The plan, beside what actually happened

Budget vs Actual pro-rates the annual budget to the window you are looking at — eight months in, you are compared against eight-twelfths, not the whole year. Budgeted profit, actual profit and variance lead the page, with 'ahead of budget' stated in words.

Like every accounting screen, it reads the ledger directly: the actuals are the books, not an import of them.

Accounts with activity but no budget line are listed rather than hidden — money spent through an account nobody budgeted still spends, and the screen says exactly that. It is the drift-catcher: the subscription that crept in, the category nobody owns.

Set lines account by account; the comparison then runs itself every time you open the page.

Because actuals flow from the ledger continuously, keeping a budget honest costs one setup session a year. The page then answers the board-meeting question — are we where we said we would be? — on demand, with drill-down to the accounts behind any variance.

Budgeting stops being a spreadsheet ritual and becomes a screen you glance at.