XBuddy
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Chief financial officer (CFO)

Control spending before cash leaves the account

Budgets by cost centre, spend checks on documents, payment approval, a 13-week cash forecast and management P&L by centre — all on one ledger.

  • Spend documents checked against budget as they are raised
  • 13-week cash forecast, traceable item by item
  • P&L by cost and profit centre
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Control spending before cash leaves the account

The core problems

What is costing you time and money

  • Budgets outside the system

    Budgets are built in Excel while actual spending sits in the accounting software. Only the month-end comparison reveals which department overspent, after the money is gone.

  • Commitments nobody adds up

    Approved purchase requests and open purchase orders are not invoices yet, so they never show in the books. Two requests get approved one after the other against the same remaining budget and nobody notices.

  • A patchwork cash forecast

    Cash is forecast in a spreadsheet fed from several places, and overdue items are either missed or counted twice. When the actual balance differs from the forecast, there is no way to trace which item caused it.

  • No idea which unit makes money

    Statutory reports give profit for the whole company, but leadership needs to know which branch, department or profit centre is contributing. Allocating by hand every month is laborious and hard to audit.

Before and after

What changes on XBuddy

Today

  • Budgets in Excel, compared with actuals at month end
  • Purchase commitments missing from spend figures
  • Large payments go straight to the bank
  • Cash forecast stitched together from several sources
  • Profit and loss only at company level

With XBuddy

  • Budgets submitted and approved in the system, phased by month
  • Approved requests and open POs counted as commitments
  • Pending payments are neither posted nor applied to balances
  • One forecast engine, every figure traceable to a document
  • P&L by cost centre, rolled up through the tree

The flow

7 steps, one continuous record

  1. 1

    Build the budget

    Accounting and department heads build budget plans by company, department, cost centre or project, phased by month and importable from CSV. Plans are submitted and approved in the system; only approved budget lines are used for spend control.

    • Plans by company, department, cost centre or project
    • Monthly phasing, CSV import, submit and approve
    • Budget categories mapped to ledger accounts
    Accounting →
    Build the budget — Accounting
  2. 2

    Check budget on requests

    When an employee raises a Purchase Requisition, each line is compared with the budget line matching its account, cost centre, category or department. Depending on the mode, over-budget documents are warned or blocked, and committed amounts count as used.

    • Warn or block mode when budget is exceeded
    • Approved PRs not yet on a PO count as commitments
    • Lines missing a dimension are reported, never assumed fine
    Purchasing →
    Check budget on requests — Purchasing
  3. 3

    Threshold approvals

    Conditional approval rules route documents above a value threshold to the person with authority. The CFO receives purchase orders, advance requests and payment requests in the same approval inbox and reviews overdue items by approver.

    • Conditional and threshold-based approval rules
    • The preparer cannot approve their own document
    • Escalation of overdue items, delegation while away
    Requests & Approvals →
    Threshold approvals — Requests & Approvals
  4. 4

    Approve payments

    With the payment approval gate on, every outgoing payment from the Payments page, supplier payment runs or employee payouts enters a pending queue. A pending payment is not allocated to bills and has no journal entry; it posts the exact submitted amount only once approved.

    • One gate for Payments, supplier runs and advances
    • Limits include other pending items on the same document
    • A payee cannot approve their own payout
    Finance →
    Approve payments — Finance
  5. 5

    Forecast cash

    The cash flow forecast shows 13 weeks or months from one engine: opening balance from the ledger, receivables, payables and the uninvoiced part of sales and purchase orders. The CFO adds manual lines, overrides assumptions and saves snapshots to measure accuracy later.

    • Base, optimistic and pessimistic scenarios
    • Overdue items roll into the first period, flagged
    • Manual lines, overrides, snapshots and accuracy
    Accounting →
    Forecast cash — Accounting
  6. 6

    P&L by centre

    Cost centres and profit centres live in the same tree. The cost centre screen shows each centre's profit and loss for the year, rolled up from child centres to their parents, and exports CSV for management reporting.

    • Cost centres and profit centres
    • Roll-up through the centre tree
    • Internal charges between centres, statutory reports unchanged
    Accounting →
    P&L by centre — Accounting
  7. 7

    Actual versus budget

    At period end the CFO opens the budget variance report to see actuals by line and by month, a roll-up across plans and the list of overruns. The full-year forecast estimates the landing figure from spending pace and open commitments.

    • Variance by budget line and by month
    • Plan roll-up and overrun list
    • Full-year forecast with commitments as the floor
    Accounting →
    Actual versus budget — Accounting

Key capabilities

What this solution relies on

Budget and spend control

3

  • Budget plans

    By company, department, cost centre or project; monthly phasing, submission and approval.

  • Budget gate on documentsAdvanced

    Spend documents are checked against budget when raised, warned or blocked by mode.

  • Open commitments

    Approved PRs and open POs count as used budget, without double counting.

Cash and payments

4

  • 13-week cash forecast

    Weekly or monthly, three scenarios, every figure traced to a source line with its certainty.

  • Payment approval gateAdvanced

    A pending payment has no effect on the books until it is approved.

  • Supplier payment runs

    Batch due bills into one run that goes through the same approval gate.

  • FX risk

    View foreign-currency exposure and revalue balances at period end.

Management reporting

4

  • P&L by centre

    Profit and loss per cost or profit centre, rolled up through the tree.

  • Project P&L

    Revenue, cost and margin per project, with overhead allocation.

  • Margins

    Margin by item, service and sales order from transaction data.

  • Multi-company consolidationAdvanced

    Group chart, elimination entries and consolidated statements for companies in one account.

AI finance assistants

4

  • FP&A analysisAI

    Revenue trends, budget forecasts, variance alerts and unusual correlations.

  • Payment run proposalsAI

    Proposes specific bills and payment runs to approve; the user confirms.

  • Supplier payment priorityAI

    Analyses payables aging, early-payment discounts and duplicate bills.

  • Ask about cashAI

    Ask XBuddy Chat "will we run short?" and get answers from the same forecast engine.

Handled out of the box

Hard questions XBuddy already answers

A purchase request escaped the budget check?The PR line lacks an account, cost centre or category, so it matches no budget line; add the dimensions so the gate can control it.See the how-to →Payments that must wait for the CFO?Someone with payment approval rights decides in the queue; only then is the payment posted.See the how-to →Where do employee advances get paid?Every outgoing payment, including employee advances and settlements, goes through the same payment approval queue in Finance.See the how-to →Who approves a PO above the threshold?Threshold rules route the PO to the approver with authority; it only moves on once every approval step is complete.See the how-to →Charging costs between two departments?Use an internal charge between two different cost centres; management reports change while the statutory B02 does not.See the how-to →How far can the cash forecast be trusted?Every figure traces to a source line with its certainty; overdue items roll into the first period and orders count only their uninvoiced part.See the how-to →

What’s inside

Apps and AI assistants involved

AccountingJournal entries, general ledger and reconciliation.FinanceInvoices, expenses and purchase orders.PurchasingVendor management and the purchasing process.Requests & ApprovalsEvery request and every pending approval in one inbox.AI assistantFP&A AnalystForecasts cash flow, analyzes revenue trends, and monitors budget variance and cross-domain anomalies.AI assistantAccounts Payable AssistantAccounts payable assistant — optimizes payment timing, monitors AP aging and DPO, plans payment runs to capture early-payment discounts, prioritizes vendors and flags 3-way match exceptions.AI assistantJournal Entry AssistantProcess-aware agent tracking journal entry lifecycle, flagging drafts left unposted

FAQ

Frequently asked

Does the budget block or only warn?

The company chooses the mode when enabling budget control: warn so the preparer knows they are over, or block so over-budget documents cannot proceed. Lines that cannot be measured show the reason instead of appearing to have budget left.

How many budgets is one payment checked against?

A document matches a plan in the order cost centre, department, then whole company. Spending on a cost centre is also checked against the ceiling of the department containing it, and documents linked to a project are checked against the project budget as well.

Does the forecast double count orders and invoices?

No. Sales and purchase orders count only their uninvoiced portion, less unapplied deposits. The weekly page, the monthly page and the AI assistant all read the same engine.

Does P&L by centre distort the financial statements?

No. A cost centre is an analysis dimension on journal lines, and internal charges between centres serve management reporting only. B01 and B02 are still produced from the ledger as usual.

Can a cost centre be mandatory on every entry?

Yes. With cost-centre tracking and the mandatory flag enabled, every journal line must carry a cost centre before it can post.

Can we consolidate several companies?

Yes, for companies in the same account, including those on different accounting standards, via a group chart and account mapping. Importing figures from companies outside the system is not supported yet.

See this flow on your own data

A thirty-minute demo focused on the process you are actually stuck on.

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