Prompt: Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan
Finance · Time: 30 min
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.Placeholders to fill in
{{period}}{{industry}}{{description of seasonality or "none"}}{{percent}}{{amount}}
Works well in
- Gemini in Google Sheets $14/mo
- Copilot in Excel $20/mo
- ChatGPT $20/mo
- Microsoft 365 Copilot $20/mo
How to check the answer
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
Step-by-step versions by role
- Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan: Accountant
- Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan: Finance manager
- Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan: Data analyst
- Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan: Economist
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