IN THIS SECTION
This section contains information about the Budgets feature within Joiin.
Overview
You can view Budgets and Forecasts in Joiin and compare them to Actual values and see Variance and Varance %. Budgets are automatically imported from Xero or QuickBooks. You can also create your own Budgets directly in Joiin using manual budget creation.
NOTE: A maximum of 100 budgets will be imported from Xero or QuickBooks.
Viewing Budgets
You can view a list of budgets, either imported from Xero/QuickBooks or created by you, by selecting Budgets from the left menu.
Joiin Budgets
The top section shows a list of Budgets added directly into Joiin and a button to add a new budget - see Creating a Budget section for more information on this. You can perform the following actions on a Joiin budget:
Activate/Deactivate - set the Budget as Active/Inactive to control whether it appears in report results or not
Edit - edit the data for the budget
Download - download the budget data in CSV format
Remove - remove the budget - this will remove it permanently
External Budgets
The bottom section shows a list of all Budgets that have been automatically imported from your Xero or QuickBooks companies. These budgets will be refreshed whenever your main company data is refreshed. You will see the name of the Budget and the company it relates to.
Budgets are imported in 12-monthly chunks. Each 12 month period will be aligned with the Start Date you have set on your Company config. By default the Start Date is January but you can change this if your financial year starts in a different month. See our Managing Companies article for more information on how to change.
You can perform the following actions on an External budget:
Activate/Deactivate - set the Budget as Active/Inactive to control whether it appears in report results or not
Download - download the budget data in CSV format
More information on Xero Budgets.
More information on QuickBooks Budgets.
Reporting on Budget vs Actual
You can report on Budget vs Actual when running a report by switching the Budget toggle on - see this section for more information on running reports.
The Budget toggle will only appear if there are active budgets available to view for the period and companies selected. When you select the Budget toggle, you can choose what items to display:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| No budget | No budget information will be displayed |
| Budget vs Actual | Budget information will be displayed - you can choose which items to display:
|
| Budget only | Only the budget values will be displayed. This is a convenient way to see a budget in a particular report format such as P&L. |
| Actual & Budget | Shows Actual figures for past months and Budget figures for current/future months. |
Click on Apply changes and the budget information will be displayed.
NOTE: Only data from Active budgets will be displayed.
If you have chosen to show variance columns, those columns highlight the difference between the budget amount and the actual amount. The arrow icons show whether the variance is an increase (up arrow) or decrease (down arrow), and whether it’s favourable (green) or unfavourable (red).
NOTE: You can control how the favourability is displayed by changing the Budget Favourability setting on Custom Reports - for more information see this article.
Hovering over the value with your mouse will bring up more details of the individual budgets/months that the budget information came from.
NOTE In Compact View budget info is shown in the same column as the Actual.
The budget information used is taken from all the active budgets for the relevant period and companies that have been selected for this report run. If there is more than one budget or the report period spans multiple months then the individual budget amounts for each budget/month will be displayed when you hover over the amount - the individual amounts will be summed up to get the total budget amount displayed on screen.