Organizations all over the world are putting in more effort than ever before to achieve long-term, profitable growth.
Fiscal planning, which entails accumulating, monitoring, and revising a company’s revenue, spending, debt, and capital predictions for inclusion in the annual budget, is a part of that growth strategy. It’s a large operational activity that occurs once a year but usually lasts longer than anticipated.
Any large company’s CFO will tell you that organizing personnel, aligning numbers, and managing clearances have cost them a few nights (or weeks) of sleep.
They are the ones who are ultimately accountable for creating goals, benchmarking business performance, making modifications, and enforcing the budget company-wide, despite the fact that there are many diverse participants in the budgeting process.
It goes without saying that without the proper procedures and processes in place, this may be a difficult moment. Budgeting is critical for guiding day-to-day income and spending decisions, allocating resources, and achieving long-term financial goals.
While budgeting is intended to keep your firm on track and identify areas for development, the reality is that it is not an easy undertaking. Instead of focusing on profitability and productivity, the budgeting process is frequently time-consuming and labor-intensive, with little return on investment.
Embrace Continuous Planning To Adapt To Continuous Change
To get to the bottom of these issues, we did our research and identified the top eight budgeting problems most companies face in fiscal planning.
1. Time
Coordinating, compiling, and consolidating several budget contributors’ versions of the same static spreadsheet takes a long time.
Many CFOs have reported spending upwards of 250 hours on the budgeting process alone, from time spent certifying statistics to lost hours spent tracking down individual budget contributors.
2. Communication
Before, during, and after the budgeting process, there are a lot of moving pieces in a corporation. Budget creators, contributors, and approvers must all provide input at each level, but many businesses lack a platform to facilitate collaboration.
They end up budgeting in silos, with no coordination with other departments or a clear end objective in mind.
3. Complexity
Dealing with deadlines and unanticipated changes is another issue that many budget owners experience during the multi-layered budgeting process.
Any change or adjustment to a budget results in a convoluted back and forth tango of redoing calculations, replying to queries, and re-sending spreadsheets, which should be an easy repair.
4. Flexibility
When developing a budgeting document for all managers in a company, it’s critical that the form or spreadsheet they’ll be filling out is uniform and simple to comprehend.
The problem is that uncontrolled spreadsheets lack the structure and labeling that you require for all of your budget contributors. As a result, many people become engrossed in the details and find it difficult to provide correct responses.
5. Accuracy
When working with 30 to 100 Excel files (each with many versions), most companies end up relying on manual data entry and processes to piece it all together.
With no easy way to drill down to the numbers, manual processes are infamous for resulting in human error, inconsistencies, and lack of control.
6. Optimization
Monitoring and changing your budget throughout the year is an effective business technique that leads to increased profits and productivity.
Unfortunately, due to technological limitations and the physical labor necessary to blend actuals and budgets, many businesses do not employ it.
7. Cost
The total cost of many annual budgeting programs can add up when you consider all of the time and resources that the six budgeting issues listed above demand.
Aside from the personnel expenses of inefficient processes, many businesses are missing out on the benefits of proper budgeting and fiscal planning.
8. Value
Perceived value is one of the most important considerations in the budgeting process. Is it really worth the money you’re spending on planning and budgeting? Operating managers should be able to make educated decisions that are in line with the company’s overall financial goals thanks to fiscal planning.
We’ve heard similar budgetary issues from our reporting and analytics customers time and time again at insight software. As a result, with our new budgeting solutions, we want to revolutionize the way you budget.
Collaborative, Integrated, Finance-Owned Budgeting and Planning Applications
Our budgeting software is a simple, adaptable, and easy-to-use fiscal planning solution that controls and streamlines the budgeting process, connecting to over 140+ ERPs.
With native Excel integration and an intuitive web portal, users can leverage their existing Excel skills and turn the budgeting process into an easily managed, systematic process that gets finished in half the time.
- Reduce the time it takes to see results by simplifying the budgeting process – You may build any type of budget, forecasting, or planning form using an intuitive, spreadsheet-like interface for a robust and integrated planning process, without having to work with various spreadsheets kept on individual PCs. Work with a single source of truth and get real-time data on any device, at any time. Create a repeatable, consistent planning procedure that updates your ERP system automatically. Without relying on IT, use embedded analytics to track performance and spot trends.
- Save time by taking control of budget entries and approvals with robust processes and automated, coordinated email notifications to your team. To simplify communication, leave comments directly on planning forms. Adherence to governance and compliance requirements is ensured by sophisticated data access controls and a detailed audit trail of modifications. Export figures to Excel for offline work and re-import with a single click.
- Throughout the year, continuously monitor and reforecast – Throughout the year, make adjustments to your plans and forecasts. Rolling predictions can help your company be more agile and accurate. Users log in, add their data, and the system changes forecast estimates instantly with a single click. Existing models can be changed on the fly to meet changing business needs. With built-in version control, you can keep track of and compare prior figures.
Get a Demo of our Budgeting Solutions
affordable and flexible budgeting tool that works the way people expect a fiscal planning tool to work. Businesses can cut the time required for budget exercises in half, generate more accurate numbers, improve financial performance and productivity, and make faster decisions.
If you are interested in getting control over your budgeting processes, click the link below to schedule a demo.
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