Budget Variance Report

The Budget Variance report presents the budget versus actual costs variance at a given date, broke down by the team roles and expense types you defined.  To access this report, click on the Report tab (or hit '6') and then click on the 'View report' button next to the Budget Variance report preview. This will bring up the report with today's date and all expense types and position titles selected as default.  The report will be automatically refreshed when one of its parameters changes.

The report first presents a bar chart showing two bars for each selected expense type and position title: a green bar indicating the budgeted amount at specified date, a red bar indicating actual amount.  Hovering the bars will open a tooltip showing the precise amounts.  The labels on y-axis can be clicked to navigate to the detailed expense information for that expense type.

Budget Variance chart

Detailed information for all expense types and position titles follow the chart.  Each of these sections shows the list of expenses, ordered alphabetically and grouped by category (OPEX, CAPEX or FINEX).  The variance appears in a losange in the heading on the right.  A green losange indicates a positive variance (budget ≥ actual) and a red losange indicates negative variance.

Detailed budget heading variance section

Configuring the report

To change the date for which to get the variance, simply change the date in the 'Date' field.  The expenses considered are the ones occurring between the start date of the portfolio and the one specified in the date field.  The user can also limit the expenses considered to a certain number of expense types and/or position titles.  Simply select/deselect the expense types you are interested in and the report will be instantly refreshed to reflect the new selection.  Selecting or deselecting a category will cause the list of available expense types and position titles to be updated accordingly.

Budget Variance report parameters

Printing the report

Selecting the "Printable" item in the report's action menu found at the top right of the report's parameters panel to get a printer-friendly version of the report.

Printable version of the report

Exporting to Excel

The Budget Variance report can be exported to Excel format to give you all the latitude you need to further digest, analyze or graph the data. Do it by selecting the "Export to Excel" item in the report's action menu found at the top right of the report's parameters panel. The parameters that were used to generate the report can be found on the second tab of the generated spreadsheet

Excel export of the report