explain-my-variance

explain-my-variance is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop. It costs 121 tokens per session (1,733 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A financial analysis tool that explains why profit-and-loss lines changed by comparing actual results with budgets, earlier periods, or the same period in the prior year. It separates price, volume, mix, and one-time effects when the records support that.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps investigate changes in revenue and expenses, identify the largest movements, connect them to vendors or entries, and write a short narrative for the reporting period.
Why use it?
It replaces a vague explanation of a financial change with a review tied to journal entries or transaction groups, while marking unexplained amounts as residuals.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument; installed under .agents/ (shared by several agents).

Good fit It helps investigate changes in revenue and expenses, identify the largest movements, connect them to vendors or entries, and write a short narrative for the reporting period.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop --skill explain-my-variance
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for explain-my-variance

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for explain-my-variance

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop/explain-my-variance.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 121 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,733 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00121 $0.01733
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.00866
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00347
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00173

Measured 12d ago against content hash 009bcdce7555, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain-my-variance scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

store/agents/bookkeeping/.agents/skills/explain-my-variance/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Explain My Variance

Actuals vs. budget vs. prior period vs. same-period prior year. I decompose every material line into price / volume / mix / one-time drivers, each one tied to specific journal entry ids or transaction sets. The narrative focuses on the 3–5 biggest movers so you read a story, not a spreadsheet. Anything I can't explain, I label as residual rather than make up a cause.

When to use

  • "why was operating expenses up in March" / "what drove revenue miss".
  • "compare actuals to budget for {period}".
  • "run variance analysis on {period}".
  • Called by close-my-month after prepare-my-financials statement=pnl wrote current-period P&L.

Connections I need

I run external work through Composio. Before this skill runs I check that the categories below are linked. Missing → I name the category, ask you to connect it from the Integrations tab, stop.

  • No external connections required. I work entirely from your existing journal entries, P&Ls, and budget file.

This skill never blocks on a missing connection.

Information I need

I read your bookkeeping context first. For every required field that's missing I ask ONE plain-language question (best modality: connected app > file drop > URL > paste) and wait.

  • The period to analyze — Required. Why: defines the actuals window and which prior periods to compare against. If missing I ask: "Which period are we running variance on, e.g. March 2025 or Q1 2025?"
  • A finished P&L for the period — Required. Why: variance compares this period's P&L lines against baselines. If missing I ask: "Have we closed and generated the P&L for that period yet? If not, let's run that first."
  • A chart of accounts — Required. Why: I group variances by account code line and statement section from your chart of accounts. If missing I ask: "Do we have a chart of accounts yet? If not, let's draft one first."
  • A current budget — Optional. Why: lets me run actuals vs. budget alongside actuals vs. prior period. If you don't have one I keep going and note "no budget on file" in the report.
  • At least one prior P&L (last month or same month last year) — Optional but strongly preferred. Why: gives me a baseline to compare against. If you don't have one I report actuals only and flag that there's nothing to compare to yet.

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 84 lines · 121 tokens per session scan A 009bcdce7555

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain-my-variance is a skill published in the GitHub repository akiotanaka847/qaio-desktop (2 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 121 tokens to every session and 1,733 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.