FP&A Budget vs. Actual & Rolling Forecast: Driver-Based – Excel XLSX

BENEFITS OF THIS DOWNLOADABLE EXCEL DOCUMENT

1. Build the budget from drivers, record actuals, explain variances by price, volume and mix, and reforecast the year under scenarios.
2. Use it if you run a budget and a monthly review and want the variance explained, not just reported.
3. Live formulas, no macros, every figure traced to its source and recalculated before listing.

BUDGETING & FORECASTING EXCEL DESCRIPTION

FP&A Budget vs. Actual & Rolling Forecast: Driver-Based is an Excel template (XLSX) available for immediate download upon purchase.

The budget cycle in one file: a budget built from drivers rather than typed numbers, actuals entered monthly, variances that say why (price, volume or mix), a rolling forecast that keeps the year honest, and a dashboard for the monthly review.

• Budget drivers: units, price and unit cost of goods per product line by month; headcount and cost per head for sales, operations and G&A; marketing, rent, software, other opex; capex. Change a driver and every sheet follows.
• Budget: revenue and cost of goods per line, gross profit, people cost with on-costs, opex lines, EBITDA, depreciation from capex, EBIT, margins, with annual totals.
• Actuals: enter units, average price and cost of goods per line plus the cost lines for closed months; derived rows compute; set the months of actuals on Inputs.
• Variance: year to date budget against actual per line and per cost, favourable positive, with percentages; revenue variance decomposed per line into price effect and volume effect, and the mix effect separated from pure volume; check column.
• Rolling forecast: actual months stay actual, future months come from the drivers scaled by the scenario multipliers (base, upside, downside); the outturn block gives the full-year view.
• Dashboard: revenue, gross profit, people cost and EBITDA year to date and full year, budget against actual and outturn, margins, and the price, volume and mix effects.

Rebuilt independently in Python from the same inputs and matched cell by cell before listing. Every default is an example value. Live formulas, no macros, no locked cells. Excel and Google Sheets.

Who it is for: FP&A analysts and controllers running the annual budget and the monthly review, founders and finance leads at companies with two to five product lines, advisers setting up a client's first proper budget process.

Contents: 1 Excel workbook (.xlsx), sheets: Dashboard, Variance, Inputs, Budget drivers, Budget, Actuals, Rolling forecast, Guide

Not for you if: You need consolidation across entities or currencies; this is a single-entity operating model.

Source: Best Practices in Budgeting & Forecasting, Variance Analysis Excel: FP&A Budget vs. Actual & Rolling Forecast: Driver-Based Excel (XLSX) Spreadsheet, Bindler