Skip to content
es
Browse topics

How to read budget vs actual

Compare each account's month and year to date against its budget, find in red where you went over and open the entries that explain it.

Updated October 25, 2026

On this page

The report puts side by side what you budgeted and what you posted, account by account. It is in Accounting › Reports › Budget vs actual.

Opening it

  1. Pick the Scenario (it opens with the year's main one) and the Month.
  2. To see a single cost center, pick it.
  3. Click Show.

What you see

For each account, two blocks: the month and the year to date through that month. In each:

  • Budget and Actual: actuals are your posted entries, without the year-end closing entry.
  • Variance: positive when favorable (you spent less or sold more) and negative, in red, when you went over or sold less.
  • %: the variance against the budget.

Accounts are grouped into revenue, cost, expenses and other, each with its total.

Seeing what happened

Click an account's Actual amount: its movements of the month (or the year) open with the same cost center, and from there each entry and its document.

Tip: the report prints and downloads as PDF, Excel and CSV. You can also put it on a dashboard or ask the assistant "which expenses went over budget this month?".

If you don't see…

  • Any scenario: create one in How to load a budget.
  • An account that moved money: only accounts with a budget or with movements in the year show.

Related articles

Accounting How to load a budget Create the year's scenario, enter each account by month or fill it with an annual amount, last year's actuals or from Excel, and decide whether Nori warns you when you go over. Accounting Trial balance, income statement and balance sheet Run the trial balance, income statement, balance sheet, general journal, subsidiary ledgers and cash flow, filter by period, branch or cost center, and drill down from an amount to the document. Accounting How to use cost centers Turn on up to five dimensions, set up their cost centers with validity dates, use them in your journal entries and filter the trial balance and income statement by center. Accounting Accounting in Nori: how it works What Nori's accounting does, which entry each document posts and where each screen of the module is.

Can't find something?

Tell us what you need to do and we'll get back to you. If you're already a customer, include your company's name.

Contact us