Budget Variance Analyzer

Budget Variance Analyzer

Automate your monthly financial reporting. Feed in budget vs. actuals data, and this skill acts as an FP&A analyst to identify key variance drivers, assess risks, and draft executive-ready commentary. It doesn't just calculate the difference; it explains why the numbers are off and what to do about it.

Features

• Driver Identification: Pinpoints the specific line items causing the biggest deviations.
• Risk Assessment: Classifies variances as "Risks" or "Opportunities" based on impact.
• Action Planning: Suggests corrective actions (e.g., "Freeze hiring," "Reallocate spend") for each issue.
• Audience Tailoring: Adjusts the report depth for CFOs (high-level) vs. Department Heads (granular).
• Threshold Filtering: Focuses analysis only on variances exceeding your defined % or $ limits.

> This is a CLI skill. It requires the skills CLI to execute. Install it with npm install -g @hasna/skills, then run the commands below.

Usage

# Analyze a variance report file
skills run budget-variance-analyzer -- "./inputs/budget_variance.csv"
  --period "November 2025"

# Analyze inline data
skills run budget-variance-analyzer -- --text "Marketing: Budget 120k, Actual 138k. Sales: Budget 300k, Actual 270k"
  --audience "Finance Team"

# Set a strict threshold
skills run budget-variance-analyzer -- "./inputs/q4_report.json"
  --threshold "5%"
  --format markdown

Options

| Option | Description | Default | | ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | -------------- | | --text | Raw data text (if not using file input) | - | | --period | Reporting period (e.g. "Q4 2024") | current period | | --audience | Target audience (Finance, Exec, Dept) | Finance | | --threshold | Variance threshold to trigger analysis (e.g. "5%") | 5% | | --currency | Currency symbol for display | USD | | --format | Output format (markdown or json) | markdown | | --output | Custom filename for export | Auto-generated |

Output

• Report: A structured variance analysis document.
• Action Items: A list of recommended next steps.

Examples

Executive Summary

skills run budget-variance-analyzer -- "./inputs/pnl_summary.csv"
  --audience "Executive Team"
  --threshold "10%"

Department Review

skills run budget-variance-analyzer -- --text "Engineering: Budget 500k, Actual 550k (Cloud costs spike)"
  --audience "Engineering Director"

Requirements

• OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable.
• Bun runtime.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: hasna
• Source: hasna/skills
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.