Your variance % flips sign on a negative budget

Here’s the formula most of us start with:

=(Actual - Budget) / Budget

It works until a line is budgeted at a loss. Say the budget is -100 and the actual is -50. You beat budget by 50, but the formula returns -50%, which reads as a miss.

The fix

Divide by the absolute budget, and handle zero while you’re there:

=LET(
    act, C2,
    bud, B2,
    IF(bud = 0, "n/a", (act - bud) / ABS(bud))
)

Now the same line returns +50%, and a positive variance means actual came in above budget, every time.

Make it reusable

In Excel 365, save it once under Formulas → Name Manager as VarPct:

=LAMBDA(act, bud, IF(bud = 0, "n/a", (act - bud) / ABS(bud)))

Then use =VarPct(C2, B2) anywhere in the workbook.

One thing this doesn’t change: on cost lines, positive still means you spent more, which is adverse. Decide on a sign convention and label it on the report.