Declining budgets help you track how your spending aligns with your forecasted sales throughout a budget period. They update daily, showing you not just how much you've spent—but how much you should spend through the rest of the period.
What Is a Declining Budget?
A declining budget is a dynamic view of your spend vs. budget, which adjusts daily based on your actual and forecasted sales. It is designed to help you:
- Understand how you're pacing through your budget
- Make informed purchasing decisions throughout the period
- Avoid overspending early or underutilizing your budget due to uncertainty
What this means in the real world: If your sales are forecasted to spike over the weekend, your available budget for those days will increase accordingly.
Accessing Declining Budgets
No set up needed! But to access declining budgets, you must have:
- Sales Forecasting enabled, and
- A budget set as a percentage of Total Sales or of Category Sales
Once both conditions are met, your budget data will automatically display in declining format.
Budget Overview Page
The budget bar chart helps you visualize budget performance in real time.
Key Terms:
- Target – Your allowable spend, dynamically calculated based on your forecasted sales
- Spend to Date – Your actual spend up to today
- Remaining – Budget left for the rest of the period or selected date range (Target - Actual Spend)
Green bars indicate you’re under your budget for the period
Red bars indicate you’re over budget for the period
Budget Detail View
In the budget detail view, you’ll see a daily line chart showing how your spend tracks against your dynamically calculated budget.
Line Chart Behavior
Target Line: Based on actual sales up to today's date, and uses forecasted sales data for the remainder of the period
Actual Spend Line: Tracks actual spend day by day.
For any dates where no sales forecast is available, the target line remains flat.
Detail Table Terms
Target Spend to Date – Cumulative dynamic budget based on actual + forecasted sales, depending on where you are in the period
Actual Spend to Date – Spend recorded so far
Variance to Date – Difference between actual spend and target spend
Total Remaining – Full period/date range budget minus spend to date
Budgets - Viewing Multi-Unit Groups
When viewing budgets at the Company or Location level:
- If Sales Forecasting is enabled for all locations, targets are based on a combination of actual sales to date and forecasted sales for the rest of the period.
- If Sales Forecasting is NOT enabled everywhere, targets are calculated using actual sales to date only.
An info icon indicates which units don’t have forecasting enabled.