Budgeting and Planning... the phrase alone conjures up feelings of inefficiency, frustration, and a lot of tedious number-crunching. But in most cases, the aggravation can be directly attributed to the use of spreadsheets and manual adjustments for a process that requires something more powerful and automated. The good news is that there's a better way... it's called Sage Active Planner.
If you're relying on the old spreadsheet approach to budgeting, you probably have multiple budget scenarios scattered across various hard drives, laptops, and databases. Each spreadsheet is an island without any link from one budget to another. No security, no controls, and no way to effectively update one spreadsheet without throwing a wrench in the delicate web of disconnected confusion. Good luck if you're responsible for the "role up."
Perhaps worst of all, the beginning of a new budget cycle starts the process again from scratch with a need to import or manually type fresh data into each sheet to reflect the new numbers and time span. There's little, if any, efficiency gained from one year to the next.
Active Planner is designed specifically to enhance the budgeting and planning process by making it easy to collect data, consolidate in a central database, manage multiple budget scenarios, perform side-by-side analysis, and create rolling forecasts.
'Plan sheets' (similar to spreadsheets) are arranged in a process plan flow which automates the passing of data and information from one sheet to another. That means numbers populated in one sheet (like salaries) are automatically summarized and 'passed up' to a higher level sheet. Decisions made at the top are easily dispersed among lower level plan sheets for 'top-down' budgeting.
Active Planner draws data from your Sage 500 ERP (formerly Sage MAS 500) general ledger which totally eliminates the need to manually key data into plan sheets or perform complex import/export routines.
With a powerful tool like Sage Active Planner, you'll turn a traditionally frustrating process into an opportunity to create insight and a meaningful roadmap to your strategic goals. You'll gain better insight from last year's outcome, clearly evaluate this year's results, and modify next year's plan to improve business performance.
Ready to Ditch the Spreadsheets? Contact Us and discover a better way of budgeting and planning with Sage Active Planner 2011.