Turn a raw actual-vs-budget export into a variance narrative someone can act on

Phase 1 — Ingest.
Here is the actual-vs-budget data for the period, as I have it (paste raw, don't reformat before giving it to me):
Marketing: budget $85k, actual $121k. Contractor costs: budget $40k, actual $22k. Cloud hosting: budget $30k, actual $38k. (18 more lines)

Period: July 2026 (month 7 of FY26)
Materiality threshold: Ignore anything under $5,000 or 10% of budget, whichever is larger

Phase 2 — Classify.
For every line where the variance exceeds the materiality threshold I gave you, classify it into exactly one of three buckets: Timing (the spend or revenue happened, just not in the period it was budgeted for, and nets out over the year), Rate (the volume was as planned but the unit cost or price differed), or Volume (more or less of the thing happened than planned, at roughly the budgeted rate). Do not classify a variance you can't actually explain from the data given — if the line item alone doesn't tell you which bucket it belongs to, say so explicitly and list it under "needs input" with the specific question you'd need answered, rather than guessing a plausible-sounding explanation.

Phase 3 — Rank.
Order the material variances by how much each one changes the full-year forecast if it persists at the same rate for the rest of the year, not by the size of the variance in this one period alone — a large one-time timing variance matters less going forward than a smaller variance that compounds every month.

Phase 4 — Narrative.
For the top five ranked items, write a two-sentence explanation each: what happened, and whether it needs action or will self-correct. Never write "variance due to timing" as a complete explanation on its own — state what specifically shifted and when it's expected to reverse, or flag that you don't have enough information to say it will reverse.

WHAT NOT TO DO
Do not smooth over an unfavorable variance with softer language than a favorable one of the same size gets — describe both with the same level of directness. Do not present any dollar figure you calculated as exact if the underlying period data was incomplete; say what's approximate.

OUTPUT FORMAT
1. A table: Line Item | Variance ($ and %) | Bucket | Persists If Unaddressed (full-year impact estimate).
2. The five-item narrative section, ranked.
3. A "needs input" list of anything you couldn't classify confidently, each with the specific question to ask the line owner.
4. One line noting this is a structuring aid for the review meeting, not a finalized management account.