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Variance analysis

CloseCore's AI can explain why your numbers moved. Instead of starting from a blank explanation box, you get a draft narrative that names the specific drivers behind a variance, grounded in the actual transactions and ready for you to review, refine, and sign off.

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AI variance analysis depends on the AI features enabled for your account (the Assistant and report commentary). Contact your account manager if you'd like access.

What it does​

AI variance analysis reads the transaction detail behind a change from your connected ERP, compares the base period against the current period, and writes a concise explanation of the largest drivers. It never invents a number: every figure it cites traces back to your data.

It works at two levels:

  • A single flux item: a one-to-two sentence explanation of what drove that account's movement (for example, "Salaries increased $142,000 driven by three new hires in Engineering").
  • A whole report: an executive-style commentary covering the biggest drivers across every dimension the report groups by (account, vendor, department, customer, and so on).

Explaining a single flux item​

Open a flux item and use AI Analysis to draft its explanation. Behind the scenes, CloseCore pulls the transactions on both sides of the comparison, matches them line by line, and surfaces the items that actually moved the number:

  • New activity that appears in the current period but not the base period.
  • Dropped activity that was in the base period but is gone this period.
  • Changed amounts on activity present in both periods.

The result is a short, direct explanation naming the most significant dollar drivers, along with the vendor, department, or location that explains them.

You can refine the draft two ways:

  • Rewrite Analysis: give an instruction ("explain the change on vendor XYZ in detail," "focus on the headcount impact") and CloseCore regenerates the explanation.
  • Ask AI: ask free-form questions about the account's ledger for the period to investigate before you finalize the wording.

Report commentary​

On a custom report, the Report Commentary panel generates a written variance analysis for the entire report and period. Generate produces a paragraph per dimension that has meaningful drivers, leading with the grand-total variance, then working through account, vendor, department, and any other dimension you group by. It also calls out standout individual rows that a dimension-level summary would otherwise hide.

To reach that answer, CloseCore ranks the variances within each dimension and drills into the composition of the biggest movers, rather than summarizing from a single glance at the numbers. That's what keeps the commentary specific and quotable instead of generic.

Once commentary exists, you can:

  • Rewrite it with an instruction: "make this more concise," "focus on material drivers," "drop the department paragraph."
  • Edit it by hand for the final wording. Manual edits are preserved and won't be overwritten.

Commentary is saved per period and per comparison type, so month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year, and budget-vs-actual each keep their own analysis.

Generating in bulk​

The Generate report analysis action fills in what's missing across a whole report and period in one pass: the report commentary and the explanations for every flux item that requires one. It's the fast way to prepare a package for review:

  • Choose whether to include the report commentary, the per-row flux explanations, or both.
  • Optionally respect the current filters so only the rows you're looking at are covered.
  • Anything that already has an explanation is skipped, so a re-run never overwrites work that's already been reviewed.

Progress streams row by row, and you can watch each explanation land.

Comparison types​

Variance analysis works across the comparisons CloseCore supports: month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year, and budget vs. actual. Report commentary covers all of them. Per-row flux explanations cover the period-over-period comparisons; they are not available for budget comparisons, because a budget has no transaction detail to match against.

Review and sign-off​

AI variance analysis prepares the explanation. It does not replace review. Everything it produces is a draft: a person reads it, edits it if needed, and signs off through the normal flux and reporting sign-off workflow. Nothing is finalized automatically.

Who can use it​

Generating and saving variance analysis requires the reporting sign-off permission along with access to the AI features, so the same people who own the flux review own the AI that assists it. Access is controlled by roles & permissions.

  • Flux analysis for reviewing and explaining period-over-period variances.
  • Custom reports for grouping, thresholds, and required explanations.
  • AI Assistant to ask questions and dig into variances conversationally.
  • Add-in for Excel to generate variance explanations straight into a workbook.