Formula-free accounting: FP&A on easy mode

At the lightning pace of business today, it’s common to move fast and break things. Too often, the things that get broken are Excel formulas that touch many aspects of your business’ budget and financial planning.

One formula error can mean a day wasted trying to find and fix the problem.

Centage’s Planning Maestro empowers finance professionals to build driver-based budgets effortlessly, eliminating the need for programming and formulas. It’s the only FP&A software solution that doesn’t require you to enter formulas every time you need to make a change or add an account.

We simplify your FP&A process, saving time and minimizing human error.

Formula-free budgeting?

Planning Maestro’s built-in accounting rules and business logic let you build an accurate, driver-based budget quickly and easily. No programming. No formulas. No copy/pasting.

It connects operational activities with business goals, tracking your performance so you can quickly adjust your budget as needed to stay in the green.

Unlike traditional software solutions that rely heavily on manual formula entry, Planning Maestro takes a formula-free approach. Our product is unique in the way it automatically maps new data sources to existing finance models. We save our users immeasurable time gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on critical financial data that can change daily.

By contrast, other software necessitates manual formula entry every time a new data source is added. The result? Tedious data entry and model management that consume valuable time and resources. Planning Maestro eliminates this cumbersome process, freeing up finance professionals to focus on more in-depth analysis.

Outgrowing Excel is a common pain point for FP&A professionals

Human error based on broken formulas and moving things around in Excel is a huge pain point we hear from our users and prospective customers over and over again.

We’ve heard some version of this more times than we can count: “Excel is great, but we’ve outgrown it.”

“Excel was fine when we had one location, but as our business has grown it’s introduced a lot of problems.”

For decades, Excel has been a trusted tool for finance professionals. But as businesses evolve and data complexities grow, the limitations of Excel become increasingly apparent.

A major drawback of Excel is the time wasted double- and triple-checking formulas. More than a few four-letter words get said when a broken formula creates more unplanned work for the finance department.

This is more than a minor annoyance. Such delays can have a ripple effect on critical decisions and business performance.

Once onboarded with Planning Maestro, users happily say goodbye to laborious formula creation. Our formula-free design is integrated during implementation, ensuring a smoother and more efficient journey down the road.

Budgeting on easy mode

Financial tools should be easy to use, and reports should be simple to present to stakeholders. Planning Maestro eliminates the need to enter formulas manually every time a change or addition is made. The result is a user-friendly, efficient, and error-free financial planning process.

Finance professionals can connect operational activities with business goals seamlessly, ensuring that budgets remain aligned with company objectives. Stakeholders company-wide have visibility into the process, and if changes or updates are requested, you can turn them around quickly without having to manually adjust multiple pages or separate spreadsheets, or any of the formulas inside of them.

The automation of routine tasks, coupled with built-in financial intelligence, ensures accuracy and frees up finance teams to focus on value-added work, rather than maintenance and manual troubleshooting.

Empowering CFOs and finance teams to focus on what’s most important

CFOs and their finance teams are some of the busiest people in any given organization. They manage multiple data streams and spin numbers into strategic insights that guide crucial decisions. With traditional spreadsheets, too much of their time is eaten up consolidating data, manually inputting formulas, and checking for errors.

Unlike other tools that work like a technological add-on to legacy spreadsheets, Planning Maestro is purpose-built to streamline the entire planning process. The formula-free platform begins delivering detailed intelligence about the current and future health of the business within days of implementation, providing immediate value to CFOs and their teams.

Move from spreadsheet chaos to clarity

Data-driven decisions are at the heart of what every FP&A professional does. 

By eliminating the complexities associated with formulas, links, and logic maintenance, Planning Maestro brings clarity and confidence to financial planning and analysis. This clarity saves time and reduces the risk of errors that can have far-reaching consequences. Planning Maestro offers a lifeline to finance teams struggling with spreadsheet chaos.

We simplify the budgeting process and enable finance professionals to focus on their core competence: providing valuable insights to drive informed decisions.

Planning Maestro’s formula-free design makes it easy to create sophisticated models, perform meaningful analytics, realize value quickly, and meet ever-growing demands. Never waste a minute fixing formulas again.

Sound useful? Set up a live demo today.