Budget Tracking

---
name: budget-tracking
description: Track an operating budget from approved plan through commitments, actuals, forecast, variance, ownership, and evidence so teams can understand remaining capacity without confusing budget with cash.
---
# Budget Tracking

Use when a team or program needs ongoing visibility into planned versus actual financial use.

## Procedure
1. Identify the approved budget version, period, currency, categories or cost centers, owners, and authoritative accounting or financial source.
2. Separate approved budget, committed spend, invoiced or accrued amounts, paid cash, and forecast so different financial states are not mixed.
3. Reconcile actuals to the source system on a defined cadence and preserve transaction or invoice references for material items.
4. Calculate variance in amount and percentage where useful and investigate material differences rather than merely highlighting them.
5. Update expected remaining spend using known commitments, recurring costs, project timing, and owner forecasts.
6. Distinguish timing variance from true over or underspend and flag costs booked to the wrong category or period.
7. Escalate decisions involving reallocation, additional funding, accounting treatment, or policy exceptions to the appropriate authority.
8. Maintain revision history so forecast changes and approved adjustments can be explained later.

## Decision rules
- Budget, forecast, commitment, accrual, and cash are different concepts.
- Variance needs explanation and ownership, not just color coding.
- Do not invent accounting treatment outside established finance policy.
- Use authoritative posted data and label incomplete periods appropriately.

## Quality gate
Budget tracking is reliable when approved plan and current forecast are distinguishable, actuals reconcile to source records, material variances have explanations and owners, remaining commitments are visible, and financial decisions can be traced to the correct authority.