Budget P&L & forecast

Every budget in Flowtly includes a P&L view that brings together income, expenses, and balance in one place. This article explains how to open that view and what each figure means.

Opening the P&L view

1. Navigate to Budgets in the main menu.
2. Click the tile of the budget you want to analyse.
3. Select the Budget Summary tab (it is the default tab when you open a budget).

The view is split into a headline KPI section at the top and a chart below, followed by the breakdown table.

Headline KPIs

The top of the P&L view shows three headline figures for the current period:

Figure	What it shows
Income	Total revenue attached to this budget in the current period (e.g. paid client invoices linked to the budget).
Expense	Total costs charged to this budget in the current period.
Balance	Income minus Expense. A positive balance means the budget is in surplus; a negative balance means it is over-spending.

Awaiting vs received: Within both income and expense, Flowtly distinguishes amounts that have already been received or paid from those that are still planned or awaiting settlement. This lets you separate confirmed cash flow from expected cash flow at a glance. Awaiting amounts appear with a lighter visual treatment so you always know what is confirmed versus pending.

P&L by tags and cost groups

Below the headline figures, the breakdown table lists every tag and cost group that has been applied to transactions inside this budget. Each row shows:

• Tag / cost group name — the label used when the transaction was categorised.
• Allocated amount — the slice of a shared cost that belongs to this budget specifically. When a transaction is shared across several projects or budgets, only the portion allocated here is counted.

This view is particularly useful when overhead costs (payroll taxes, office rent, software licences) are split across multiple budgets. You can verify your budget is carrying the right share and spot anomalies without leaving the P&L view.

Tag and cost-group rows are assigned to months on the same basis as the headline figures and the timeseries chart below (see Which month a cost counts in). Because all three agree, a tag's monthly amounts reconcile with the cost totals they sit under, and a paid cost is never counted once under its tag in one month and again as untagged in another.

Filtering and sorting

Use the column headers to sort rows by name or amount. If your organisation uses many tags, the search field above the table lets you filter by keyword.

Awaiting vs received in detail

The chart area contains a toggle that switches between two perspectives:

• Received / paid — only confirmed transactions (invoices marked paid, bank transactions already settled).
• Awaiting — transactions that are booked but not yet settled (approved invoices pending payment, planned costs not yet due).

Switching between the two lets you stress-test the budget: if awaiting amounts were all to fall due at once, would the balance still be healthy?

This split describes settlement status only. It does not change which month an amount belongs to — a cost sits in the month its document relates to both before and after it is paid, and settling it moves it from awaiting to received without moving it between months.

Timeseries chart

The bar chart shows one bar per calendar month. Each bar represents the actual income or expense figures recorded for that month.

Which month a cost counts in

A cost is counted in the month its document relates to — the Related month recorded on the transaction attachment. This applies whether or not the document has been paid, so a cost stays in the same month when it is settled.

Two qualifications apply:

• No related month on the document. Flowtly falls back to the payment date and counts the cost in the month the payment was recorded.
• A related period spanning several months. The amount is prorated across that period rather than placed in a single month.

Because attribution follows the document rather than the bank, clearing a backlog of older invoices in one month does not pull a year of cost into that month. Each document stays in the month it relates to, so the shape of the chart reflects when the work or supply happened rather than when the account was settled. A month can therefore carry cost even though no payment left the account in it, and a month of heavy settlement can show little cost of its own.

Monthly attribution changes only how a total is distributed, never the total itself. Period totals, the balance, and consumption measured against the planned budget count the same money regardless of when it was paid.

Income follows the equivalent rule: an invoice is recognised in its sale month rather than the month the client's payment arrived.

Refreshing figures

Budget figures are cached for performance. In most cases the cache updates automatically when new transactions arrive. If you need to force an immediate recalculation — for example, after bulk-importing transactions — click the Refresh icon in the top-right corner of the Budget Summary tab. This clears the cache for this budget and recomputes all figures from scratch.

Example use cases

• A project manager opens a client project budget mid-quarter to check whether the balance is still positive after recent invoices were paid.
• A finance controller uses the by-tags breakdown to verify that office rent is allocated at the correct 40% share to this department budget rather than counted in full.
• An accountant settles a year of outstanding supplier invoices in a single payment run, then checks the monthly chart and finds each invoice still counted in the month it relates to instead of a single spike in the payment month.
• A controller comparing spend month by month sets the related month on every incoming document so that costs line up with the periods they belong to, regardless of when the supplier is actually paid.