Discover the Power of Automating Your Budget: A Purpose-Built Approach to Business Performance Management

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1 Discover the Power of Automating Your Budget: A Purpose-Built Approach to Business Performance Management ( ) Financial planning can be an inefficient drain on an organization. Old technology makes budgeting, forecasting and reporting difficult and error prone in a market that already inflicts enough uncertainty in daily operations. However, SMBs have better options than spreadsheets, it s simply a matter of choosing a more streamlined, powerful purpose-built application instead of accepting the old onesize-fits-all standby.

2 Centage Corporation 2 Introduction Budgeting and planning have become more complicated as volatile and unpredictable markets continue to challenge small and medium businesses (SMBs). These days, every expense is under constant scrutiny as organizations endeavor to weather unpredictable changes in the market. Therefore, not only has budgeting become more complicated, forecasting and reporting have become more frequent as financial officers try to react quickly to ever-changing market conditions. Challenge: Yesterday s Tools in Today s Market While some organizations have the mindset that budgeting is an exercise in futility in the new economic situation, the truth is an adjustment is required to yesterday s strategy and technology in order to adapt to a market that is faster, broader, more unpredictable and more complex. Organizations still struggling with budgeting, planning and forecasting are likely using yesterday s most common financial tool, the spreadsheet, and therefore wrestling with its long-term inherent problems. Organizations still struggling with budgeting, planning and forecasting are likely using yesterday s most common financial tool, the spreadsheet, and therefore wrestling with its long-term inherent problems: Challenge: The Last-Minute Cash Flow Statement Last-minute Cash Flow Statements are a result of old technology and a process supported by old technology. In the typical budgeting process most of the effort is spent on the Income Statement and its supporting detail, while the Balance Sheet is built at 50,000 feet. At the 11th hour, a Cash Flow Statement is created, which is only as precise as the Balance Sheet upon which it is built. In this process, a strategic tool with great potential to aid business planning gets no real attention or analysis from time-strapped accountants.

3 Centage Corporation 3 Challenge: Perceived Lack of Options The business world has been using spreadsheets since a Harvard Business School student invented the interactive visible calculator in Though 35 years of technological advances can certainly offer improvements on the spreadsheet, the perceived lack of affordable, functional software ensures that spreadsheets remain the go-to method for budgeting, forecasting and reporting, including cash flow management. Solution: Leveraging Today s Technology for Success in Today s Market Fortunately, technology is available that can assist finance chiefs with their biggest budget, forecasting and cash flow management challenges. Today, SMBs have the option to choose efficient, purpose-built budgeting software over poorly adapted, one-size-fits-all spreadsheets. Applications exist that allow expert users to hardwire formulas into shared spreadsheets so individual users can share a common workspace and enjoy better collaboration and less proliferation. These solutions are affordable and easy to implement. However, not all applications are created equal. Financial managers should beware of solutions that only partly align with what they actually need to manage their businesses in today s environment. Organizations need financial planning software that is: Easy to implement Easy to learn Easy to use Affordable Comprehensive Budget Maestro: Affordable and Purpose-Built for Today s SMB Budget Maestro from Centage offers a single centralized database to manage all the elements that comprise a budget: revenue, expenses, personnel, capital assets, loans, lines of credit. Budget Maestro is an easy-to-use, scalable Business Performance Management (BPM) software designed for SMBs. By automating many of the time-consuming activities in the planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis process, Budget Maestro enables organizations to go far beyond spreadsheets to enjoy extraordinary efficiencies, deep visibility and increased agility.

4 Centage Corporation 4 Benefits Easy to Implement, Easy to Use Implementation is easy and requires little or no IT involvement; the client s G/L structure is supported 100%. Financial intelligence and business rules are based on accounting principles and already built into the software, getting up and running happens in a matter of days, not weeks or months. Plus, a fast and simple implementation means no expensive consulting fees. If there are questions, clients have access to the full Centage support team. Easy-to-use dropdown boxes provide the ability to select pre-defined spreads, schedules and business logic on the fly, saving time required to replicate and maintain settings over and over again in multiple areas of a user s budget.

5 Centage Corporation 5 Budget Maestro Easy to Use Grid: This screen shot demonstrates the easy to use grids for entering budget numbers and adjusting a forecast. The views are available on the left to control that expenses show up in the window. Save Time & Money Budget Maestro saves organizations money by improving productivity, reducing or eliminating errors and spreadsheet proliferation, increasing efficiency and connecting and consolidating all the critical parts of the entire financial process. Synchronized P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Because Budget Maestro keeps all financial data in one place, organizations can enjoy synchronized P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow reporting. Even non-financial department heads, managers and users can enter their own budget without having to know anything about accounting. Ripple-through accuracy means changes made to an Income Statement or Balance Sheet line item automatically updates in real time throughout all financials - including the Cash Flow Statement. The Balance Sheet and Cash Flow side of P&L assumptions are automatically built based on pre-defined AR and AP schedules. As a result, P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow are built at the transaction level instead of estimates calculated based on Days Payable And Days Sales Outstanding. Every value is calculated based on the exact settings that users choose for each line item in their budget. Comprehensive Budget Maestro is a comprehensive start-to-finish solution that allows SMBs to react and adapt to fastchanging markets. Benefits include: Dedicated modules for all financial details Integrated business logic

6 Centage Corporation 6 Built-in financial intelligence that follows dual-journal entry, creating debits and credits behind-thescenes for each transaction Built-in business logic that understands the attributes of revenue vs. expense, asset vs. liability, and cash vs. other forms of payment Built-in Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable schedules to use as-is or tailor, and apply globally or to individual line items Drill-down reports for a high-level Cash Flow Statement or individual operational, investment and financing actions What if capabilities to create various scenarios based on different decisions and different cash flows Built-in Cash Flow report formats Integration with Workforce Planning elements provides immediate information on how real or potential payroll and headcount changes impact cash Integration with Capital Asset Planning for forecasting capital asset purchase and depreciation/ amortization on a detail or aggregate level Budget Maestro has out-of-the-box GAAP compliant P&L, balance sheet and cash flow reports. Reporting Each business user has the ability to create and personalize dashboards with the most relevant, accurate and up-to-date information. Dynamic, visual reports of Budget Maestro data enable executives and managers to quickly and routinely see how they are performing against key performance indicators (KPIs), including financial and statistical data. Centage reporting capabilities enhances the power and flexibility of enterprise-class OLAP (online analytical processing) multi-dimensional reporting by extracting key data, including all the General Ledger data, from Budget Maestro into an OLAP Reporting Cube. This capability allows users present the most complete and reliable data available to drive more informed decisionmaking throughout the organization. Flexibility Broad flexibility empowers managers to create views (or dimensions) of an organization for financial and management reports, data entry and consolidation purposes with simple drag n-drop capabilities. Financial Reporting: All the reports print, export to Excel, PDF, Text, and Image files, or can be ed for easy inclusion into documents and presentations.

7 Conclusion Budgeting in today s rapidly changing economic environment poses new challenges for SMBs. Old budgeting tools such as spreadsheets are error-prone, inefficient and only add to the chaos. Today s technology affords SMBs precise insight into their financial position across the organization, and the ability to leverage their financial resources strategically. Budget Maestro from Centage Corporation streamlines the entire budgeting process and dramatically simplifies the planning process for financial executives, financial analysts and managers. Customers also enjoy improved accuracy and efficiency of their financial operations. Ready to try Budget Maestro? Visit our website for a free trial, sales@centage.com or give us a call at About Centage Corporation Centage Corporation is the world leader in formula-free, easy-to-deploy Business Performance Management (BPM) software solutions for small- to medium-sized organizations. Since 2001, thousands of managers at all levels use the Budget Maestro family of solutions to streamline their budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, performance analysis, and reporting process to improve the accuracy and efficiency of their overall business planning process. Centage Corporation is headquartered in Natick, MA. Connect with Centage: Web Twitter Facebook Linkedin Blog Centage Corporation Centage and Budget Maestro are registered trademarks of Centage