# Explain the variance, not just the number

Compare budget to actuals per owner, write the narrative, and diff against last month's pack.

**Connects:** googlesheets, gmail, slack

## How to install

1. Fetch https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skill.md and save it into your skills folder as `budget-vs-actuals`.
2. Ask the user the first-run questions the skill lists, and store the answers in memory.
3. Offer to schedule the recurring jobs below; create only the ones the user approves.
4. Run the skill once end to end and review the output with the user.

## What this does

- Pulls budget and actuals per owner and computes variance in dollars and percent
- Flags only variances over each owner's materiality threshold
- Drafts a one-line narrative for every flagged variance, what moved, why
- Diffs this month's flags against last month's to catch recurring misses

## Recurring jobs

- **Monthly variance pack** (Monthly, after the period's books close) — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/jobs-setup/monthly-variance-pack.md

## Skills inside

The full method, including each of these, is in skill.md. Individually fetchable:

- **Variance materiality policy**, Which variances are worth a narrative line, by owner and threshold — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/variance-materiality-policy.md
- **Owner narrative format**, One-line context per flagged variance, what moved, why, what's next — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/owner-narrative-format.md
- **Month-over-month diff**, Compare this pack's flags against last month's to catch recurring misses — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/month-over-month-diff.md

## Files

- skill.md — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skill.md
- jobs-setup/monthly-variance-pack.md — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/jobs-setup/monthly-variance-pack.md
- skills/variance-materiality-policy.md — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/variance-materiality-policy.md
- skills/owner-narrative-format.md — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/owner-narrative-format.md
- skills/month-over-month-diff.md — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/skills/month-over-month-diff.md
- workflow.json — https://eluu.ai/cookbook/budget-vs-actuals/workflow.json