Budget vs. Actual Report

The Budget vs. Actual report compares your planned spending and revenue (the budget) against what actually happened. It highlights variances — where you're over or under budget — so you can catch problems early and report to your board and funders with confidence. This report requires a Standard plan or higher.

A budget without regular comparison to reality is just a wish list. Your board expects to see how actual spending compares to what was approved. Grant funders may require variance reporting. And for you, this report is an early warning system — it tells you if a program is burning through its budget too fast, or if revenue is falling behind projections, while there's still time to adjust.

• An active budget for the fiscal year you want to report on (see Creating and Managing Budgets)
• Posted transactions for the period you want to compare
• A Standard plan or higher

Running the report

1. Go to Reports > Budget vs Actual (in the sidebar).
2. Select a fiscal year. If you don't select one, the report defaults to your current fiscal year.
3. Select a budget if you have more than one for the same fiscal year. Only active budgets appear by default.
4. Choose a comparison mode:
5. Annual — Compares full-year budget amounts to actual spending, regardless of how far you are into the year.
6. Year-to-Date — Pro-rates the budget based on how much of the fiscal year has passed. This gives you a fairer mid-year comparison — if you're six months in, it compares actual spending against half the annual budget.
7. Optionally filter by fund, program, or project to narrow the comparison.
8. Click "Apply" to generate the report.

Reading the report

The report shows a table with six columns:

Accounts are grouped into Revenue and Expenses sections, each with a subtotal. At the bottom, a Net (Revenue - Expenses) row shows the overall picture.

Reading variances: - Green (favorable) — For expenses, this means you spent less than budgeted. For revenue, this means you earned more than expected. - Red (unfavorable) — For expenses, this means you overspent. For revenue, this means you earned less than expected. - An "Unbudgeted" badge appears next to accounts that have actual activity but no budget line item — these are spending categories you didn't plan for.

Exporting the report

1. Click "CSV" to download a spreadsheet with all columns, including header metadata (budget name, fiscal year, filters applied). Useful for building custom analysis or sharing with your accountant.
2. Click "PDF" to download a formatted document suitable for board packets. PDF export requires a Standard plan or higher.

• Large unfavorable variances — investigate any expense account significantly over budget
• Revenue shortfalls — if actual revenue is well below budget, this affects your ability to fund programs
• Unbudgeted accounts — spending in unbudgeted categories may indicate new expenses that should be incorporated into the next budget
• The comparison mode is appropriate — use Year-to-Date for mid-year reviews, Annual for year-end

• No active budget — If you see "No active budget found," go to Managing Books > Budgets and activate a budget for the fiscal year. A draft budget won't appear in this report (see Creating and Managing Budgets).
• Using Annual mode mid-year — If you're six months into the year and use Annual mode, all expenses will look favorable because you haven't had time to spend the full-year budget. Switch to Year-to-Date for a realistic mid-year picture.
• Forgetting to filter by fund or project — If you have a grant-specific budget, use the fund or project filter to see the comparison for just that grant. The default view shows all activity combined.
• Misreading variance direction — A positive revenue variance is good (you earned more). A positive expense variance means you overspent (that's bad). The color coding helps — green is always favorable, red is always unfavorable.

Accountant note: The Year-to-Date comparison mode pro-rates annual budget amounts proportionally based on elapsed days in the fiscal year. This straight-line pro-ration works well for organizations with relatively even monthly spending. For organizations with seasonal patterns (e.g., higher expenses during summer programs), consider comparing against a monthly or quarterly budget breakdown rather than relying solely on pro-rated annual figures.