Edit the comparison setup

Add comparison rows to give your team the context they need, such as last year’s actuals or forecasts, so they can make smarter, data-driven budget edits with instant variance insights.

Only the budget owner and administrators can customize the comparison setup. If your organization does not have prior year budgets in Phocas, you can import those budgets to view comparisons. You do this in the Designer module.

If your workbook includes additional measures for driver-based budgeting, you can add comparison rows for those measures. When you do so, the comparison rows display under their respective measure line in the worksheet, where applicable.

Read the Best practices for efficient budgeting page before you start adding more data into a workbook. The addition of comparative data into a workbook might negatively impact its performance.

The comparison setup automatically applies to every budget row in a worksheet tab, so if you add a comparison row against one item, such as Sales, you will also see that row against all other rows, such as Marketing Expense. However, the comparison setup applies to the active tab only, so you need to edit the comparison row setup for each tab.

Access the Comparison Setup window using one of these methods:

• Click the Tab menu > Edit comparison setup.

• Right-click the tab name at the bottom of the workbook and click Edit comparison setup.

Edit a comparison row

Edit the default comparison row details, for example, change the name or offset, or select a different stream or measure.

Add more comparison rows

Click + Add comparison row, enter a name, select a stream and measure, and enter the offset.

For example, if you want to compare this year’s budget actuals with the actuals from the budget from two years ago, add a new comparison row called 2 Years Ago Actuals based on the Profit and Loss stream. The offset is -24, as you want values from 2 years (24 months) ago.

If you’re partway through the year and therefore, your actuals don’t yet include the entire year’s data, you will get a warning note telling you the actuals are slightly out of range. Any months not yet completed will populate with zeros in the comparison row. For example, if you are currently in November 2020, the December 2021 budget will populate as zeros because December 2020 currently has no activity. You do not need to take any action here; you can enter data manually in the zeros cells, or copy forward data from the other months as a starting point.

Use calculated measures

The available measures in the comparison row setup depend on the selected stream in the underlying database. Some of the measures have a yellow calculator icon next to them, which signifies that they are a calculated measure in the underlying database. You can hover over the icon to view the underlying formula.

You can also see this formula in the budget worksheet.

Customize the measure format

Click the menu button (three dots) at the end of the row and switch to Custom format, then define your format. See Format measures in the comparison rows for more information.

Delete a comparison row

Click the menu button (three dots) at the end of the row and click Delete. The row is instantly deleted.