Budgeting and Planning Made Easier with Sage Intacct

Posted on: March 23, 2020
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Blog, ERP / Accounting, General, Sage Intacct,
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By MicroAccounting
Budgeting and Planning Made Easier with Sage Intacct | MicroAccounting

Arguably the most important role of the CFO is to report current financial data to stakeholders for strategic planning. The ability to accurately budget and plan allows your company to easily execute the organizational mission or annual business plan. Most financial teams currently slog over data, gathering information from multiple sources, to be organized and analyzed all during the monthly close process. This type of reporting is risky. Strategic CFOs should consider Sage Intacct’s integrated budget and planning feature to streamline the reporting process to provide better data for decision making.

Companies who implement an environment that makes performance management easy have the best chance of strategic success. Without automation the typical reporting process provides an opportunity for error. These accidental errors lead to stakeholders viewing outdated and often inaccurate data when making critical decisions for the future of their companies. Below are just a few reasons why manual reporting isn’t the best process for long term success.

  • Multiple data sources – during the monthly close most finance teams build financial reports from multiple data sources. Once this data is pulled it is reorganized in Excel. Not only is this process time consuming for your team it also requires manual manipulation of your data. Once data is removed from its source it becomes error prone.
  • Lack of analysis – with so much time being spent organizing the data there is little time left for strategic CFOs to provide proper analysis of that data. The role of the strategic CFO is drastically hindered at this stage. Without time to accurately review the monthly financials, the CFO enters the stakeholder meeting behind unable to provide a strong financial forecast for decision makers.
  • Missing snapshot view of organizational data – without real time data analysis, stakeholders only ever see outdated numbers. Reports that have been pulled, manually organized, and reviewed days prior to planning meetings don’t show a view of current numbers. Stakeholders are then basing future growth and planning on numbers that don’t reflect the current status of their bank accounts.

Sage Intacct’s budget and planning feature provides a solution that streamlines the monthly reporting process providing stakeholders accurate data in real time. With the budget and planning feature Intacct saves your finance team time and eliminates the need for manual manipulation of data. Your financial data stays in one place and can be reviewed at the click of a button. Having data in one place, automatically organized into stakeholder reports, allows more time for CFOs to build strategic plans. Furthermore, automated budget and planning allows for dynamic forecasting. With budget numbers at the click of a button CFOs can provide immediate visibility for optimal strategic planning. This feature allows your executive team to make changes to their annual plan on the fly in accordance with current financials.

Check out this feature in action with a Sage Intacct product tour. If you are interested in learning more about Sage Intacct, or are already a Sage Intacct customer and want to streamline your budgeting process, give us a call at 855.876.3773 or email us at [email protected].