Cashflow Planning vs Actuals

A cashflow plan gives you a structured view of what may happen over the months and years ahead. But real life rarely follows the plan exactly.

Income arrives at slightly different times. Spending shifts. Transfers happen. Savings move faster, or slower, than expected. One-off costs appear. Plans change.

That is why we have added Plan vs actual to the Planiva Cashflow Planner. It gives you a simple way to check whether your saved cashflow plan is still connected to reality, without turning the process into detailed budgeting or bookkeeping.

Plan vs actual is a month-end balance check-in for your cashflow plan.

Instead of asking you to categorise every transaction or manually enter detailed spending breakdowns, Planiva focuses on the figure that really matters: where your account balances are at the end of the month.

Those balances already reflect what actually happened. They include your income, spending, transfers, unexpected costs, savings movements and timing differences. By comparing those balances with your saved plan, Planiva can show whether your real position is tracking above, below, or close to the plan.

A saved plan is only useful if it remains believable.

Plan vs actual helps you see whether your balances are tracking close to the plan, whether you are drifting away from the plan earlier than expected, and whether your current position changes the likely outcome.

This is not about judging every purchase. It is about spotting meaningful drift early enough to make better decisions.

The core of the feature is deliberately simple.

At the end of a completed month, you enter your closing balances for the accounts in your cashflow plan. Once checked, you can mark the month as complete.

There is no need to enter transaction-level data. There is no need to break actual spending into categories. There is no need to recreate your bank statement. The check-in is designed to be quick, practical and useful.

Once you have entered balances, Planiva shows how reality compares with the saved plan.

You can see the latest balance check-in, whether actual balances are above or below plan, the strongest month above plan, the tightest month so far, and your balance check-in history.

This gives you a clearer view of whether the plan is holding up in practice.

The biggest addition is Actuals projection.

Actuals projection is a forward-looking projection based on your checked actual balances. It starts from your latest completed month-end balances, then projects forward using your saved cashflow plan assumptions, including planned income, spending, transfers, goals, inflation and account growth.

Where there is enough actual balance history, Planiva also uses the recent gap trend against your saved plan to refine the forward view.

In plain English: your saved plan shows what you expected. Actuals projection shows what the plan looks like from where you actually are now.

It does not change your saved plan. It gives you a reality-aware preview.

The Plan vs actual tab now includes a visual chart showing your saved plan, your actual balances, and your Actuals projection over time.

You can view this monthly, quarterly or yearly. This makes it much easier to see whether reality is staying close to the plan or starting to diverge.

A table can tell you the numbers. The chart helps you see the direction.

Planiva now also highlights practical actions inside Plan vs actual.

These focus on things you can actually do, such as adding missing month-end balances or completing a partial balance check-in.

We have deliberately avoided treating every warning or variance as a reminder. If your balances are below plan, that is useful insight, but it is not something you can simply tick off. The action prompts are there to help you keep your plan up to date without cluttering the experience.

Scenario comparison is also now more useful.

You can compare different cashflow scenarios not only against each other, but also against what has actually happened so far.

Instead of asking only which plan looks better on paper, you can also ask which plan still makes sense given where you are now. That is a much stronger basis for decision-making.

Plan vs actual is included in Planiva’s reporting and export tools.

Excel and PDF exports can now include Plan vs actual summaries, latest actual balance check-ins, Actuals projection details, balance variance information and reality-aware scenario comparison sections.

We have also separated the main plan reports and scenario comparison reports more cleanly, so exported documents are easier to review and share.

This is useful for personal reviews, conversations with a partner, or discussions with a financial adviser.

Plan vs actual is not trying to be a budgeting app.

It is lightweight by design. The focus is not on analysing every transaction. The focus is on using real account balances to keep your cashflow plan connected to reality.

That makes it easier to maintain, less intrusive, more forward-looking, and better suited to planning decisions.

The aim is simple: less bookkeeping, better planning.

This release is especially useful if you are actively checking whether your cashflow plan still works, managing changes in savings or income, comparing future options, or reviewing whether your current position still supports your preferred plan.

It gives you a clearer way to move from assumption-based planning to reality-aware planning.

Open the Cashflow Planner in Planiva, then go to Plan vs actual.

Enter your month-end balances for the latest completed month, mark the month complete once checked, and review the insight, chart and Actuals projection.

You can also include Plan vs actual and Actuals projection information in your Excel and PDF exports.

A cashflow plan should not be something you create once and forget.

It should help you make better decisions as life changes.

Plan vs actual makes that easier. It connects your saved plan to your real balances, shows whether you are drifting, and gives you a forward-looking Actuals projection based on where you are now.

That makes the Cashflow Planner more practical, more useful and more grounded in real life.