Month-end reviews stall when the variance story has to be reverse-engineered from a spreadsheet the morning of. This recipe pulls the period's actuals from the Stripe ledger, reads the budget definitions from your docs or spreadsheet, and buckets spend against the budget categories with the mappings normalized once and remembered. It computes variance per category with the named drivers behind each mover, and projects run-rate to period end so categories on track to blow through budget are flagged before they do, not after. The output is a variance brief — table, three narratives for the biggest movers, corrective asks per material variance — written to your docs only after you approve the draft. Idempotent per budget + period window: reruns update the brief in place, never duplicate a row or restate a period already briefed.