--- title: "Budget vs actual variance explanations, automated — Rebase" description: "Rebase investigates budget vs actual variances across your ERP, payroll and plans, finds the drivers and drafts the explanation for finance review." url: https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/explain-performance language: en --- Performance analysis # Know what changed. Know why. Rebase investigates material movements across your financial and operational systems, finds the drivers behind them, and prepares the explanation for finance review. Go from variance detected to cause explained without manually tracing it across systems and spreadsheets. [See Rebase investigate a variance](https://rebasehq.ai/contact-us) [Talk to us](mailto:m@rebasehq.ai) Illustration: a Rebase investigation of the question "Why are Q3 operating expenses $4.2M above budget?" for Q3 of FY26 (July to September 2026; the fiscal year is the calendar year), consolidated, forecast against budget, read from Business Central, payroll journals and the FY26 operating plan. Operating expenses are forecast $4.2M, 10.0%, above a $42.0M budget. A waterfall bridges the budget to the $46.2M forecast through headcount +$2.1M, cloud infrastructure +$1.4M, marketing +$0.9M, professional services −$0.5M and other +$0.3M. The driver table gives each its current variance and, set apart as forward-looking, its Q4 impact and type: headcount +$1.8M and cloud +$1.1M recurring, the annual conference $0 and one-off, professional services −$0.3M recurring, other +$0.3M mixed, $2.9M in all. Rebase's analysis: headcount and cloud explain 83% of the variance, and about $2.9M is recurring. The investigation is ready for review, with actions to view it or add it to the management report. The work behind the variance ## Seeing the variance is the easy part. Your ERP, planning software and BI tools can show that actuals differ from plan. The work begins when finance has to explain why. Illustration: the work of explaining a variance, two ways. Without Rebase, finance exports account detail from Business Central, opens the operating plan, checks payroll journals, looks through Salesforce, searches the transactions in an export, builds the bridge in a workbook and writes the commentary in a document: eight steps, several hours or days. With Rebase, the variance is detected, Rebase investigates it across the same systems, returns the drivers with their evidence and an explanation, and Megan Carter, FP&A Manager, reviews it. ## From movement to explanation. Five steps of one investigation, Q3 cloud infrastructure. Each leaves the output the next one starts from. Illustration: the five steps of one investigation into Q3 cloud infrastructure, each with its output. Detect what matters: cloud infrastructure, +$1.4M, 21.8% over a $6.42M Q3 budget. Drill into the records: 6120 Cloud hosting, 31 invoices from 4 vendors. Find the drivers: the AWS commitment, amended on 1 August, with usage above it. Determine what persists: recurring, +$1.1M in Q4. Prepare the explanation: three sentences and four figures, each linked to its records. Common investigations ## The questions FP&A gets every month. Six kinds of investigation, each starting from a movement and ending on its causes. Open one to see what Rebase does. - 01 Budget vs actual Why are operating expenses above budget? Headcount and cloud explain 83% of +$4.2M What Rebase does Finds the material lines, investigates the transactions and drivers behind them, and explains the movement. Typically reads Business Central, Payroll journals, and FY26 Operating Plan.xlsx. Q3 opex +$4.2M · headcount +$2.1M · cloud +$1.4M · conference +$0.9M - 02 Revenue performance Why did revenue miss forecast? −$0.3M: a renewal moved to October, and churn What Rebase does Separates timing, churn, price, volume and mix across billing, pipeline and customer activity. Typically reads Salesforce, Business Central, and Snowflake. EMEA subscriptions −$0.3M vs forecast · timing −$0.2M, a renewal moved to October · churn −$0.1M - 03 Gross margin Why did margin decline? −3.2 pts: freight, product mix, discounting What Rebase does Quantifies each driver across revenue, cost of sales, logistics, mix and discounting. Typically reads Business Central, Snowflake, and Salesforce. EMEA 41.6% → 38.4% · freight −1.3 pts · mix −1.1 pts · discounting −0.8 pts - 04 Headcount Why is personnel expense above plan? +$2.1M: hires ahead of plan, merit three months early What Rebase does Compares hiring dates, vacancies, compensation and contractors with the plan's assumptions. Typically reads Payroll journals, Headcount roster, and Headcount Plan.xlsx. Q3 headcount +$2.1M · 14 engineers from 15 Jul, budgeted from 1 Sep · merit 3 months early - 05 Spend Where is spending growing unexpectedly? Cloud $3.2M in September, 55% of it AWS What Rebase does Breaks the change down by vendor, department, category and commitment. Typically reads Business Central and Vendor invoices. September cloud $3.2M · AWS $1.76M · Azure $0.80M · Datadog $0.35M · other $0.29M - 06 Cash Why is cash different from plan? −$1.4M against plan: collections and payment timing What Rebase does Traces the difference through collections, payments, working capital and timing. Typically reads Business Central and Cash Plan.xlsx. September cash $41.6M vs $43.0M plan · collections −$0.9M · payment timing −$0.5M Worked example ## A 3.2-point margin decline, explained. EMEA revenue held at $8.4M in September, yet gross margin fell from 41.6% to 38.4%. One question, investigated across three systems and tied back to the books. Illustration: Rebase's run on the question "Why did EMEA gross margin fall in September?", six steps: it pulled revenue and cost of sales from Business Central, isolated EMEA, examined the freight postings against Snowflake shipments and carrier invoices, compared product mix with August, pulled quarter-end discounts from Salesforce, and tied the result to the trial balance. Illustration: the answer, EMEA gross margin from 41.6% in August to 38.4% in September, −3.2 points on $8.4M of revenue in both months. Three drivers: freight −1.3 points, product mix −1.1 points and discounting −0.8 points. Freight is open: freight cost rose $109K, from $509K to $618K, because carrier rates on Rotterdam lanes rose in August and reached September invoices; $109K on $8.4M of revenue is 1.3 points, read from Business Central, Snowflake shipments and carrier invoices. The result ties to the trial balance, with nothing unexplained, and is ready for review. ## Don't stop at the explanation. An investigated variance feeds the rest of FP&A: the part that recurs changes the forecast, and the explanation becomes the report's commentary. Illustration: what follows an investigation. The Q3 variance of +$4.2M is investigated and verified: $2.9M of it recurs and $1.3M is one-off. The recurring part becomes a forecast update, +$2.9M proposed as payroll +$1.8M and cloud infrastructure +$1.1M. In the September Management Pack the commentary is drafted and ready for review. [Review the forecast updates ](https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/forecast-updates) [Open the September pack ](https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/management-reporting) ## Every explanation opens onto the evidence. Each statement opens onto the calculation behind it, the account and its postings. Open the highlighted posting to see the record it came from. Illustration: the freight statement from the worked example traced to its source. Statement: freight cost increased $109K. Calculation: $618K − $509K = $109K, divided by $8.4M of revenue, 1.3 points. Account: 5310 Freight out, EMEA, $618K in September. Transactions: 212 September postings, the largest DHL Express $48,620, Maersk $41,200 and Kuehne+Nagel $36,870. The DHL Express posting is highlighted and opens onto its source record: invoice 88-4410, 26 September, Rotterdam to Hamburg, $48,620, purchase invoice PI-30412 in Business Central, with its evidence: read from the Business Central general ledger, last synced 30 September 2026 at 08:40, calculated as September less August over EMEA revenue, owned by Megan Carter, FP&A Manager, included in the September Management Pack, from the investigation of 30 September at 08:49. Questions ## Where Rebase starts and stops. - ### Does Rebase replace our BI or planning software? No. Those tools keep showing and storing financial performance. Rebase investigates the movements they surface and prepares the explanation. - ### What data can Rebase investigate? Financial and operational data in the systems you connect: the ERP and its payroll journals, the CRM and the warehouse, and the plans and spreadsheets your team works from. - ### Can Rebase trace an explanation back to individual transactions? Yes. Each investigation keeps the calculation, the accounts, the postings and the source records behind every figure, so any line of the explanation opens onto what it rests on. - ### How does Rebase decide which variances to investigate? Your finance team sets the materiality thresholds and the dimensions that matter, such as an amount, a percentage, an entity or a department. Rebase investigates what crosses them. - ### Does finance review the explanation? Yes. Rebase prepares the investigation and the commentary; your team reviews them before they go anywhere. [ The product Rebase FP&A Investigate performance, prepare reporting, update forecasts and model decisions across the finance stack you already use. Explore Rebase FP&A ](https://rebasehq.ai/product/fpa) Other FP&A solutions - [ Management reporting Turn investigated performance into finance-ready reporting. ](https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/management-reporting) - [ Keep forecasts current Carry recurring changes into the outlook. ](https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/forecast-updates) - [ Model business decisions Test what happens next. ](https://rebasehq.ai/solutions/scenario-analysis) ## Bring us the variance your team spent last week explaining. We'll show you how Rebase investigates it, what evidence it finds and what it would prepare for review. [Book a working session](https://rebasehq.ai/contact-us)