Budget vs. Actual and Categories at Risk – GoodBooks Software, LLC

Once you've created a budget, two reports under Reports put it to work: one compares plan to reality, the other looks ahead and warns you which categories are pacing to miss the year.

Budget vs. Actual

Pick a budget and a date range (it defaults to fiscal-year-start through today), and you get revenue and expense sections with:

Column	What it means
Budget (Period)	The share of the budget belonging to your date range. Monthly budgets use the actual months you entered; annual budgets are spread evenly across the year.
Actual	What your books show for the same window.
Variance	The difference — colored by whether it's good news. Revenue over budget is green; expenses under budget are green.
Annual Budget	The full-year number, for context.
% Used	How much of the annual budget is consumed so far.

Totals for each section and a Net row at the bottom tell you whether the organization as a whole is ahead or behind plan.

Two behaviors worth knowing:

Unbudgeted activity still shows. An account with real activity but no budget line appears with a zero budget — surprises don't hide off-report.
A month in progress counts in full on the budget side. Mid-July, the period budget includes all of July — the treasurer's usual year-to-date convention.

The report prints cleanly for board packets — use your browser's print button on the report page.

Budget Categories at Risk

The at-risk report is the early-warning version. It always looks at the fiscal year to date, projects each category's year-end total from its pace so far, and lists only the categories projected to miss their annual budget by more than 5% — worst first. Each row is badged:

Badge	Meaning
OVER BUDGET	Already past the annual number — not a projection.
OVERSPENDING PACE	An expense on track to finish over budget at its current rate.
REVENUE SHORTFALL	A revenue category on track to finish under budget.

An empty report is the goal — it means every budgeted category is projected to land within 5% of plan.

Early in the fiscal year, take projections lightly: one big annual bill paid in month two looks like a wild overspending pace until the year catches up. The report earns its keep from a few months in onward.

Good to know

Both reports read the same numbers as your income statement, so Budget vs. Actual's "Actual" column always agrees with your financial statements for the same dates.
Categories with no budget and no activity stay off both reports entirely.
If a category is at risk, the fix happens in the books or the budget — spend differently, or revise the budget line to the new reality (edits show up on the reports immediately).