Small and medium business owners have lots of reasons for why they start out on their own. Of all of the reasons to start a business, failing isn’t one. Yet 21% of businesses do that in the first year, and 51% have failed in the first 5 years.
As a small business owner, if there is something you could do that would lower your chance of failure, would you do it?
Budgeting and forecasting can minimize the risk to two of the biggest reasons for failure. With 29% of businesses failing because of a lack of cash, and a whooping 82% going under because of cash flow problems, accurate budgeting and forecasting can mean the difference between making it to ten years or not seeing your second year in business.
Excel can exacerbate the issues a small business faces when building a budget and planning sustainability and growth. Errors, complexity and conflicts with other users can turn Excel from a quick solution into a budgeting challenge. This means your company is never too small to start using dedicated budgeting and forecasting software.
How SMBs Benefit from Budgeting Software
Reduces Errors and Frees Up Resources
One of the bigger issues with Excel is how easily errors make their way into a budget. From mistyping a number into a cell to rows not matching and formatting issues, errors are common with Excel budgets. These problems can lead to a lack of trust with other members of the business or even business leaders.
What’s more, tracking down these issues takes time and expertise, something SMBs typically have in short supply. But without validating entries, a small business may be making critical decisions based on incorrect data.
With less manual entry or need for manipulation of formulas, and easier importing and sharing of data, dedicated budgeting and forecasting software for small businesses reduces the potential for errors while freeing your team for more important tasks.
Dedicated Budgeting and Forecasting Software is Easier to Use
Excel was not created as a budgeting tool and it simply cannot replace business forecasting software. To use it for this purpose, you need to either be willing to work with limited options and functionality or be an Excel power user. What-if scenarios, frequent changes or updates, and multiple versions and users increase the complexity of using the software for your business’s budget.
Software that is built specifically for budgeting and forecasting removes the complexity. These solutions are designed to make budgeting tasks easy for non-power users, while giving experts the tools they need for more advanced tasks.
Dedicated business forecasting software also allows for easy, accurate forecasting that can be adjusted with real time information as the need arises.
Delegation of Departmental Budgeting
A small business may not have a large staff, but that doesn’t mean that the owner or business leaders have the time or knowledge to create budgets for every department. However, with Excel, having multiple users manipulating the spreadsheet can lead to confusion and errors.
With budgeting software, your senior leadership is freed from having to do all of the budget work while your department leads are empowered to contribute to the company’s financial goals. A dedicated, cloud-based budgeting package is built with the assumption that there will be multiple contributors. Therefore, the security and versioning needed to keep entries from multiple contributors is inherent to the software.
SMBs have many challenges to overcome to have staying power, and cashflow issues can keep these businesses from their full potential. Using the right tool – dedicated budgeting software – will keep your business on the right track.
Choosing the right budgeting and financial forecasting software is critical to the growth and stability of your small to medium business. When modernizing their budgeting and forecasting systems, organizations of every size rely on Centage Corporation’s Planning Maestro to help them keep track of and manage their cash flow. Planning Maestro improves the efficiency and effectiveness of business budgeting and planning, financial forecasting, financial consolidation and reporting processes. For more information, take a tour of Planning Maestro, contact Centage, or call 800-366-5111 now.
Organizations of every size rely on Centage Corporation’s Maestro Suite which includes Budget Maestro™ to help them keep track of and manage their budgeting and forecasting.
flow. Budget Maestro improves the efficiency and effectiveness of business budgeting and
planning, financial forecasting, financial consolidation and reporting processes. For more information, take a tour of Budget Maestro, contact Centage, or call 800-366-5111 now.
