Budget Manager & Variance Analysis
Set income and expense targets by account and period, then watch Kantivo measure your real results against the plan. The fastest way to catch a problem account before quarter-end.
Creating a Budget
A Kantivo budget is a named projection tied to a fiscal year. You enter the income you expect to earn and the expenses you intend to spend, account by account, and Kantivo handles the rest: pulling actuals from the ledger and comparing them to your plan whenever you ask for a variance report.
- Open Budgets from the sidebar
- Click Create Budget
- Enter a descriptive name (e.g., "FY26 Operating Plan" or "Q3 Sales Initiative")
- Pick the fiscal year the budget applies to
- Click Next to move on to period and amount entry
Period Granularity
Kantivo offers three planning intervals; pick the one that matches how closely you actually want to monitor the numbers:
| Interval | Columns | When It Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | 12 (Jan–Dec) | You need to see seasonality and want to react month to month |
| Quarterly | 4 (Q1–Q4) | You want high-level guardrails without monthly bookkeeping overhead |
| Annual | 1 (Full Year) | Lightweight target setting for accounts that don't move month to month |
The entry grid reshapes itself to match the interval you select — pick the one that fits before you start typing amounts.
Entering Targets
The entry grid lists every income and expense account in your chart of accounts. Type your projected dollar figure into the appropriate cell for each period:
- Income accounts — expected revenue for the period
- Expense accounts — planned spending for the period
- Leave cells empty (or zero) where you don't expect activity
Column totals build at the bottom of the grid and row totals build on the right as you type, so you can sanity-check the plan in real time.
Activating Your Plan
Click Save Budget to persist your entries. Kantivo stores the plan immediately and starts using it for variance calculations the next time you open the report. You can keep editing amounts for any period that hasn't yet closed.
Saved budgets show up in the budget list with their name, fiscal year, and status. Toggle a budget to Active to designate it as the official plan that variance reports pull from.
Variance Report
Variance reports do the bookkeeping math for you: budget figures next to live ledger actuals, with the difference highlighted.
- From Budgets, pick the budget you want to evaluate
- Click View Variance Report
- Pick a date range (single month, quarter, or year-to-date)
- The report renders instantly with budgeted, actual, and variance columns per account
Reading the Output
Every account in the variance report shows three columns:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Budget | Your plan for the selected period |
| Actual | Real numbers pulled from the general ledger |
| Variance | Actual minus Budget |
How the Colors Read
Cells are color-coded so you can spot trouble at a glance:
- Green — favorable: income over plan, or expenses under plan
- Red — unfavorable: income short of plan, or expenses over plan
- Gray — variance is inside your tolerance threshold (5% by default)
Budget Management
From the budget list you can:
- Edit — update any period that hasn't closed
- Duplicate — clone a budget as a starting point for next year or a what-if scenario
- Set Active — pick which budget the variance report uses
- Delete — remove drafts you no longer need (active budgets must be deactivated first)
- Export — download a CSV for spreadsheet work or stakeholder distribution