Joining the budget to the ledger
Budgets are monthly by account and department; actuals are transactions by date and ledger account. To compare them you need three things in common: an account (or account group), a period (month), and a department or cost centre. Load the budget sheet as a table, map its account names to the ledger's chart of accounts once, and relate the two on account, period and department. Accounts that exist in one and not the other should show up as their own line, not vanish.
The views the board reads
- This month: budget, actual, variance and variance percent by revenue line and cost head, with the biggest variances first.
- Year to date: the same, cumulative from the start of the financial year — April in India, January in most of the Gulf and Europe, or whatever your year is.
- Full-year forecast: actuals to date plus budget for the remaining months, next to the original budget, so the board sees where the year is landing.
- By department: a league table of variance percent by department or branch, with each department head able to see only their own lines.
Drill-down and who sees what
A variance line that cannot be explained starts an argument; one that clicks through to the transactions ends it. Build the dashboard so a cost head opens to the ledger entries behind it. Then apply a row rule by department so each manager sees their own budget and actuals, while finance and the board see everything, in the dashboard and in the PDF.
Where Klayara fits. Connect the budget from Google Sheets or Excel, relate it to the ledger from your accounting system, and write the variance, year-to-date and forecast measures once as formulas on your own financial year. Row rules by department apply to the dashboard and the scheduled pack. See formulas and the glossary entry for budget vs actual.