budget-variance-analyzer - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: budget-variance-analyzer version: 0.1.0 description: Explain budget versus actual variances with performance insights, key drivers, and recommended actions author: skills.md category: Finance tags: - budgeting - financial-analysis - variance-reporting - fpa - performance-metrics - ai-analyst credits: 3

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.