Normalise the base year
One-time revenue and expenditure are identified and removed before anything is grown, so anomalies do not compound.
Budget Analytics
Forecast twelve drivers, not four hundred accounts. Then publish the sensitivity table.
Forecasting
What it does
Budget Analytics builds multi-year forecasts from a small set of named drivers — assessed value, taxable sales, headcount, wage schedules, benefit trend, actuarially determined contributions, debt service and contractual escalators — rather than by escalating hundreds of general ledger accounts at assumed rates.
The output most entities find useful is not the forecast. It is the sensitivity table showing how much year-five fund balance moves for a one-point change in each driver, which turns a debate about the forecast into a debate about a specific number.
Interface mockup. Values shown are illustrative and do not represent any entity.
Capabilities
What is included
- Driver-based model. Eight to twelve named drivers per fund, each with its own assumption, source and owner.
- Three-scenario presentation. Baseline, downside and upside built from linked driver movements rather than from every input taking its worst value at once.
- Sensitivity analysis. The movement in projected balance per unit change in each driver, ranked, so the two assumptions that matter are visible.
- Capital plan integration. Operating impact of planned capital — staffing, utilities, insurance and maintenance — carried into the forecast from the year each facility opens.
- Forecast retrospectives. Each cycle compared against the prior forecast with the variance decomposed by driver, so misses have an identifiable cause.
- Structural balance view. The forecast presented both as adopted and as structurally adjusted, with each adjustment on its own line.
Implementation
How a deployment runs
Typical first deployment reaches steady state within one to two quarters, depending on the state of the source data.
Set the drivers
Assumptions are entered with a source and an owner. Consistency between revenue and cost assumptions is checked.
Run scenarios
Baseline, downside and upside are produced with the differing driver values stated explicitly.
Publish and revisit
Forecast, assumption register and sensitivity table publish together; each update reports on the last one.
Limits
What Budget Analytics does not do
We publish this section for every tool. It is the section we would want to read first.
- Forecasts are conditional projections, not predictions, and are wrong by construction. Their value is in decomposing why.
- The model reflects the assumptions entered. It does not validate whether those assumptions are reasonable.
- Budget Analytics does not produce official revenue estimates and is not a substitute for the entity's statutory estimating process.
Talk to us about your oversight programme
Walk through the platform with your own chart of accounts, or start with the research library. Both routes are free to begin.