Variance Analysis

anthropics/knowledge-work-pluginsOfficial

Decomposes financial variances into specific drivers with price/volume splits, rate/mix analysis, and headcount breakdowns. You'd use this when explaining budget vs actual gaps to leadership or building waterfall charts that show exactly where the delta came from. It includes materiality thresholds for deciding what's worth investigating and templates for writing variance narratives that actually explain the business reason instead of just restating the numbers. The narrative quality checklist alone is worth having around, it calls out the circular explanation anti-pattern that shows up in every finance deck. Designed for FP&A workflows but assumes you'll review the output with qualified finance people before using it in reporting.

skills.sh installs: 3.4K
GitHub stars: 35.3K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill variance-analysis --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Variance Analysis

Important: This skill assists with variance analysis workflows but does not provide financial advice. All analyses should be reviewed by qualified financial professionals before use in reporting.

Techniques for decomposing variances, materiality thresholds, narrative generation, waterfall chart methodology, and budget vs actual vs forecast comparisons.

Variance Decomposition Techniques

Price / Volume Decomposition

The most fundamental variance decomposition. Used for revenue, cost of goods, and any metric that can be expressed as Price x Volume.

Formula:

Total Variance = Actual - Budget (or Prior)

Volume Effect  = (Actual Volume - Budget Volume) x Budget Price
Price Effect   = (Actual Price - Budget Price) x Actual Volume
Mix Effect     = Residual (interaction term), or allocated proportionally

Verification:  Volume Effect + Price Effect = Total Variance
               (when mix is embedded in the price/volume terms)

SKILL.md on GitHub