BUDGET VS ACTUAL

Your budget was right. The spend drifted.

Budget vs actual tracking for South African building jobs — every line’s spend set against its budget and against the work actually done on site, so an overrun shows up in week three instead of at final account.

WHY THE SPREADSHEET FINDS IT LATE

Three ways a budget goes wrong quietly.

None of them is a bad estimate. All of them are a sheet that tells you the truth a month after it would have been useful.

It gets updated when there’s time

Which is month-end, if then. By the time the invoices are typed in, the slab is poured and the money is gone. A number you can’t act on is history, not control.

Rand on budget, weeks behind on site

R162 000 spent against a R180 000 brickwork budget looks fine. It isn’t, if the walls are only at sixty percent. Budget vs actual on its own misses that; spend against progress catches it.

Variations swallow the baseline

Fold every approved change into a revised total and the original budget disappears. Then nobody can say whether the job is over because of the client or because of the site.

A WORKED EXAMPLE

The same four lines, read two ways.

A small house build, month three. Budget and spent are what a budget-vs-actual sheet shows. Work done and the reading are what siteMargin adds.

LineBudgetSpentWork doneReading
FoundationsR95 000R93 500 (98%)100%Finished, on budget
BrickworkR180 000R162 000 (90%)60%Spending ahead of progress
RoofR140 000R28 000 (20%)20%In step
PlumbingR65 000R19 500 (30%)35%In step
TotalR480 000R303 000 (63%)

On a plain budget-vs-actual sheet every line is under budget and the job looks healthy. Put spend against progress and the brickwork stands out: ninety percent of its money gone with sixty percent of the walls up. If the rest of the walls cost what the first sixty percent did, that line finishes near R270 000 — R90 000 over, found while there are still walls left to build.

THE REAL THING

This is the sheet, on a real job.

Nine lines, R1.03 million budgeted. 69% of the money spent, 57% of the work done — and the app has already named the two lines doing it. Nothing here is mocked up.

siteMargin's Cost & Progress page for a real house build: spent 69% of the budget with 57% of the work done, two lines flagged over, and the line-item ledger below
STRAIGHT ABOUT IT

What it tracks, and what it doesn’t.

The second list is why the first one is worth believing.

BUDGET VS ACTUAL, IN HERE
  • Spend against progress, per line. The gap between money out and work done, flagged the day it opens. Free.
  • Variance by trade. One lump-sum overrun becomes “it’s the brickwork”. Free.
  • Variations kept apart from the baseline. Each approved change order is logged on its own, so variance is measured against what was agreed.
  • The reason next to the number. Attach the note and the invoice to the line: “supplier price rose in March” is one click away.
  • Your existing budget, imported. Export the spreadsheet you already have to CSV and bring it across in one go.
  • A one-page summary for the client. Original budget, variations, actual to date and variance, as a clean PDF.
NOT IN HERE
  • Your accounting. The Xero sync on the Company plan reads paid bills onto their lines; it never writes anything back to your books.
  • A QS. It won’t do the take-off or value the final account for you. If you have a QS, it gives them better numbers to work from.
  • Estimating. It starts once you have a budget. It won’t price the job for the tender.

From the Construction Library

Construction Cash-Flow Forecast The Variation JBCC Doesn’t Give You a Form For The Retention Register

Start on one job.

Free on your first project — put your own budget in and see which line is running ahead of the work before you decide anything else.

Sign up free