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variance-analysis

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Decompose financial variances into drivers with narrative explanations and waterfall analysis. Use when analyzing budget vs. actual, period-over-period changes, revenue or expense variances, or preparing variance commentary for leadership.

marketing/variance-analysis/SKILL.md

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# 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.

When inputs are supplied through report URLs, read [the SandBase API map](references/sandbase-api-map.md). Resolve the listed capability with `sandbase_discover`, inspect its returned `name` with `sandbase_inspect`, then follow `execute_as` to call `sandbase_run(name: "<returned name>", arguments: { ... })` using only the current schema. For async results, poll `sandbase_run_get` with the returned `run_id` within the task budget; report pending or failed runs without automatically resubmitting them.

Define the sign convention before calculating and label favorable/unfavorable separately: a numerically positive variance can be favorable for revenue and unfavorable for expense. When the comparison value is zero, report the percentage as not meaningful rather than dividing by zero.

## Variance Decomposition Techniques

### Price / Volume Decomposition
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