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How do I use the budget-to-actual report?

Use Budget to Actual to compare budgeted, assigned, and actual hours and labor costs by user or location, including Summary and Trends views, variance badges, drill-downs, and Excel export.

The Budget to Actual report compares what you planned to staff and pay against what you assigned and what people actually worked. Use it to answer:

  • In which locations have we scheduled more or fewer people than what is in our service agreement?
  • Are our labor rates higher than our budgeted rates?
  • Are people working more or fewer hours than they have been assigned?

Applies to: Managers and payroll staff with Timetracking (Edit). The Dollars view, cost columns, and rate options require the Costs module (Expert plan). Setting shift budgets needs location edit access; setting employee pay rates needs Users (Edit) and Costs.

Before You Start

  • Budgets live on shifts (and jobs), not on the report itself. The report only reflects Budgeted cleaners per shift and Budgeted labor rate you set when you create or edit a shift or work order.
  • Budgeted hours appear only when you group by Locations. Switch the row view to Locations to see the Budgeted column. Users and Both show Assigned and Actual (and variance), but not Budgeted hours.
  • Hours vs dollars. Everyone with time-edit access can run the report in Hours. Switch to Dollars only if your role includes Costs.

Setting Budgets on a Shift

To get useful Budget to Actual numbers, make each shift match your service agreement and expected labor cost.

  1. Open Manage Locations from your profile menu in the bottom-left corner, or press Ctrl/Cmd + K and search for the location name.
  2. Open the location, then open the Shifts & Inspections tab.
  3. Select a shift (or create one). In the shift editor, expand the Budget section.
  4. Set Budgeted cleaners per shift to the number of people that should cover the shift. Whole numbers are usual; decimals (for example 2.5) are allowed when a fractional headcount matches your agreement.
  5. Enter the Budgeted labor rate and currency. Cost is calculated hourly. If your contract is a fixed dollar amount for the shift, divide that amount by the shift length to get an hourly rate.
  6. (Optional) Turn on Hold to budget if you want Clean Smarts to help keep staffing at the budgeted headcount.
  7. (Optional) Choose a Default pay code for time logged against the shift.
  8. (Optional) Turn on Pay users the budgeted labor rate if people on this shift should be paid the budgeted rate instead of their normal employee rate.
  9. Save the shift.

You can also open a shift from the calendar or from Budget to Actual itself: in Locations view, click a Budgeted value to open that location's scheduled shifts for the date, then select a shift to edit.

Setting Employee Pay Rates

Assigned and actual costs use each employee's pay rate (unless a shift override or pay-code rate applies).

  1. Open Manage Users from your profile menu, or press Ctrl/Cmd + K and search for the user.
  2. Open the user's Time & Pay tab.
  3. Under Pay rates, click Add New Pay Rate, enter the rate, currency, and start date, then save.

Pay rates only appear when your company is on the Expert plan and your role includes Costs. For more detail on how rates resolve on time entries, see How can I add a new user? (Time & Pay section) and How do I set up pay codes?.