Integration with Accounting and ERP Systems

Will budgeting software work with my accounting or ERP system? Will integrating the two be a nightmare?

CFOs may put off upgrading to dedicated budgeting software due to fear that the software may not work, or work well, with the company’s accounting (General Ledger) or ERP system. This fear is understandable, given the importance of flawless integration between the two. However, it is an unnecessary fear in the case of using Budget Maestro or Planning Maestro.

Your accounting or ERP system is the heart of your financial management capabilities, not to mention a goldmine of historical data. But those systems, even ERP systems with budgeting modules, usually can’t present your business from any perspective except account structure, and they usually fall short when it comes to looking forward (forecasting, creating “what-if” scenarios) and adjusting (reforecasting).

Rest assured

Budget Maestro / Planning Maestro works with your accounting or ERP system to enhance your budgeting capabilities and improve budget accuracy. It is designed to work with any G/L application. It models your financial and organizational views, and supports multiple G/L structures so you can generate financial statements independently or at a consolidated level.

Financial View: Budget Maestro / Planning Maestro supports your exact G/L structure “as is”. There is no need to modify or truncate your account structure to fit the tool. Your account names can have up to 128 alphanumeric characters and up to 20 segments. This straightforward feature offers many benefits:

• Speeds acceptance of and proficiency with the new system among your finance team and operations managers, since they are working with familiar accounts
• Lets you line up your actuals vs. budget numbers for variance analysis
• Allows you to generate Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements in accordance with your reporting requirements.

Organizational View: Budget Maestro / Planning Maestro adapts to your organizational hierarchy, rather than forcing you into a pre-ordained structure that somewhat resembles your organization. You get to budget and report based on the way your business actually operates. Imagine being able to easily:

• Generate profitability reports by variables including individual customers, customer types, product lines, regions, locations, managers, divisions, etc. Budget Maestro supports your key metrics, whatever they are.
• Make changes to your organizational structure by “drag and drop” so you can see the impact of these changes on your financial statements.

Variance Reporting: Since Finance works with familiar accounts, importing your “trial balance” into Budget Maestro / Planning Maestro to generate variance reports by account numbers is fast and painless.