Financial variance is the difference between budgeted and actual spending. Positive variance means spending less, negative indicates overspending. Regular monitoring reduces surprises and improves ...

A good tool to ask the right questions. A company's planned budget at the beginning of the year will always end up being different from how the year actually plays out. It's just impossible to predict ...

A stock's historical variance measures the difference between the stock's returns for different periods and its average return. A stock with a lower variance typically generates returns that are ...

This article was originally published on Built In by Eric Kleppen. Variance is a powerful statistic used in data analysis and machine learning. It is one of the four main measures of variability along ...

Even the best budgets rarely turn out exactly the way that planners expect. Whenever you're planning in advance for a period of time, you'll inevitably make some mistakes in your estimates, and it's ...

Cost and schedule variance data are part of earned value analysis, which is a tool that small and large businesses use as an early-warning system to identify and manage problems in ongoing projects.

As a small-business leader, taking care of the bottom line is critical for growth, as well as for maintaining your current payroll and customers. Understanding sales price variance can help you ...

Claire Boyte-White is the lead writer for NapkinFinance.com, co-author of I Am Net Worthy, and an Investopedia contributor. Claire's expertise lies in corporate finance & accounting, mutual funds, ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...