01Capability
Daily Account-By-Account Variance Scan
Scans every GL account every morning against budget, last month, last quarter, and last year. Surfaces breaches over your defined materiality threshold. No weekly batch lag.
New
Variance Agent
Watches. Explains. Alerts. Drafts
Scans every GL account daily against budget and last period. Auto-drafts narrative variance explanations per budget owner — 'Marketing spend up €82K MoM, driven by Q2 campaign launch and SaaS renewals.' Alerts on threshold breach. Day 5 close commentary writes itself instead of taking three weeks.
By the numbers
Variance Agent by the numbers.
Daily
Refresh
Auto
Narrative
100%
Account coverage
<5 min
To activate
The use case
Catch every drift on the day it happens. Explain it before anyone asks.
FP&A teams running variance commentary as a Day 9 sprint. 40 budget owners emailed every month — half ignore, the rest send one-line answers. Audit asks 'why did this account move' three months later and pulling the trail takes three weeks. CFO learns variances at Day 12 review. Decisions come Day 18.
Variance Agent runs every morning against budget, last period, and prior year. Drafts the narrative explanation per account using PO, AP, headcount, and project signals. Routes each variance to the named owner via Slack, Teams, or email. Day 5 close commentary is already written when the controller opens the file. Pairs with Close Orchestrator for month-end and Board Pack Agent for executive distribution.
For who
FP&A Director
“Variance commentary day 9 of close. Board pack day 12.”
Head of FP&A
“I email 40 budget owners. Half ignore me. The rest send 1-line answers.”
Group Controller
“Audit asks 'why did this account move'. Three weeks to answer.”
CFO
“I learn variances at Day 12 review. Decisions come Day 18.”
Capabilities
What Variance Agent actually does.
02Capability
Threshold-Based Alert Routing Per Owner
Each budget owner receives only the variances on the accounts they own — by Slack, Teams, or email. Routing rules per cost center, project, and entity. No spam, no missed breaches.
03Capability
Auto-Drafted Explanation Chain
For every variance the agent walks PO data, AP postings, headcount changes, and project signals to draft the likely driver. Astral's typed entity resolution links postings to the owner, the project, and the supplier.
04Capability
MoM, YoY, and Budget vs Actual
Three comparison frames in every digest. Spot a recurring drift versus a one-off, a YoY shift versus a budgeting error. The full picture, not just one ratio.
Continue exploring
More on Templates.
Accruals Agent→
Auto-calculates month-end accruals from receipt history, payroll cadence, utility patterns, and recurring-service signals.
Approval Agent→
Learns your approval patterns and routes invoices to the right approver automatically, escalating exceptions in real time.
Audit Prep Agent→
Assembles the audit document request list (PBC), pulls evidence from every system, drafts walkthroughs, reconciles GL accounts to source, hands off to auditors with full traceability.
ISO 27001:2022 · GDPR · EU-hosted · Full audit trails · Trust Center →
See Variance Agent on your stack.
Start free. See your first workflow run before the next quarter close.
ISO 27001
GDPR
CyberVadis
PA Certified
Peppol