculated the same way every time from the property's own posted activity. Run it twice on the same data and you get the same answer, which is what makes it usable in a report you have to defend.

You can swap an individual line's forecast to an AI-generated figure using Forecast Source, the small Calc / AI control in that line's forecast cell. The swap is per line, not per budget, so you can use it on the two or three lines where judgement helps and leave the rest calculated. The choice sticks with the line.

The control tells you when it cannot be used: when no AI forecast has been generated yet, when there is no matching forecast for that account, when you do not have permission to change the forecast source, when the budget is archived, and when AI-adjusted forecasting is not included in your property's plan. Where no forecast exists yet, it offers Go to AI Assist so you can generate one. See The AI Assist tab.

See what is driving the increase

The Attribution view answers the only question owners really ask: where is the increase coming from?

It shows the baseline total, the draft total, and each group's Share of Increase. Those shares add up to the headline percentage exactly. They are not rounded independently and left to nearly agree, so you can read a group's share off the table and put it in a letter without checking the arithmetic.

If the property has no contribution total on file, the view says so plainly rather than showing a percentage it cannot stand behind.

What is not exported

The history and attribution tables are for working and presenting on screen. They do not export this release. The two registry reports are this release's export surface.

Related

• Modelling Budget Scenarios
• Two New Registry Reports
• The AI Assist tab