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variance-commentary

Vendor officialLow riskBy anthropicsLicense: Apache-2.0★ 41,232
Used byAsset Managers & Hedge Funds · Fund Operations & AccountingCommercial Banking · Finance & Accounting

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.

Use in Claude.ai (no code)

Download variance-commentary.zip
  1. In Claude.ai, open Settings → Capabilities → Skills
  2. Choose “Upload skill” and pick the zip you downloaded
  3. Turn it on, then describe your task in a chat. Claude uses the skill when it fits

Use in Claude Code and other agents

Claude Code plugin

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/financial-services
/plugin install month-end-closer@claude-for-financial-services

skills CLI (installs every skill in the repository)

npx skills add anthropics/financial-services

Manual: Copy the plugins/agent-plugins/month-end-closer/skills/variance-commentary folder to ~/.claude/skills/variance-commentary/

Safety scan report

Executable scripts: noneSuspicious patterns: 0Files: 1Content hash: 11624574b72c

The scan is static pattern matching. It catches common problems and is not a guarantee of safety. Read the source before installing a skill that ships scripts.

Source

anthropics/financial-services/plugins/agent-plugins/month-end-closer/skills/variance-commentarycommit 6056506In plugins: month-end-closer, fund-admin
Files (1)
  • SKILL.md
SKILL.md
# 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.