Expenses Plan
The Expenses Plan is your operating cost budget — one row per expense account, one amount per period. Used to forecast overhead and operational spend across the year.
Navigate to: Planner → + New Plan → Type: Expenses
The Expenses Plan is the operating overhead budget. Unlike the Sales and Purchases Plans that work in quantities, the Expenses Plan works in direct amounts — you enter how much you expect to spend on each expense account in each period.
Row Source
Rows come from the chart of accounts — accounts whose element is Expense, grouped by account detail type, with the account code shown. Use Add Account to search and select, or Add all to include every account in a group at once.
Cell Mode: Amount
Each cell holds a single planned amount — the total expected spend on that account in that period.
Example
| Account | Jan | Feb | Mar | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent — Office London | 8,500 | 8,500 | 8,500 | 25,500 |
| Utilities | 1,200 | 1,100 | 1,000 | 3,300 |
| Software Subscriptions | 4,200 | 4,200 | 4,200 | 12,600 |
| Marketing and Advertising | 6,000 | 6,000 | 8,000 | 20,000 |
| Total | 19,900 | 19,800 | 21,700 | 61,400 |
Marketing steps up in March for a campaign. Each cell is independent, so irregular patterns are easy to plan.
Actuals
Open the plan to see targets against actuals. For each account and period the actual is the account's posted ledger activity in that period — bills, expense claims, and manual journals all count once posted.
Status badges and colours follow the same scale as every plan: Exceeded from 100%, On Track from 80%, At Risk from 50%, Behind below. The scale does not flip for expense accounts — spending 105% of budget reads Exceeded. Read the direction from the amount "over" or "under" in the expanded period card. See Variance.
Choosing a center when the plan is created labels the plan, but the actual for each account is the account's activity across the whole business. Use the Finance reports, which do filter by center, when the split matters.
Only positive amounts are saved. A cell at zero is skipped when you save, and a value that was already saved stays on the plan. Leave periods with no planned spend empty.
An Expenses plan linked to a P&L plan counts toward the P&L plan's Expenses total, alongside Purchases, Production, and Payroll plans. Net Profit is Income minus Expenses.