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Compare your budget with actual spending

Budget against actual for each account, the largest differences first, with the transactions behind them.

  • On a schedule: On the 5th of each month at 9:00
Use in CuiarRun from your AI agent

What it does

The task

Open the Profit and Loss report in Xero for last month. Compare each account with the budget in the Google Sheet budget sheet, and calculate the difference in money and in percent. For each difference above threshold, list the 3 largest transactions behind it. Write the table to a new tab with the name of the month. Send me the 5 largest differences with one line each.

  • It works in Xero and Google Sheets, in the workspace you pick, and signs in with passwords from your Cuiar vault.
  • As a routine it runs on the 5th of each month at 9:00 (cron 0 9 5 * *).

What you give it

BlankWhat to giveExample
budget sheetThe Google Sheet with your monthly budgethttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Budget2026
thresholdThe smallest difference to explain1,000 EUR

What you get back

An example run with the example values above. Your run uses your own data.

October 2026: spend 84,320 EUR against a budget of 78,500 EUR (+7.4%)

AccountBudgetActualDifference
Software6,0009,140+3,140 (+52%): annual Figma renewal 2,880, Datadog 1,410
Travel4,5007,230+2,730 (+61%): team offsite 4,100, Lisbon client visit 1,487
Contractors18,00020,400+2,400 (+13%): extra QA hours from Pixelgrove
Marketing12,0009,350-2,650 (-22%): trade fair moved to December
Rent9,8009,8000

Saved to the tab "2026-10".

Run it in Cuiar

  1. 01

    Open it

    Click Use in Cuiar on this page. The side panel opens with the task in the composer.

  2. 02

    Fill in 2 blanks

    Type budget sheet and threshold. Tab moves to the next blank.

  3. 03

    Run it, then repeat it

    Run sends it once. To run it on the 5th of each month at 9:00, make a routine on cuiar.com/routines or with the CLI below.

As a routine, from the terminal

cuiar routines create "Compare your budget with actual spending" --schedule "0 9 5 * *" --time-zone Europe/Berlin \
  "Open the Profit and Loss report in Xero for last month. Compare each account with the budget in the Google Sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Budget2026, and calculate the difference in money and in percent. For each difference above 1,000 EUR, list the 3 largest transactions behind it. Write the table to a new tab with the name of the month. Send me the 5 largest differences with one line each."

Run it from your AI agent

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other MCP clients reach Cuiar at https://mcp.cuiar.com/mcp. Add the server one time, then ask for the task in plain words, or call create_routine yourself.

1. Add Cuiar to Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http cuiar https://mcp.cuiar.com/mcp

2. Ask your agent

Use the Cuiar tool create_routine to run my "Compare your budget with actual spending" template with budget sheet = https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Budget2026; threshold = 1,000 EUR.

Setup for other agents: AI agents.

The tool call

{
  "name": "create_routine",
  "arguments": {
    "name": "Compare your budget with actual spending",
    "task": "Open the Profit and Loss report in Xero for last month. Compare each account with the budget in the Google Sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Budget2026, and calculate the difference in money and in percent. For each difference above 1,000 EUR, list the 3 largest transactions behind it. Write the table to a new tab with the name of the month. Send me the 5 largest differences with one line each.",
    "schedule": "0 9 5 * *",
    "time_zone": "Europe/Berlin"
  }
}

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