Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning

Arguably the most important role of the CFO is to report current financial data to stakeholders for fiscal year business planning and budgeting. To achieve business goals in today’s competitive environment, you need financial budgeting and planning that’s effective, collaborative, and strategic. But unfortunately, most small- to mid-sized companies are trapped with a time-consuming, error-prone spreadsheet budgeting process because the alternatives are just too complicated.

Manual budgeting and planning with spreadsheets is risky

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 These accidental errors lead to stakeholders viewing outdated and often inaccurate data when making critical decisions for the future of their companies.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 business planning and budgeting.

Multiple data sources – during the monthly close most finance teams build financial reports from multiple data sources. Once this historical 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Missing snapshot view of organizational data – without real time data analysis, stakeholders only ever see outdated numbers.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 business planning and budgeting 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.

Discover simple, but powerful cloud budgeting and planning

Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning is an easy-to-use, yet powerful cloud solution for small- to mid-sized businesses. Deploy it in just a few days and say goodbye to the spreadsheet headaches.

  • Quick deployment. Intuitive design and intelligent tools make it easy to quickly deploy and use across your entire business.
  • Control the process. Everyone works on the latest version, knows who updated the budget and when, creates and saves multiple scenarios within a single budget, and gets a better handle on your process.
  • Collaborate across the organization. Bring all stakeholders and business units into the budgeting process with a single, secure solution that builds trust and accountability to decision-making. Easily invite business unit department heads to build or edit their budgets, present plan or budget options to management, set key performance indicators and strategic objectives, create multiple what-if scenarios, and dig into the details.
  • Secure your data. Move sensitive data out of spreadsheets and emails and into a single, secure solution. Limit access to budgets and payroll data with user-level security.
  • Sync your financial data. Sage Intacct Planning seamlessly integrates with Sage Intacct Core Financials accounting software to ensure every plan and forecast uses current and accurate information. 
  • Stay agile. With driver-based models, what-if scenarios, and rolling forecasts, you’ll be able to make faster course corrections and confidently choose the right path, no matter how complex your business may be.

Liberate your business planning from spreadsheets

  • Tackle budgeting and planning process challenges. Easily model projected cash flow, sales, or revenue recognition. Or calculate headcount expenses — without spreadsheet errors.
  • Streamline everyday tasks. With Excel-like formulas, best practices, and pre-built functionality, budget owners can take advantage of an easy-to-use interface and intuitive navigation.
  • What-if, what-if, and what-if again. Create multiple scenarios by changing drivers and assessing the potential impact to your business.
  • Execute the job that matters. Forget about building a cumbersome spreadsheet infrastructure in the budget process. Instead, focus on a business plan that exploitsopportunity and sidesteps risks.

Watch this video to learn how to eliminate spreadsheet headaches with Sage Intacct’s easy, powerful cloud-based solution for business planning:

Ready to learn more? Contact us to see how Sage Intacct can help you you can transform your business.