Budgets
Plan spend inside the Accounting add-on, compare actuals, and monitor budget health across your operation
Budgets are one of the three sections inside the Accounting add-on. They give SettleWise a planning layer for operational spend by helping your team define budget periods, allocate target amounts by account, and compare planned spend against actual results as payments and payouts are recorded.
Use this page for budget planning. Use the Accounting Add-on page to understand the larger account layer behind budgets, payments, payouts, registers, and the Income Statement.
Best For
- Teams that need planned-vs-actual visibility instead of reviewing expenses one payout at a time
- Finance and operations leaders who want category-level spend control across a period
- Organizations that need clearer visibility into remaining budget and over-budget areas before issues grow
What You Unlock
| Capability | What it helps with |
|---|---|
| Budget planning | Create budgets for monthly, quarterly, seasonal, annual, or custom periods |
| Line-item allocations | Assign planned amounts across posting accounts instead of tracking only one total number |
| Budget vs actual | Compare planned spend against account-linked actuals as operations move |
| Health monitoring | Review remaining budget, spent percentage, and over-budget counts from one workspace |
| Drill-down review | Open category detail and inspect the payout activity contributing to the numbers |
How It Connects to Accounting
Budgets become most useful when operational activity is mapped to accounts. In practice:
- Chart of Accounts provides the account tree used by budgets
- Payout activity provides expense actuals when completed payouts are booked to expense accounts
- Payment activity provides revenue actuals for the Income Statement when deposits are validated into registers
- Budget review becomes a control layer on top of day-to-day payment and payout workflows
Think of Accounting as the shared account layer. Budgets are the planning view; payments and payouts provide the actuals.
Access Notes
- Budget workspaces are admin-oriented
- The add-on is designed for ongoing review, not just one-time setup
- Teams usually benefit most when budget review becomes part of a weekly or period-close routine
Build and Review a Budget
- Choose the period and confirm the reporting currency.
- Allocate planned amounts to posting accounts, not parent-only headings.
- Review the total allocation before using the budget operationally.
- Complete payouts against those same expense accounts.
- Compare planned, actual, remaining, and spent percentage.
- Drill into an unexpected actual and trace it back to the source payout.
A budget category receives actuals only when operational activity posts to the same account. Similar names do not create a connection; the account assignment does.
Review Questions
- Is an over-budget result caused by timing, volume, price, or incorrect account mapping?
- Are pending payouts intentionally excluded from actuals?
- Did a completed payout use a broad default expense account instead of the intended line account?
- Does the selected period contain the payout date?
- Are parent totals consistent with the posting accounts below them?
Related
Accounting Add-on
Understand the account model that connects budgets, payments, payouts, and the Income Statement
Payouts Add-on
See the operational spend workflows that feed budget actuals
Payouts
Review vendors, statuses, OCR, and payout exports
Billing & Subscription
Manage trial and subscription details for the add-on