QuickBooks Online · Budget vs. Actual
Budget vs Actuals Variance Analysis for QuickBooks, board-ready in minutes
VarianceDesk runs budget vs actuals variance analysis on your QuickBooks Online data: connect QuickBooks, load your budget, and it decomposes every variance by account, class and department — ranks the drivers, writes the commentary, and exports a polished board package.
From $49/mo · 14-day free trial · No credit card to start
Connect QuickBooks
Authorize read-only access to your QuickBooks Online company.
Load your budget
Pull the budget from QuickBooks, or upload a CSV with our template.
Get the board package
Run the analysis and export a polished PDF + Excel in minutes.
Everything a board report needs
Variance by account, class & department
Every line decomposed: $ and % variance, direction-aware favorable / unfavorable, rolled up by class and department.
Driver ranking
The largest swings ranked by net-income impact, grouped into revenue, COGS and opex.
Net-income bridge
A waterfall from budgeted to actual net income — exactly what a board wants to see.
Automated commentary
Concise, board-style narrative grounded only in the numbers — no fabricated causes.
Materiality thresholds
Set dollar and percent thresholds to surface what matters and suppress the noise.
Board package export
A branded PDF and a multi-sheet Excel workbook, ready to drop into the board deck.
Why finance teams trust TechForCFO
Built by CFOs, secured to enterprise standards, and connected directly to your books.
- Intuit-certified QuickBooks integration
- Read-only QuickBooks access
- AES-256 encryption at rest
- Per-tenant data isolation (Postgres RLS)
Budget vs actuals variance analysis — frequently asked questions
- What does VarianceDesk do?
- It connects to QuickBooks Online, pulls your actuals, compares them to your budget, and produces board-ready budget-vs-actual variance analysis with commentary and a PDF + Excel export.
- Do I need my budget in QuickBooks?
- No. You can pull a Budget from QuickBooks, or upload a CSV mapped to accounts and periods using our template.
- How is favorable vs unfavorable determined?
- It is direction-aware. For revenue, coming in over budget is favorable; for expenses, coming in over budget is unfavorable. Each variance is scored by its impact on net income.
- What is the net-income bridge?
- A waterfall that starts at budgeted net income and adds each driver to arrive at actual net income. The drivers sum exactly to the net variance.
- Does the commentary make up explanations?
- No. Commentary is grounded only in the numbers and phrases causes as "driven by" the actual line movements versus budget. It never invents business events.