skillhub

variance-commentary✓ Pass

Write flux commentary for every P&L and balance-sheet line over threshold — current vs prior period and vs budget, with the driver explained from underlying activity. Use for the month-end close package and management reporting.

45out of 100
41.0k
★ stars
2
↓ downloads
63
◉ views

// Install Skill

Install Skill

Skills are third-party code from public GitHub repositories. SkillHub scans for known malicious patterns but cannot guarantee safety. Review the source code before installing.

Install globally (user-level):

npx skillhub install anthropics/financial-services/variance-commentary

Install in current project:

npx skillhub install anthropics/financial-services/variance-commentary --project

Use this for Hermes or another runtime. The skill is written to <directory>/<skill-name>/.

npx skillhub install anthropics/financial-services/variance-commentary --target-dir /path/to/skills

Suggested path: ~/.claude/skills/variance-commentary/

AI Review

45
out of 100
Instruction Quality50
Description Precision39
Usefulness43
Technical Soundness49

Instructions: followable with real substance but not comprehensive; description: an action verb with one or two trigger phrases; workflow value: useful; generality: one framework ecosystem; technical soundness: mostly correct.

Reviewed by reviewer-service(typed:jev-1.14.0/v3) on 11/2/2026

SKILL.md Content

---
name: variance-commentary
description: Write flux commentary for every P&L and balance-sheet line over threshold — current vs prior period and vs budget, with the driver explained from underlying activity. Use for the month-end close package and management reporting.
---

# Variance commentary

Given current-period actuals, prior-period actuals, and budget for the same scope, produce a commentary table.

## Threshold

Flag a line for commentary if **either** is true:

- Absolute variance ≥ the firm's materiality threshold (use the provided value; default 5% of the line or a fixed floor, whichever is greater)
- The line is on the "always comment" list (revenue, headcount cost, cash)

## For each flagged line

| Column | Content |
|---|---|
| **Line** | Account or caption |
| **Current / Prior / Budget** | The three values |
| **Δ vs prior** and **Δ vs budget** | Amount and % |
| **Driver** | One sentence explaining the movement from underlying activity — not a restatement of the number |

A driver explains *why*, not *what*: "Cloud spend up $1.2M on incremental GPU reservations for the May launch" — not "Cloud spend increased $1.2M (18%)."

## Sourcing the driver

Look at the activity behind the line (journal-source breakdown, vendor mix, headcount delta, volume × rate) via the internal-gl MCP. If the driver isn't clear from the data, write "driver unclear — flag for controller" rather than inventing one.

## Output

The commentary table plus a short narrative (3–5 sentences) summarizing the period's biggest movers.

License

Declared license: Apache-2.0

The full license text is available in the source repository.

View the license in the source repository — the version published there is authoritative.