Budgets & schedules

Financial planning inside Cord

Most businesses build their annual budget in a spreadsheet that ends up disconnected from operations. Cord brings that planning in-house — and connects it to what actually happens in your business.

Budget vs. Actuals

What a spreadsheet cannot do: connect a budget row to your real data — closed sales ($ or units) or collections received — and under each budgeted month you see what actually happened, with the variance in green or red. Zero data entry: the data already lives in Cord. Use period labels like "Jan 2026" so each column matches its month; future months don't show actuals yet. Available from the Professional plan.

Full financial plan in one click

The wizard creates the universal money cascade — Sales → Collections → Cash — with cross-schedule formulas pre-wired (adjustable 40/30/30 staggered collections, month-by-month cash balance), seeded with your real average sales from recent months, and with the key rows already connected to Budget vs. Actuals. If your business produces or carries inventory, it can also add Production and Raw Material Purchases.

Budget schedules

Build the classic cost-accounting cascade with ready-to-edit templates: Sales, Sales with adjustment factors, Production, Raw Material Purchases, Labor & Overhead, Collections, and Cash. Each schedule is a table of line items by period:

• Input rows you type and formula rows (marked ƒx) that recalculate on their own, with a per-row total column.
• A formula can reference other rows in the same schedule or in another one — so "Production" pulls from "Sales" with zero retyping.
• The builder supports add/subtract, chained factors, row-by-row multiplication (units × price), and references to prior periods.
• Add periods to an existing schedule and duplicate it to kick off next year (with dates shifted automatically).

Analysis tools

Decision calculators with scenarios you can save and reopen:

• Project evaluation: Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and payback period, with an assistant that derives the annual cash flow from profit, depreciation, and income tax.
• Optimal inventory (EOQ): economic order quantity, minimum total cost, and reorder point.
• Variance analysis: compares standard cost against actual and breaks the difference into price and quantity variances (favorable / unfavorable).

Availability: the Free plan includes 1 schedule and Starter 3, so you can try it with your numbers; Professional and up unlocks unlimited schedules, Budget vs. Actuals, the one-click full plan, and the analysis tools. It is a planning tool — not a live inventory system.