Maintenance Budgets and Variance

Budgets answer one question: are you going to overspend, and where? You set a limit for a period and Rivolq measures real spend against it continuously, with no month-end reconciliation. Open Budgets in the sidebar. Budgets are part of the Intelligence tier; on lower plans the page is unavailable.

Setting a budget

A budget is an amount, a period, and an optional facility. Leave the facility empty for an org-wide budget that counts everything your organization spent in the period, or pick one facility to count only that facility's work.

Periods are monthly, quarterly, or annual, anchored on the period start you choose. The anchor is normalized: a mid-month start covers the whole calendar month, a quarterly budget snaps to the enclosing quarter, and an annual budget snaps to January. Admins and supervisors can create and change budgets. Anyone with cost visibility can read them.

What counts as spend

Actual spend is the sum of two real numbers; there is no separate budget ledger.

• Work orders: the recorded actual cost of work orders completed inside the period window. A job closed in April counts in April, whenever it ran.
• Purchase orders: the full line total of POs at approved status or beyond within the window.

Draft and submitted POs are excluded because they are not committed money yet. Cancelled POs never count. A PO commits budget the moment it is approved, not when the goods arrive or the invoice is paid. See purchase orders and receiving.

Reading the status

Every budget reports its amount, actual spend split into work-order and purchase-order halves, what is remaining, percentage used, variance, and a status: Under is below 85 percent, Near is 85 percent or more (the warning band), and Over is 100 percent or more. Variance is the percentage over or under the limit: positive means over, negative means under. A budget of zero reads as over on any spend.

Using it well

• Budget the facility, not just the org. An org-wide budget at 70 percent can hide one site already 140 percent through its share.
• Watch the PO half of the split; a large committed-but-unreceived number is next month's problem arriving early.
• Use quarterly budgets for capital-type work and monthly for routine spend. Act on the near band, since by the time something reads over, the money is committed.

Plan multi-year replacements in capital planning and see where the money went in the operations report.