How to build a marketing budget tracker

What matters here

• A marketing budget tracker is four parts: budget by programme, committed spend, reconciled actuals, and a remaining view per owner.
• Record commitment at signature, not at invoice. That gap is the entire disagreement between marketing and finance.
• Break the budget down by programme and channel, not just by cost centre. Cost centres do not map to the decisions marketers make.
• Reconcile against finance rather than tracking in parallel. Two independent records diverge and then nobody trusts either.
• Track spend against results per programme, or the tracker only answers what you spent and never whether to spend it again.
• Multi-currency and cross-period commitments are where these trackers break. Handle both from the start.

Who this is for

You run marketing operations or own a marketing budget. You already get a monthly report from finance. What you want is to know what is left before you sign the next contract, without a reconciliation exercise.

How it works in practice

What a channel owner does before they sign something, and what finance does at quarter end.

1. 1

   Budget is structured by programme, not just cost centre

   Because programme is the unit marketers make decisions in, and cost centre is a finance structure.

2. 2

   Spend is recorded at signature, not at invoice

   With the expected invoice schedule, which is where the disagreement with finance actually lives.

3. 3

   Actuals arrive from finance on a schedule

   And match against open commitments, so nothing is counted twice.

4. 4

   Two unmatched lists appear, and both are findings

   Spend with no commitment means the process was bypassed. A stale commitment usually means work quietly stopped.

5. 5

   The pre-commitment check runs before you sign

   Enter a proposed amount against a programme and see what would remain. This is the screen that prevents overspend rather than reporting it.

6. 6

   Quarter close freezes the figures

   So a correction next month cannot rewrite a number already in a board pack.

1. 1

   Structure it the way marketers decide

   Programmes, and the money already spoken for.

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   In this Helix project, build me a marketing budget tracker.
   
   Structure the budget by programme rather than only by cost centre:
   programme name, channel, type, owner, quarter, planned spend, currency and
   objective. Cost centres are a finance structure, and marketers make
   decisions at the programme level, so a tracker organised the other way
   cannot answer the questions they ask.
   
   Channels to seed: paid search, paid social, events, content, sponsorship,
   agency and freelance, tools, brand.
   
   Keep budget versions so a reforecast never overwrites the original plan.
   The gap between them is its own report.
   
   Then commitments, recorded at signature rather than at invoice: programme,
   vendor, description, amount, currency, signed date, contract reference,
   and the expected invoice schedule as one or more dated lines. That gap
   between signing and invoicing is the entire disagreement between marketing
   and finance.
   
   Two things to build in now rather than retrofit: commitments that span
   quarters, split across the periods their invoices land in, and
   multi-currency, storing the original amount and a converted amount at a
   rate I set per period.
   
   I sign in through Helix, so do not build a login page. Read the signed-in
   user from the runtime. And do not put any key or connection string in the
   code: if this needs to reach another system, tell me and I will create the
   connection in my workspace.

   Worth knowing. Cross-period commitments and multi-currency are what break these trackers in month three, and both are far cheaper to build in than to add later.

2. 2

   Agree with finance instead of arguing with them

   Reconciliation, and the two lists that fall out of it.

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   Import actuals from finance on a schedule: programme, vendor, amount,
   currency, invoice reference and dates, cost centre, description. Record
   the last successful import and show it on every page, and say so on screen
   when one fails rather than serving stale numbers quietly.
   
   Match each actual to an open commitment by vendor, amount and expected
   date, within a tolerance I configure. A matched actual reduces the open
   commitment rather than adding to the total.
   
   Then surface two unmatched views, both directions. Actuals with no
   commitment, which is spend that bypassed the process. And commitments long
   past their expected invoice date, which are either late invoices or work
   that stopped without anyone telling finance.
   
   And show planned, committed, actual and remaining together everywhere.
   Never a single remaining figure on its own.

3. 3

   The screen that prevents overspend

   Rather than the one that reports it.

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   Build the owner view: their programmes, with planned, committed, actual,
   remaining, and the percentage consumed. Then roll up by channel, by
   quarter, and for the year.
   
   Alert an owner when a programme crosses thresholds I set, and again when
   committed plus actual exceeds the plan.
   
   Then build the pre-commitment check, and make it easy to find. Enter a
   proposed amount against a programme and see what would remain if it were
   signed. This is the screen people will use most, and it is the only one
   here that stops an overspend rather than describing one afterwards.
   
   Highlight programmes with a lot of unspent budget late in a quarter, which
   is a planning signal as much as a spending one.
   
   And let me transfer budget between programmes, with an approver, a reason,
   and a full history.

   Worth knowing. Every other view in a budget tracker reports the past. This one changes a decision that has not been made yet.

4. 4

   Whether to spend it again

   Results, and the comparison that is easy to get wrong.

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   Record results per programme: the metric, the target, the actual, when it
   was measured and where it came from.
   
   Derive cost per outcome, and restrict comparisons to within a channel.
   Comparing an event to paid search on cost per lead reliably produces the
   wrong decision, because the two produce different kinds of pipeline that
   convert differently.
   
   Add a quarter-close snapshot that freezes the figures, so a later
   correction does not change a number already reported to a board.
   
   Then report spend by channel against plan, committed versus invoiced over
   time, cost per outcome trend per programme, and the budget transfer history
   with reasons. Plus one summary line I can paste into a monthly update:
   planned, committed, invoiced, remaining, and the largest variance with its
   owner.

5. 5

   Connect it to real systems

   The step that turns a working prototype into something with your data in it.

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   Now connect it to the systems we actually run, so it works on real data
   rather than the rows you seeded.
   
   Anything in angle brackets is a placeholder. Swap it for whatever we use
   instead, and have the app name the connection it wants rather than assume
   a vendor, so changing my mind later is a config change and not a rewrite.
   
   <NetSuite>. Import posted actuals on a schedule and reconcile them against
   open commitments.
   
   <Coupa>. Read signed orders, so a commitment is recorded at signature
   rather than at invoice.
   
   <Google Analytics>. Pull results per programme, so cost per outcome is
   derived rather than estimated.
   
   <Slack>. Warn an owner when committed plus invoiced crosses the plan.
   
   <Okta>. Read the manager relationship, so a programme owner's line rolls
   up to whoever owns the budget above them.
   
   <Marketo>. Read spend and performance per campaign, so cost per outcome is
   derived rather than typed.
   
   <Google Sheets>. Take the plan in the shape it was built, a tab per
   programme and all, rather than asking anybody to retype it.
   
   Only write where I have said to write. Everything else is read only.
   
   Do not write a key, a token or a connection string anywhere in the code,
   and do not ask me to paste one. Tell me which connections you need and I
   will create each as an authentication in my Helix workspace. Reference
   them by alias.

   Worth knowing. Every name in angle brackets is a placeholder for whatever you run. Helix holds the credential as a workspace authentication, so the app references an alias and never the secret itself.

6. 6

   Ship it

   The last step of every build: a URL, and the right people on it.

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   Deploy my app.

   Worth knowing. Your assistant runs helix deploy underneath and the app comes back as a URL. These numbers get quoted in budget conversations, so set Access Control before sharing: owners see their programmes, leadership sees the roll-up.

What it connects to

Marketing knows what it committed. Finance knows what was invoiced. This app is the join.

• NetSuite

  Import posted actuals on a schedule and reconcile them against open commitments.

• Coupa

  Read signed orders, so a commitment is recorded at signature rather than at invoice.

• Google Analytics

  Pull results per programme, so cost per outcome is derived rather than estimated.

• Slack

  Warn an owner when committed plus invoiced crosses the plan.

• Okta

  Read the manager relationship, so a programme owner's line rolls up to whoever owns the budget above them.

• Marketo

  Read spend and performance per campaign, so cost per outcome is derived rather than typed.

• Google Sheets

  Take the plan in the shape it was built, a tab per programme and all, rather than asking anybody to retype it.

Each line says whether the app reads, writes or both. Anything not described as writing should be read only.

Named systems are the ones most teams actually run, not a list of the only ones that work. Swap in whatever you use.

Each connection is an authentication in your Helix workspace, referenced by alias. The app names the connection it wants and never holds the credential, so nothing here ends up in your code and any of it can be rotated or revoked without a redeploy.

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