the drawbacks of excel
- Cells can easily be overwritten. A complex formula can vanish in a second. If there is only one person using the spreadsheet and they notice immediately, this can be fixed, but if not, the error may propagate through the file, resulting in incorrect results, and there are numerous horror stories of money lost due to simple spreadsheet errors (see appendix).
- Providing team access not only increases the chances of the error just noted, but not all users will have the same level of aptitude, and if you’re not using a cloud based spreadsheet, you may need to collate files from different contributors who have altered your formatting, entered data in different places, and generally created more work for the finance team.
- Version control is a challenge. If you’re sending and receiving budget spreadsheets, and your process involves multiple iterations, or regular updates, how can you be sure that the files you receive back are the right version.
- Security can be an issue. How do you disseminate your spreadsheet templates to your users? By email? By secure file sharing platform? Can you control who is seeing the file once you have sent it?
- Change tracking and workflow is next to impossible. There is no way in Excel to track who made changes and when, nor is there a function that offers the ability for a user to request approval for a change.
Depending on the size and structure of your organization, you may have experienced some or all of these problems, and because of this, there are a large number of different platforms that have appeared to answer them in a variety of ways.
A budget is a financial plan for a defined period
A financial forecast is an estimate of future financial outcomes
The two have some similarities, but different approaches are often used to create them.
So what steps do we typically consider when building a budget?
Related: Budgyt's 2020 Business Budgeting Software Reviews & Rankings
Come see why Budgyt leads the pack in overall value, ease of use and functionality. Other reviewed platforms include: Adaptive Insights, Vena Solutions, Jirav, Planful, Budgeta, Hyperion and many more!
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