What is Budget Monitoring?
Budget monitoring is the ongoing process of comparing actual financial performance against the approved budget, investigating variances, and taking corrective action to keep the business on track.
How It Works
- Lock the approved budget by department, cost center, and project.
- Pull actuals monthly and compute variances by line.
- Investigate variances above a threshold and re-forecast if needed.
Saudi Context
Saudi public-sector entities follow MOF budget circulars and SAMA reporting. Private companies often align monitoring cycles with quarterly ZATCA filings and CMA disclosure deadlines.
Example
A Saudi retailer budgets SAR 200,000/month in marketing. Actual spend hits SAR 260,000 in Q1. Finance investigates and finds Ramadan campaigns were not fully captured in the original budget.