Budget Tool — User Guide

For: anyone using Budget Tool day to day. Covers: version 1.15. Last reviewed 2 September 2026.

If you are setting Budget Tool up, adding people, or fixing it when it misbehaves, you want the Administrator Guide instead.

This guide covers whole tasks from start to finish. For "what does this control do?", use the ? button in the bottom-right corner of any page — it explains the page you are actually on.

---

• Closing your account

Contents

1. Creating your organisation
2. Inviting your team
3. Signing in
4. Finding your way around
5. Setting up a budget year
6. Creating a budget and entering figures
7. Importing budget lines from a spreadsheet
8. Getting a budget approved
9. Signing off a whole company: Master Budgets
10. Importing actual spend
11. Fixing an unmatched transaction
12. Reading the reports
13. Recording a reforecast
14. Closing your account
15. When things go wrong

---

Creating your organisation

Goal: get your own Budget Tool, with you as its administrator.

1. Go to /register.
2. Enter your organisation's name, your name, your work email and a password of at least 12 characters.
3. Select Create organisation.
4. Open the confirmation link we email you. Nothing is active until you do: this is how we know the address is really yours.
5. Sign in.

You should see: an empty Budget Tool, with your organisation's name, and nobody in it but you.

Use a work address, not a temporary one. Temporary addresses are refused, because losing access to the address means losing the ability to reset your password on the only administrator account.

The confirmation email hasn't arrived

• Check the spam folder. A first message from a new sender often lands there.
• Check the address was typed correctly. If not, register again with the right one.
• If that address already had an account, no email was sent and nothing new was created. Use Forgot your password instead. The registration page deliberately doesn't say which of the two happened, so nobody can use it to find out who has an account.

What to do next

A brand-new organisation is empty. The usual order is:

1. Set up your Master Data — companies, departments or cost centres, nominal codes, suppliers.

2. Create a Budget Year.

3. Create budgets and enter or import their figures.

4. Invite your colleagues from Invitations — one at a time, or a whole list from a CSV.

---

Inviting your team

Goal: get your colleagues into your organisation. You need: the Administrator role.

Everyone you invite gets a link that lets them set their own password. Their account is created only when they use it — an invitation that is never opened never becomes a user.

Inviting one person

1. Go to Invitations.
2. Enter their email address and choose a role.
3. Select Send invitation.

You should see: their address listed as Pending, with the date the link expires. Links last 14 days.

Inviting a whole team from a spreadsheet

1. Go to Invitations → Bulk invite from CSV.
2. Upload a file with one email address per line. A role in the second column is optional; a blank one becomes Read Only, which grants nothing.
3. Review what would happen. Nothing has been sent at this point. You'll see who would be invited, and who would be skipped and why.
4. Download the skipped rows if there are any, correct them, and upload again.
5. Select Send invitations.

Uploading the same file twice is safe: anyone already invited is skipped rather than invited again.

Managing invitations

Once somebody has accepted, use Users to change their role or deactivate them; the invitation itself is finished.

Why an invitation might be refused

• They already have a Budget Tool account. One person has one account, in one organisation. If they need to move, they'll need a new address or their old account removing first.
• They already have an invitation waiting. Resend or revoke that one rather than sending a second.

---

Signing in

Goal: get into Budget Tool.

1. Go to your Budget Tool address and enter your email and password.
2. If two-factor authentication is set up on your account, enter the six-digit code from your authenticator app.
3. You land on the Dashboard.

Signing in with Microsoft

If your organisation has set it up, use Continue with Microsoft instead: enter your work email address and you are sent to your own Microsoft sign-in.

• You need to have been invited first. Microsoft sign-in does not create accounts on its own.
• Your organisation's own security rules apply - if your Microsoft account requires an authenticator app, that is what you are asked for. Budget Tool's own two-factor setup does not apply to you.
• If it says Microsoft sign-in is not set up for your email domain, use your password instead.
• If Microsoft sign-in is temporarily broken, you are sent back to the password form with a message. Tell your administrator.

You should see: the Dashboard, with KPI cards across the top.

Setting up two-factor authentication

Required if you hold the Administrator role - every other page redirects you back to Settings until it is set up, with a banner explaining why. Strongly recommended for everyone else, even though it is optional.

1. Go to Settings → Two-Factor Authentication → Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.
2. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app — Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator and 1Password all work.
3. Enter the six-digit code the app shows, to prove the pairing worked.
4. Save the recovery codes on the next screen. They are shown once and never again.

Recovery codes matter. Each one works once, in place of a code from your app. Keep them somewhere that is not the phone holding the authenticator — losing that phone is the exact situation they exist for. A password manager is ideal; a printed copy somewhere secure is fine.

If you have lost your authenticator device

• You still have a recovery code: enter it in the "Authentication Code" box on the sign-in screen instead of a six-digit code.
• You have no recovery codes left: ask an administrator to reset MFA on your account. You will be asked to enrol again next time you sign in.

If you have forgotten your password

Use Forgot your password? on the sign-in page. You will get the same confirmation message whether or not the address matched an account — this is deliberate, so nobody can use the form to find out who has an account.

The link expires after 60 minutes. If it has expired, request another.

---

Finding your way around

The left-hand sidebar is the main navigation. On a tablet or phone it becomes a scrolling strip across the top.

Administrators also see Invitations, Master Data, Users, API Tokens and Audit Log.

---

Setting up a budget year

Goal: create the container that a year's budgets live inside. You need: the Finance User or Administrator role.

Nothing can be budgeted for a year until the year exists.

1. Go to Budgets.
2. Select New Budget Year.
3. Enter the year and a name (for example, "Budget 2027").
4. Set the status:
   • Draft — being set up, not yet open for entry.
   • Active — people should be entering figures.
   • Locked — the year is closed. No new budgets, no edits to existing figures. Reforecasting deliberately stays open.
5. Save.

You should see: the new year in the list, and it becomes selectable in the budget-year filter on the Dashboard and reports.

---

Creating a budget and entering figures

Goal: record what one department or cost centre plans to spend. You need: the Budget Owner role or above, and an existing budget year.

A budget covers one department or one cost centre, for one year.

1. Go to Budgets and open the relevant budget year.
2. Select New Budget.
3. Choose the department or cost centre. If your organisation only has one company, the company picker will not appear — there is nothing to choose.
4. Save. You now have an empty budget.
5. Select Add line for each nominal code you are budgeting against.
6. For each line, enter a figure for every month, January to December. Leave a month blank for zero.

You should see: an annual total on each line, and a total for the budget.

Which nominal code? The nominal code decides whether a line counts as cost or revenue in the Profit & Loss report. If you are unsure which code to use, ask whoever maintains Master Data rather than guessing — a line on the wrong code lands on the wrong side of the P&L and is easy to miss.

If you have many lines, importing them is usually faster than typing them.

---

Importing budget lines from a spreadsheet

Goal: load budget lines from a spreadsheet you already have. You need: a CSV or XLSX file, and an existing budget to import into.

Your spreadsheet does not need reformatting first. You tell Budget Tool which of your columns is which, in step 2.

One import run targets one budget. A spreadsheet covering four departments needs four passes, one per department.

Step 1 — Upload

1. Open the budget you are importing into.
2. Select Import lines.
3. Choose your file and upload it.

Step 2 — Map columns

1. For each standard field, pick the column in your file that holds it.
2. Leave anything you do not have unmapped — it is ignored, not guessed at.
3. Continue.

The mapping is remembered. The next file in the same layout arrives pre-mapped.

Step 3 — Review and confirm

1. Every row is checked against Master Data before anything is saved.
2. Problems are listed per row and per field.
3. Only clean rows import. Rows with errors are left out entirely.
4. Confirm to import.

You should see: a count of rows imported, and the lines on the budget.

When rows are rejected

The most common reason is a nominal code or supplier that Budget Tool does not recognise. Budget Tool never creates master data automatically — inventing a supplier because a spreadsheet mentioned one is how a reference list turns into a mess.

To fix it:

1. Note which codes or names were flagged.
2. Ask an administrator to add them under Master Data (or add them yourself, if you are one).
3. Run the import again. Rows that already imported are not duplicated by re-running with a corrected file, but check the line list afterwards.

---

Editing a whole budget in a spreadsheet

Once a budget has lines, the quickest way to change a lot of figures at once is to take them out, edit them, and put them back.

1. Open the budget and select Export CSV, or use Export this budget on the Import screen.
2. Edit the monthly figures in Excel or Sheets. Leave the column headings alone.
3. Go to Import Budget Lines and upload the same file.
4. At the review step, choose Replace them.

Choosing Replace matters. If you leave it on Add to them, every line you exported comes back as a second copy and the budget doubles. Replace deletes the lines that are there and puts the imported ones in their place.

If nothing in the file can be imported — for example every nominal code has been mistyped — the replace is refused and your existing lines are left untouched.

---

Getting a budget approved

Goal: move a budget from Draft to Approved.

A budget moves through: Draft → Draft Review → Draft Approved → Final Review → Approved → Locked.

Assigning approvers

Before submitting, somebody has to be named — otherwise there is nobody to act.

1. Open the budget and select Approvers.
2. Add the people who must sign off at Draft Review, and at Final Approval. The two stages can have different people.
3. Save.

You cannot approve a budget you created. Whoever created it does not appear in the list of people you can add, and the application refuses the assignment even if it is attempted another way. This is deliberate: the separation between the person who prepares the figures and the people who sign them off is what makes the approval mean anything, and it is the first thing an auditor asks about.

If the list is empty, it is because you are the only person in your organisation. Invite a colleague and they will appear.

How sign-off works

Every named approver on a stage must approve. It is unanimous by design.

One rejection sends the whole budget back to Draft, and clears everyone else's vote for that stage — so when it comes round again, everyone looks at the revised version rather than a mixture of old and new approvals. The rejecter's own vote stays recorded as Rejected, so the reason is not lost.

Approving or rejecting

1. Open the budget. If you are a named approver for the current stage, you will see Approve and Reject buttons.
2. Choose one.

You should see: your decision recorded in the Approvals panel, and the budget advancing once the last approver has agreed.

---

Signing off a whole company: Master Budgets

Goal: one company-wide sign-off for a year.

A Master Budget holds no figures of its own. It rolls up every budget beneath it — departments and cost centres alike.

1. Go to Master Budgets → New Master Budget.
2. Choose the company and budget year.
3. Assign approvers, the same way as for a budget. There is a single stage here rather than two.
4. Submit — but only once every budget underneath has reached Approved or Locked. Until then it is not submittable, and the detail page shows which budgets are still outstanding.

---

Importing actual spend

Goal: bring real spend in so it can be compared against budget. You need: the Finance User or Administrator role, and an export of transactions from your accounting system. Xero, Sage and QuickBooks exports are recognised automatically; anything else that produces a CSV or Excel file works too, you just map the columns yourself. There is an example file to download on the upload screen if you are building the export by hand.

The three steps are the same shape as the budget import: upload, map, review.

1. Go to Import Actuals.
2. Upload the file.
3. Map the columns. The fields that matter most are company, department or cost centre, nominal code, supplier and period — these are what Budget Tool matches on, so the more of them you map, the more transactions match automatically.
4. Review and confirm.

Matched and unmatched

Each transaction is matched to a budget line on those five dimensions.

Anything that matches nothing is still imported, but lands in the unmatched queue on the Actuals page.

Unmatched spend is excluded from variance figures until it is resolved. This is the single most common reason a variance report looks wrong. If the numbers seem low, check the unmatched queue first.

The usual cause is a supplier or nominal code recorded under a different name in your accounting system than in Master Data. You can now fix that transaction directly — see "Fixing an unmatched transaction" below — or fix the name in Master Data and re-import resolves it.

---

If you import the same file twice

Budget Tool notices. At the review step it tells you how many rows look like transactions it already holds — same date, amount, reference and account — and skips them by default.

That is usually what you want: importing overlapping files would count the same spend twice, and doubled spend looks like overspend rather than like an error, so it is easy to miss.

If some of them really are separate transactions that happen to look identical — two bank charges of the same amount on the same day, say — choose Import them anyway.

---

Fixing an unmatched transaction

Some imported transactions cannot be matched to a budget line — usually because the nominal code is missing from the export, or nothing in your budgets carries that code for that year. They are held in Unmatched Actuals on the Actuals page and are excluded from variance until they are resolved.

You do not need to export and re-import to fix one.

1. Go to Actuals.
2. Find the row under Unmatched Actuals and select Match.
3. Set the nominal code, and whichever of company, department, cost centre and supplier apply.
4. Select Save and match.

If it matches, it is counted towards variance straight away and disappears from the unmatched list.

If it still does not match

You will be told which nominal code and which year it looked for. Two common causes:

• No budget for that year contains that code. Add the line to the budget, or choose a different code.
• You set more detail than the budget line has. Matching narrows with every field you fill in — a transaction set to the Finance department only matches a budget line in the Finance department. Clearing a field matches more broadly.

Whatever you entered is saved either way, so you can adjust and try again.

What you cannot change here

The date, amount, description and reference came from your accounting system and are shown read-only. They are the record of what happened; if one of them is wrong, correct it in your accounting system and import again.

---

Reading the reports

Dashboard

A live snapshot for the year and filters you choose: KPI cards, a budget-vs-actual chart, and a variance table with RAG status.

Revenue is deliberately excluded here. The Dashboard, Variance Report and Trend report are all cost-only. Use Profit & Loss for revenue.

Variance Report

One row per line item, budget against actual, with RAG status.

RAG status flags how far actual spend is from plan:

The percentage thresholds are set by an administrator in Settings, so they can be tuned to what your organisation considers material.

Compare against. You can measure variance against either the original budget (the approved baseline — "did we do what we said we would") or the reforecast (the revised view — "given what we now know, are we on track"). Both figures are always shown; the selector only decides which one drives the variance column and the RAG status.

"Unplanned spend". If a line has nothing planned for the basis you chose but real spend against it, the percentage shows as — and the status is Red, labelled Unplanned spend. There is no percentage to give — you cannot be a percentage over a plan of zero — and showing it as 0% would make unplanned spend look on track.

Year-over-Year Trend

The same totals across every budget year at once, rather than one. Useful for spotting a line that has drifted over several years.

Profit & Loss

Revenue against Costs, budget and actual side by side, per company. Where a company has more than one cost centre, you can see each one on its own or compare them side by side, alongside the consolidated total.

Exporting

Variance, Trend and Profit & Loss each export to CSV. The variance export names the basis in its header row, so a spreadsheet that has left Budget Tool still says what its variance column was measured against.

---

Recording a reforecast

Goal: record a revised view of the year without losing the approved plan.

The Budget is the original approved figure. It does not change once approved — that is what makes it a baseline worth comparing against. A Reforecast is a separate set of January-to-December figures on the same line.

1. Open the budget and find the line.
2. Select Reforecast.
3. The first time you open it, it is pre-filled from the original figures, so you are editing a copy rather than starting from blank.
4. Adjust the months and save.

Reforecast stays editable even on a Locked budget year. Revising a frozen baseline is the entire point of it.

Once entered, reforecast figures appear in the Variance Report as their own column, and can be chosen as the comparison basis.

---

Closing your account

Settings -> Close your account. You do not need to ask anyone.

1. Go to Settings.
2. Scroll to Close your account.
3. Enter your password, type CLOSE to confirm, and select Close my account.

You are signed out straight away and cannot sign in again.

What happens to your work

The budgets, forecasts and imports you created stay with your organisation, as do any approvals you gave. They are its records rather than yours, and removing them would leave its figures wrong.

If you change your mind

Closing your account is reversible. An administrator at your organisation can restore it, and everything comes back with it. Ask them.

If you want your personal details deleted

That is a different request, and it cannot be undone. Ask an administrator to erase your account rather than remove it, or contact whoever runs the service. Your name, email address, password and two-factor setup are removed, along with your name on every entry in the audit log. The budgets and approvals themselves remain, shown as a removed user, for the reason above. The privacy notice sets this out in full.

---

When things go wrong

If none of these fit, tell your administrator what you did, what you expected, and what happened. Administrators can see the Audit Log, which records who changed what and when.