We are so excited to introduce a new feature that has been highly requested by our Xero customers –– the Budget module! This idea was first brought up by the Xero community in 2012 and after years of working on the idea, it was finally implemented in 2020. We at G-Accon were honored to be among the Exclusive App Partners who migrated to OAuth 2.0 in August of 2020. Because of this, we were able to start using the budget summary Xero API feature early on.

In order to enable this Budget functionality, you will need to go to xero.com, select your organization, choose “Connected Apps” in the settings, and explicitly disconnect the G-Accon application. Following this, you should be able to log back in into G-Accon for Xero in your Google Sheet and use this Budget functionality.

How can G-Accon help you?

With our new feature, you are now able to download a set of Budget-related reports, create your own report, automate your downloads based on your schedule, and use other existing G-Accon functionalities to perform your day-to-day operations.

New Report: Budget Manager

With the Budget Manager report, you can quickly prepare comprehensive budgets, run comparisons against performances on selected periods, and download them into Google Sheets. The report will show any revenue or expense accounts that have amounts budgeted in the Budget Manager.

To generate a Budget Manager report, you need to click G-Accon for Xero –>Standard Accounting Reports–> Budget Manager. You can select any budget (Overall Budgets, By Tracking category, and so on) that is set up in your Xero account. But if you haven’t set up any additional budgets, you will only be able to use the Overall Budget option.

New Report: Budget Variance

A budget to actual variance analysis is a process by which a company’s budget is compared to its actual results and any explanations for variances are interpreted. But what exactly is the purpose of performing this variance analysis? It is to find the answers to the following questions:

• Why did one division, department, product line, or service perform better or worse than others?
• Why are operating, selling, general, and administrative expenses higher or lower this year when compared to last year?
• Are variances in budget reality vs expectation being caused by execution failure, change in market conditions, competitor actions, unexpected events, or unrealistic forecasts?

Variance analysis essentially measures the difference between the actual measures and some predetermined standard measure. Most organizations perform variance analysis on a periodic basis (i.e. monthly, quarterly, or annually) in enough detail to allow managers to understand what’s happening to the business without overburdening staff.

In order to generate a Budget Variance report, you need to select G-Accon for Xero –>Standard Accounting Reports and select –> Budget Variance.

G-Accon offers you the ability to generate a Budget Variance report by comparing your current budget with the previous month’s, quarter’s, or year’s budgets. This advantageous feature allows you to sidestep the Xero limitation in which you can only compare your budget with the previous month’s.

New Report: Budget Summary

What is the purpose of a Budget Summary report? This report helps executive managers and finance teams assess key financial, operational, and competitive metrics as part of a monthly performance review. In its simplest definition, a Budget Summary refers to an itemized summary of expected revenue, as well as the expenditure related to a given project, business, or entity. Usually, a Budget Summary highlights some essential information that is related to the significant revenues and expenses of an organization.

In other words, the Budget Summary report uses the Budget Manager to create a summarized view of the budget you have prepared.

In order to generate a Budget Summary report, you need to select G-Accon for Xero –>Standard Accounting Reports and select –> Budget Summary.

Report: Budget vs Actual

The Budget vs Actuals report shows you how well you are meeting your original goals for the year for top-line sales and line-by-line expenses. For each line, you can compare your budgeted amounts versus your actual income and expenses.

G-Accon gives you the ability to pull your planned annual budgets by taking the quarterly approach or by using a monthly budgeting strategy. Making your budget quarter by quarter can give you a better sense of your business and can help you create longer-term budgets in the future. Of course, a budget is only an estimate of revenues and expenditures; actuals are the recorded revenues and expenditures at any given point in time.

You can generate a Budget vs Actuals report by selecting G-Accon for Xero –>Standard Accounting Reports and select –> Budgets vs Actuals

This report compares your budgeted amounts to your actual income and expenses. Negative amounts in the report show that you are under budget, while positive amounts mean that you are over budget.

Design Budgets Report

Last but not least, you have the ability to create your own Budgets report by using the Report Designer capability. This feature is available to you if you want to generate your own report. This feature is not available under the Standard Accounting Report option.

In order to generate your own Budgets report, you need to select G-Accon for Xero –>Report Designer –>Design Accounting Reports and select –> Budgets. You can pick all attributes or some attributes based on your preferences. You can also expand attributes to see the whole structure with the sub-attributes or alternatively, collapse them. You can also set up the advanced filters and query orders. You can learn more here.