How to Read Budget Performance and Variance

The Budget vs Actual tab shows how your property's income and spending compare to the budget for any period you choose. You need at least Read Only permission to view it.

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Open the performance view

1. In the left sidebar, go to Accounting, then Budgets.
2. The Budget vs Actual tab is open by default. The table shows the active budget's performance for the current year to date.

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Read the summary row

Above the charts, a Budget summary row answers three questions at a glance. Read it by what each figure tells you rather than by its position, because the row is laid out to fit the width you have:

• Total budget is the whole fiscal year's budget, not the period you are looking at. It stays put when you switch periods, so you always have the year's size for context.
• Spent is what has actually been spent in the period named beneath it.
• Variance compares those two for that same period, and says Under Budget or Over Budget in words rather than leaving you to work out what a negative number means.

If you have permission to see the general ledger, the figures that have transactions behind them can be opened to show them. Without that permission the figures still appear; only the drill-through is withheld.

Reserve money is not in any of these figures. Reserve fund activity is kept out of budget performance entirely, so a large reserve expense will never appear here as an overspend.

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Switch the period

At the top right of the table, use the period controls to change what you see:

• YTD, year to date (the default). Shows all posted months from the start of your fiscal year to now.
• Full year. Shows the entire fiscal year, including future months.
• Month. Shows a single month.

The left and right arrows step between months. Using them while you are in YTD or Full year switches the table into Month for you, because a single month is what you have just asked for.

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Read the table

The columns depend on the period you have chosen, which surprises people who switch between them.

• Month gives you three figures per row: Budget, Spent, and Variance.
• YTD and Full year give you one column per fiscal month, then Total, Budget and Variance. There is no Spent column in these two views; the Total column is the spend, added up across the months shown.

Either way the table is split into two sections, Income at the top and Expense below. YTD and Full year also carry a Totals row, and every view ends with Net (income - expense).

Understanding the Variance color:

• For expenses: green means you spent less than budgeted (good). Red means you spent more (over budget).
• For income: green means you collected more than expected (good). Red means you collected less (under target).

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Rows with spending but no budget

If money was posted to an account that has no budget line, the row still appears, so the spending is never hidden. Its Budget cell shows a dash and its Variance cell reads No budget rather than pretending the account is 100% over. These rows are marked as accounts with actuals but no budget mapped, and they are left out of the Totals row so they cannot distort it.

Fix: add the account to the budget, in a category or on its own, and it starts being measured next time.

Reserve money is not counted here

Spending funded from reserve is deliberately kept out of the actual figures on this screen, on both cash and accrual reporting. A budget is the operating plan, and a single large reserve project would otherwise read as the operating budget being consumed. It is also why a budget figure will not tie to a bank statement. See Reserve in Budgets and Reports.

Expand a group to see member accounts

Groups show a combined Budget / Spent / Variance total. To see which accounts within the group are driving the spending:

1. Click the expand arrow on a group row.
2. The member accounts appear beneath the group, each showing their actual spend for the selected period.

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Open the Full Budget view for month-by-month detail

The table on the main page is a summary. For month-by-month figures, reallocation tools, and allocation history, open the Full Budget view:

1. Click View full budget (top right of the table).
2. The Full Budget drawer slides in. Each row shows a horizontal month strip when expanded, so click the left chevron on any row to see all 12 months.
3. Click the chevron at the right of a row to open that row's detail panel. This is where you find the transactions behind the figure, the transfers made in and out of the row, and the Reallocate surplus button.

You can reach the same detail panel by clicking a row directly on the Budget vs Actual table. Opening the transactions needs General Ledger permission; without it, rows are not clickable.

See How to reallocate budget funds for what you can do from that panel.