Reviewing and Editing the Budget in Cephai
Cephai creates recommendations, not final decisions. Creating a budget is only the first step. Before it's ready for approval, review it carefully to confirm the recommendations accurately reflect your association's operational needs, planned projects, and financial goals.
Although Cephai analyzes historical data, inflation, seasonal spending patterns, and supporting documents, it can't account for every future event or organizational decision. Vendor negotiations, planned projects, board initiatives, and other community-specific considerations may require adjustments before the budget is finalized.
As you review, consider questions such as:
Do the recommendations reflect known contract changes?
Are upcoming capital projects represented?
Have reserve contributions been considered?
Do seasonal expenses display in the appropriate months?
Are there unusual increases or decreases that require investigation?
Your expertise ensures the final budget reflects your community's actual needs. Review Cephai's recommendations and make informed changes where appropriate before approving the budget.
Before making any changes, review the AI-generated budget. Understanding the overall financial picture and the reasoning behind Cephai's recommendations helps you identify areas that may need additional attention.
If you have already reviewed and are looking for information about editing, see Editing a Budget in Cephai.
Follow these steps to review a budget:
In the Cephai Task Center, select the appropriate budget.
OR
In CINC with universal navigation, go to Cephai and select the appropriate budget.
The Budget Summary displays. Review the AI summary, which shows Cephai's current summary of where the budget stands: Current Status, Key Issues, and Additional Notes. It stays up to date, automatically regenerating so you're never looking at stale data. It regenerates when:
Budget values change.
The default scenario is switched or deleted.
Flagged GL accounts are modified.
Budget values update from CINC.
A scenario fails.
Click Proceed to budget.
The Budget Overview displays. This is your main workspace, giving you a high-level snapshot of revenue, expenses, balances, and year-over-year changes so you can quickly identify areas that need closer attention. Review each line item, grouped by category with subtotals shown, comparing Cephai's AI-suggested amount against your budget, prior-year figures, and percent change.
Note: Use the Scenario drop-down near the top of the page to create a new scenario, or, if you've built multiple, switch between them to compare each one.
Review the Key Insights and Recommendations on the right. Rather than checking every account individually, this section highlights the most significant findings from Cephai's analysis, such as large expense increases, notable revenue changes, and other significant year-over-year changes, so you can focus your attention where it's needed most. It updates automatically as you add more documents.
Review each item's AI Notes, which explain why Cephai recommended that value, such as historical spending, inflation, seasonality, uploaded documents, or balancing adjustments. Use this context to decide whether to accept or adjust the recommendation.
Notes:
AI Insights language adapts to the association’s accounting basis (cash, modified accrual, or full accrual), instead of using one-size-fits-all phrasing.
When a GL account is added during budget creation that wasn't part of the original AI-generated budget, a note is automatically created in the AI Notes section identifying the account name, code, the user who added it, the date, and the amount. If multiple accounts are added, each one generates its own note.
Review each flagged account to confirm the recommendation reflects your organization's financial plans, then mark it as reviewed so progress is easy to track, especially when multiple people are working on the budget. Cephai flags accounts that show a significant change from prior years, not necessarily because something is wrong.
Review the Historical Data graph on the right, which plots Revenue, Expenses, and Balance for the last four years of actual spending. Comparing this against Cephai's suggested amounts helps you spot recurring patterns and long-term trends, and decide whether a recommendation is appropriate or needs adjustment.
Review any seasonal distributions, marked with an Orange Sun icon, to confirm expenses like landscaping, pool maintenance, and snow removal still land in the appropriate months, even though Cephai applies these patterns automatically.