What is Variance percent?
How far an actual landed from its benchmark, as a share of the benchmark — (actual − plan) ÷ plan.
Variance percent expresses the gap between an actual and its benchmark — usually budget or prior year — as a percentage of the benchmark. "We're 4% over on software revenue" is a variance percent; the $17,000 underneath it is the dollar variance. Month-end commentary uses the percent to rank attention and the dollars to size it.
The denominator is always the benchmark, not the actual: over budget by $7,500 on a $24,000 budget line is +31% — a very different conversation than +31% on a $2M line. Always read the percent against the dollar: a big percent on a tiny line is trivia, a small percent on a huge line is material.
Teams threshold it: flag any line off plan by more than ±10% (or a dollar floor, whichever triggers first) so commentary goes where it matters. The flag rule lives in the query, not in someone's memory of last month's thresholds — that's the whole point of computing variance in SQL rather than by hand.
Formula
Variance % = (actual − benchmark) ÷ benchmark × 100
Benchmark = budget, forecast, or prior year — say which. Dividing by the benchmark (not the actual) keeps +$7,500 on a $24,000 plan at +31%, where it deserves attention.
The Sumwise question
Build the September variance table by account: Actual vs Budget with $ and % variance, biggest misses first, and flag anything off budget by more than 10%.
Runs on gl_2026.csv. The same September GL sample the variance live demo runs on — eleven accounts with actual/budget/prior-year/forecast scenarios side by side.
Worked example — gl_2026.csv
| Software revenue: $412,000 vs $395,000 budget | +4.3% |
| Professional fees: $31,500 vs $24,000 budget | +31.3% ⚑ |
| Travel & entertainment: $12,300 vs $15,000 budget | −18.0% |
| Total spend: $590,000 vs $556,000 budget | +6.1% |
Two lines breach the ±10% flag: professional fees +31.3% ($7,500 over) and T&E −18.0% (under). Total spend is +6.1% — under the flag, but professional fees is where commentary goes.
gl_2026.csv — drop it into the demo's Your-own-CSV tab (or Excel) and re-run the example.
Common questions
Favorable or unfavourable — how do I read the sign?
It depends on the line's nature, not the sign alone: +4% on revenue is favorable, +31% on fees is not. Report variance against the line's direction (revenue up = good, cost up = bad) rather than policing plus and minus.
When do I use % variance vs $ variance?
Use percent to rank lines for commentary and dollars to size the impact. The ±10%-or-$-floor flag combines both: percent catches small lines going sideways, the dollar floor stops trivia from flooding the report.
Variance to budget or to prior year?
Both, for different questions: budget variance asks "are we executing the plan," prior-year variance asks "is the business changing." The serious month-end table carries Actual, Budget, PY and variances to each.
Compute variance percent on your own export, every month
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