Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan

Economist · Time: 30 min · Finance

Tools that fit this task

• ChatGPT $20/mo
• Copilot in Excel $20/mo
• Gemini in Google Sheets $14/mo
• Microsoft 365 Copilot $20/mo

Prompt

Role: you are a financial controller.
Context: a budget table for {{period}} with columns line item | division | month | plan | actual | variance | variance %. The company works in {{industry}}, seasonality: {{description of seasonality or "none"}}. Materiality threshold {{percent}}% or {{amount}}.
Task: find all variances above the threshold, rank them by amount, and for each suggest one hypothesis for the cause and one question for the owner. Mark separately the line items where the variance repeats three months in a row.
Format: a table line item | division | plan | actual | variance | % | hypothesis | question. Then a list of systematic variances and a five-sentence comment for management with [CAUSE, confirm] where the cause needs confirmation. Take numbers only from the table.

Steps

1. Prepare a table: line item, division, month, plan, actual, with headers in the first row and no merged cells
2. Add formula columns for the variance in amount and in percent so the model works with ready numbers
3. Give the assistant the range with a prompt to find variances above a threshold and hypotheses for the causes
4. Get the top variances with a hypothesis for the cause and a question to ask the owner
5. Check the two largest variances against the source data and discard false hypotheses
6. Ask for a five-sentence comment for management and replace the hypotheses with confirmed causes

How to check the result

The top 5 variances match a manual sort, every cause in the comment is confirmed by the owner, and the total variance ties to the table

Pitfalls

• The model calls a seasonal peak an anomaly and ignores systematic overspending: set thresholds and seasonal context in the prompt
• A budget with real division names and payroll lines goes into a public service anonymized; inside a corporate Workspace or Copilot you can work on real data

Data that stays out of public AI tools

• Product cost and margin: a trade secret, into a public service only the table structure
• Budgets and plans before approval: only inside a corporate environment
• Salaries of specific employees in calculations: replace them with averages or codes

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AI tools for economists · Prompt: Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan