A First Draft Budget, Built From Your Own History
AI drafts a starting budget from your transaction history, mapped to your chart of accounts, so you start from a real plan instead of a blank spreadsheet.
What auto-budgets does
Starting a budget from nothing is the biggest reason SMBs skip planning altogether. Auto-budgets reads your prior-period actuals, applies seasonality and growth patterns already visible in your ledger, and drafts a full account-level budget you edit rather than build.
- Drafts a full budget from prior-period actuals across your chart of accounts
- Reflects seasonality already visible in your transaction history
- Every drafted line is editable before anything is approved
- Can seed a driver-based budget so future changes stay assumption-linked
Core capabilities
| Capability | What it does | What it replaces |
|---|---|---|
| History-based draft | Builds a starting budget from prior actuals | A blank spreadsheet template |
| Seasonality detection | Reflects seasonal patterns already in the ledger | Flat month-over-month assumptions |
| Editable draft | Every line can be adjusted before approval | A locked template that must be rebuilt |
| Driver seeding | Converts the draft into driver-based lines | Starting driver-based planning from zero |
How it works
From history to a draft plan
- 1
Select the base period
Choose the trailing period Fintra should draft the new budget from.
- 2
AI drafts the plan
A full account-level budget is generated, reflecting seasonality and recent trends.
- 3
Edit the draft
Adjust any line, add new drivers, or override assumptions before finalizing.
- 4
Approve as the plan
A named owner approves the edited draft as the official budget.
A draft, never a final answer
AI-drafted budgets are explicitly marked as drafts until a named owner approves them. Nothing generated by auto-budgets becomes the plan of record without that approval, and the SentriAI audit trail records the draft as it was generated alongside the final approved version.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is an AI-drafted budget?
It reflects your own transaction history, including seasonality, so it is a reasonable starting point rather than a generic template. It is explicitly a draft - every line is editable and nothing becomes the plan of record until a named owner approves it.
Can I use auto-budgets if I have no prior-year data in Fintra?
Auto-budgets works best with at least a few months of transaction history in the system. If you are newly migrating, you can import historical actuals first, or build your initial budget manually and let auto-budgets draft future periods once history accumulates.
Does auto-budgets replace driver-based budgeting?
No - it feeds it. Auto-budgets gives you a fast starting draft; you then convert lines you want to stay dynamic into driver-based lines, so future changes to headcount or pricing reprice the plan automatically.
Can I regenerate the draft if I do not like it?
Yes. You can regenerate the draft from a different base period or adjust the seasonality assumptions used, and prior drafts are not lost - only the version you explicitly approve becomes the budget of record.
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