Budget Forecasting
Budget Forecasting Software
Creating budgets is a critical part of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and financial management. Budget forecasting includes assessing the expected revenues that a business wants to achieve in the future. Budgeting creates a target baseline for comparing actual results. At the end of a period, it’s possible to compare the budget to actual financial data, to determine how well a business performed during that time frame.
You can forecast for an entire fiscal year, or make use of real-time data to project business performance.
Whether you create different forecasts throughout the year or rely on a master budget, software solutions make it easier to accurately forecast revenue and improve performance management.
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Budgeting Software Benefits
Business budgeting software keeps large volumes of business data organized. Opting for a cloud-based solution offers significant cost savings compared to software deployed on local machines in that there’s no need to maintain an extensive on-premise IT network. It also ensures the data is current and real-time, preventing employees from working with multiple versions of the same file. It’s possible to integrate the software with your existing ERP so data transfer seamlessly to and from your accounting software like SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, or Quickbooks Online.
With the right self-service budgeting solution, you’ll be able to access a variety of reports and even run a variety of “what if” scenarios to plan for any number of situations for better business planning.
Using revVana Plan, your company can quickly and easily generate revenue budgets directly from your Salesforce opportunities. You’ll save time with your budgeting process and make it easier to get accurate financial forecasts.
Forecasting Software Benefits
Forecasting software allows for better decision making within your organization. It makes financial consolidation easy, so you can combine multiple data sources. With current and historical data, it’s possible to get a good idea of what you can expect in the coming period. Depending on what the revenue forecasting data shows, you may find that you need to:
- Reduce expenses
- Increase the number of new hires
- Consider employee raises
- Consider layoffs
- Make changes in your supply chain
Data to support business decisions increases the likelihood you’re taking things in the right direction. Making changes blindly wreaks havoc on your company – affecting revenue, employee satisfaction, and more. Rolling forecasts and adaptive planning keeps the business running smoothly.
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Problems With Spreadsheet Budgets & Forecasting
Small businesses may start with a spreadsheet because it’s cost-effective and seems like it will be easy to manage. In the long term, as your business grows, spreadsheets are impractical for a number of reasons.
- Manual Process: Someone has to export data from the customer relationship management (CRM) platform (like Salesforce) to a spreadsheet – and make adjustments to the data based on when the last report was run. Time-consuming forecasting processes like these keep the business from running as efficiently as possible. SaaS-based solutions automate the entire forecasting process to save time, effort, and money.
- Constant Need to Modify Data: The finance team will have to modify the spreadsheet data to ensure it is an accurate reflection of the current operational data. Not all deals will close, and not all those that close will work out as expected.
- Outdated Information: Almost as soon as you export the data for the report, it’s out of date. As the sales team makes changes and closes more deals, it can be outdated in a matter of minutes.
- Difficult to Collaborate: It’s hard to have more than one person working on the file together because most spreadsheet tools are designed for single users.
- Multiple Versions of Data: Because of the single user set up, it’s possible people will be working with multiple sets of data. If three people create the spreadsheet and make adjustments to it – then there are three copies that someone else could be working from – all with different numbers.
- Error-Ridden: Mistakes are going to happen. In 2012, JP Morgan saw a $6 billion trading loss because of an Excel copy and paste error. Data entry mistakes can also drastically affect data accuracy.
- Difficult to Share: After you’ve finished the report, the file size could be so large it’s difficult to share via email with stakeholders and company executives.
Let revVana Do It All For You
If you’re ready to leave spreadsheets in the dust and take control of your budget and revenue forecasting, revVana can take care of it all for you. We make it easy to generate budgets and revenue forecasts by integrating with tools you already use. And, with our Insights product, you’ll get answers as to why you missed your revenue forecast or why it deviated from your expectations.
Best of all? The time you save with your new planning process can be used to focus on more profitable tasks.
What are you waiting for? Request a demo to see how revVana can streamline your financial reporting.
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