Six Challenges in the Upcoming Budget Season
September is the start of the budgeting season for many organizations. While budgeting is an essential and crucial task for most businesses, it can be a challenging process, both for the finance department and for the budget holders involved. We’ve listed six challenges that organizations often face when starting their budgeting process.
1. Distribution of budget templates through email
Many companies use tools that aren’t designed for a collaborative budget process. When controllers, CFOs, or other finance personnel distribute separate budget templates to users through email, they oftentimes come back with errors, broken formulas, and sometimes even creative modifications made by the managers filling out the forms.
2. Gathering separate budgets documents into one cohesive budget
After receiving the filled in budget forms, the administrator must gather all books. This is often a very time-consuming task. Also, there is a risk of errors due to the manual gathering of all figures.
3. Difficulties in controlling the organization with KPIs
When performing a manual and disconnected budgeting process, it can be difficult to work with KPIs. If the KPIs in the initial budget template need to be changed during the process, you must start all over again and send out new templates with updated indicators.
4. Manual entry of historical data
When actuals are used in the budget process, they often need to be exported from the data source, copied and pasted into the budget template manually.
5. Limited possibilities for changes
A manager cannot change a value after everyone has entered their budget, and the figures have been consolidated.
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Many companies have disconnected budgeting processes or systems, with no integration to their reporting, analytics, or dashboard features. Yet again, this creates another layer of manual input and time-consuming tasks, leading to suboptimal use of data.
What about the solution?
At insightsoftware, we (and our users) know that the budgeting process doesn’t have to be this time-consuming and complex. Are you or your customers looking for a solution that can solve all the above challenges?
insightsoftware provides a complete and integrated platform that allows users to perform the entire budget process in one place. Simply login and start your planning directly. Get immediate and automatic access to your actuals, KPIs, and other useful input for your budgets and forecasts. Any changes in KPIs, hierarchies, dimensions, or values are immediately reflected in your insightsoftware solution, which reduces manual work and the risk of errors. With built-in workflow, users can collaborate easily during the process. Learn more about our Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting solutions.