Streamline your budgeting process with Microsoft Forecaster

Does this sound like your organization? ?It?s once again budget time?a time dreaded by both the management and finance teams.? Finance has spent hours putting together template budget spreadsheets which are now being emailed to department heads and management.? Each budgeter makes changes to their spreadsheet and emails it back to finance to merge the data.? Once the data is merged, management makes requests such as:

?

????????? We need to cut travel costs 15% across the board.

????????? We need to limit our capital expenditures by department.

????????? What would our profitability look like if we:

w? Introduced a new product?

w? Entered a new market?

w? Sold a line of business?

?

Now the onus is on finance to makes changes to the budgets manually, all the time hoping and praying they are not making material mistakes which negatively impact the business. ?What a nightmare!

?

If this is your reality, you may have looked at automated budgeting tools in the past and found the software licenses were too costly based on the number of people involved in your budgeting process.? Or maybe you are like most of our clients who like the flexibility of using spreadsheets to calculate budgets and don?t realize there is another option.? A real dream come true!

?

A few years ago, Microsoft started bundling a browser-based budgeting solution called Forecaster into some of their Dynamics ERP packages.? Being browser-based, this solution is easily deployed to managers involved in the budgeting process.? Their access to the budget is restricted by their level of responsibility, yet it provides management and finance with a consolidated view of the overall budget on a real-time basis.? Some of the key features of Microsoft Forecaster include:

?

????????? Activity-based budgeting with roll-ups into GL accounts (i.e., budgeting at the training course level while rolling the budget into a training expense line)

????????? HR budgeting allowing you to budget personnel expenses at employee or position levels

????????? Capital expenditure budgeting providing tools to review and approve planned capital expenditures while reflecting the impact of these expenditures on the department?s financial results in the form of depreciation

????????? Revenue modeling budgets allowing managers to project revenue and gross profit based on sales volumes

?

While Microsoft includes a named user license with many of their Dynamics ERP concurrent user licenses, the software investment required to provide access to all managers involved in the budgeting process could be cost prohibitive for some organizations.

?

The good news is times are changing!? In previous posts, we have discussed the value of the new Perpetual Licensing module for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013.? One of the values is that Microsoft is bundling unlimited Forecaster named users licenses with the Extended Pack of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013.? Any new customers purchasing this edition of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 or existing customers who owned a Microsoft Dynamics GP license before October 1, 2012, receive the Forecaster tool for free!? Of course, services would be required to implement the Forecaster tool, but the license fee cost savings may help make this tool a more viable solution for your organization.

?

Please contact us at 800.366.9091 if you would like to learn more.

Source: http://technologyblog.sva.com/post/Streamline-your-budgeting-process-with-Microsoft-Forecaster.aspx

the replacements how to hard boil eggs new nfl uniforms easter derbyshire the matrix oceans 11