Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it—or maybe you don’t know what to feel. Whatever the case, like death and taxes, there’s no avoiding it. Corporate budgeting is a key finance function—and a successful budget helps drive a successful business. But whether your company budgets annually or on a more frequent cycle, there’s no reason to dread budgeting season—not if you have the right process in place. The best corporate budgeting process for your company will depend on your organizational culture—and when it’s aligned closely to strategy it will elevate your budget from “something that needs to get done” to a driving force for your business. In fact, when approached in the right way your budget has the power to bring your organization together, connect dots and eliminate silos—putting finance at the heart of everything your company hopes to achieve. Continue reading to explore different approaches to budgeting and how to make your corporate budgeting process a success. What Is Corporate Budgeting? Your corporate budget is key to enabling your business operations and executing growth. When built around your organizational strategy, it’s the tactical side of your business plan, ensuring resources are allocated in a way that sets your business up to operate effectively, meet its growth goals and keep up with ongoing market demands. To accomplish that, a corporate budget is made up of a series of lower-level budgets—including revenue forecasts, expenditures, working capital, cash-flow forecasts, financing needs, etc.—that all roll up into a single master budget. By aligning the budget to your strategic business plan, you ensure it consistently meets the needs of your organizational objectives. And that moves it away from just the administrative task it’s often been considered to become an integral part of your strategic planning process—and part of the operating plan that will drive your business forward to future success. How Do You Align Your Budget? Ideally, the budgeting process for a company begins with a clear view into strategy and objectives. Without that visibility, it’s tough to ensure your corporate budget meets all of your organization’s needs, with the right resources to facilitate programs, people and initiatives across departments. That’s where budget alignment comes in. Aligning your budget with your business strategy and KPI and goal setting is critical to success—and the more your finance team is involved in your business strategy, the more organic that alignment becomes. But even when finance doesn’t have a seat at the table, the best corporate budgeting process will keep them in the loop on organizational strategy and goals. To accomplish budget alignment follow these three steps:   Step Tactics 1. Keep your eye on the long term Expand the budgeting process past a year using strategic budgeting Break down organizational silos with tools such as scenario modeling or zero-based budgeting, funneling your strategic plan directly into your budget Implement technology solutions that make it easier to visualize your budget over the long-term horizon 2. Get your leaders involved early Whenever possible, get finance involved in building ongoing company strategy and organizational goal setting Use data-driven storytelling to frame your budget within a larger narrative of future company success Make the budget part of senior management’s regular routine—not just a single information dump 3. Measure your success and repeat it Choose the right metrics to track and measure to ensure you’re tying your budget to ongoing performance.  Make tweaks along the way based on your results to course correct for market changes and adjustments to your business goals.  Once you’re achieving budget alignment to strategic goals, consider linking budget performance to individual and team performance as well. Corporate Budgeting Best Practices Aligning your corporate budgeting process with your overall organizational strategy is the first best practice of budgeting. But that’s just the start. There are other ways to also ensure you have a successful budget that empowers business growth and helps your departments meet their individual goals. Consider four best practices for making your corporate budgeting process successful. 1. Connect your data Disparate and disconnected data is one of the top challenges faced by finance teams today—and that can become a very real pain during budgeting season. Data is critical to the budgeting process, allowing you to understand what drives performance, what’s contributing to organizational growth and where you’ve found success before, in order to fuel the current budget, predict its future success and make tweaks based on market and industry conditions along the way. So connecting your data and being able to access clean, current data will in itself build a better corporate budgeting process. 2. Consider the past Traditional budgeting uses your past performance and historical data as a starting point to inform your current budgeting process. Historical data is also critical for predictive budgeting and for understanding what drives your business growth. No matter what budgeting approach you take, though, don’t lose sight of that historic view. Comparing actual performance to past performance will allow you to better predict future performance, just like comparing your rolling plan to your longer-term strategic plan will let you see where you need to make adjustments in order to get to your goals. Model scenarios using that past performance data to understand the potential effects of your budgeting decisions. 3. Understand your critical drivers and KPIs Understanding which factors most contribute to your company’s growth will let you know exactly where to allocate your resources for a better chance of success. It’ll also make it easier to model scenarios to understand how they might affect future performance, so that you know exactly where to focus your budget for the best returns. And remember that non-financial metrics can be just as critical to your organizational performance—and your budget—as financial drivers. Non-financial drivers and KPIs play an important role in helping to keep your budgeting process on track, so always ensure they’re in your line of sight too. 4. Stay agile Finally, having some agility built into your budgeting process will empower you to make tweaks whenever the market or your business requires—ensuring you have the resources available no matter what. Budgets are traditionally inflexible, but finance teams today understand that changes are sometimes necessary—whether that means introducing rolling forecasting or a flexible budgeting process, or using scenario modeling to keep you on top of what’s ahead and letting you course correct your budget when you need to. How Do You Prepare a Master Budget? Your master budget is a sum of all of the parts that make up your business, including the budgets of every individual department and every revenue and spending consideration you’ll need to make. The department, program and line(s)-of-business budgets feed into your master budget to inform how resources are allocated company wide. So how do you do that successfully, so that every element of your business is represented in your consolidated budget? Consider some do’s and don’ts for preparing a successful master budget: Objective 1 Don’t budget in a silo Collaboration is key. For your master budget to be successful it’s going to need input from across the organization—from your department managers to your executive team. You’ll rely on them to provide the information you need to determine the people, programs and initiatives integral to achieving your organization’s goals—and to help you decide where resources should be allocated so that every piece of your business is equipped to contribute to its success. Objective 2 Do have a budget calendar Gathering all of those contributions into a master budget requires a detailed budget calendar that will keep it on schedule. After all, getting to the finish line on time means keeping your process—and all of the people involved in it—on track. Missing something or someone could mean a project, program or team doesn’t end up with the resources they need to make your final goals a reality. Objective 3 Don’t lose sight of the data You’ll need a process by which data is handed off between stakeholders, models to be used by each different part of your organization to ensure everyone contributes their unique information and a method to pull everything together. Objective 4 Do measure and report Use your master budget to measure your company performance and ensure you’re allocating resources in the right way. By comparing budget or forecast data with past performance you’ll better understand whether you’re on track with company goals. Preparing a successful master budget, then, is all about people, processes and tools—as well as the data that underlies all of them. By collaborating across teams, having the right processes in place and using technology to connect data from different formats and across sources, you can create a single version of the truth and ensure a connected, comprehensive budget that takes into consideration every part of the business. Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Budgeting Will you start your budget from the top-down or take a bottom-up approach? Most types of budgeting fall into one category or the other. Top-down budgeting is a form of budget allocation, beginning with a set amount and allocating resources accordingly across departments. Senior management creates a budget for the business as a whole, allocating resources to each team according to business-wide objectives and targets for the year ahead. They use past performance and existing market conditions to feed the budgeting process—often with some funds set aside to allow for any final shuffles. Bottom-up budgeting starts at the department level. Individual teams prepare budgets based on their needs for the budgeting cycle ahead, with company-wide objectives shared to protect against siloed requests. Departments present their budgets for approval and the budget committee approves or disapproves line items from there. While neither model is inherently better or worse than the other, they each take a different route to budgeting success—and each have their own pros and cons.   Pros Cons Top-Down Budgeting It’s often built around targets based on your company’s long-term plan Executives get involved early—which means their buy-in is built in It can be more difficult to get departmental buy-in It can create an “if you don’t spend it, you lose it” environment Bottom-Up Budgeting It can be more efficient—and accurate— in terms of how resources are allotted It’s more aligned with departmental needs It can lead to over-budgeting It can take longer to complete (unless aided by the right technology) The best approach for you will depend on your organizational culture and whether teams prefer to build their own ideas from the ground up or let leadership guide them. It may even vary from year to year or from budget to budget, depending on the specific goals your business wants to achieve. Finally, some finance teams choose to approach their budgeting from both directions—with a longer-term plan taking a top-down approach, for instance, and short-term budgeting using a bottom-up model. Zero-Based vs. Traditional Budgeting Zero-based budgeting is one example of a bottom-up budgeting process. As a way of ensuring your budget remains aligned with current financial performance and priorities, zero-based budgeting (ZBB) makes “zero” its starting line. While traditional budgets rely on your current year’s budget as a jumping-off point for the new year’s budgeting cycle, ZBB takes a different approach, wiping the slate clean every time. With traditional (or incremental) budgeting, certain expenses are fixed, while deeper analysis is reserved for new expenses. This can help to quickly seed your plan, but also means you potentially miss out on changes to your business operations, as well as possible cost savings and investments that might help your organization evolve. ZBB, on the other hand, can promote transparency and a holistic, organization-wide view, while giving departments an incentive to look for potential cuts. Every expense is connected to ongoing financial performance and company goals, and new and ongoing expenses are examined with the same level of scrutiny to see where funding should go. By starting at nothing every time, ZBB makes sure every expense is connected to ongoing financial performance and aligned with company goals—an approach that can have both advantages and drawbacks. Pros of Zero-Based Budgeting It can lead to significant cost savings, giving you new dollars to invest in other places while improving operational efficiency as a whole. It gives your team true visibility into your organization—allowing you to establish stronger leadership and insights. It can make for better collaboration organization wide, as you determine the programs that should be prioritized and how they’ll work together to contribute to company goals. It can make your company more agile, keeping teams on top of every expenditure and goal—and giving them the insight to pivot quickly when needed. Cons of Zero-Based Budgeting It can be more complex and costly—requiring more time from your team to complete. It can take specialized training or operational acumen to do it right. It requires complete organizational buy-in—otherwise it may put other departments on the defensive as they try to justify their programs and initiatives. Without the right metrics to analyze, it can potentially impact departments that offer less tangible results.   With the right organizational culture in place, zero-based budgeting can help you move your planning process and decision making forward. But of course, zero-based budgeting isn’t the only option—there are several ways to approach your budgeting, depending on your goals. Driver-Based and Predictive Budgeting What drivers are influencing your business? And how will your budget empower your long-term goals? Driver-based budgeting and predictive budgeting take those questions and center your corporate budgeting process around them. In doing so, they can help focus your budgeting on the things that matter most—and allow you to remain sensitive to what’s contributing to your organizational success. Driver-Based Budgeting Every business has its own unique drivers—both internal and external. Traffic, demand, interest rates and even—in some cases—the weather outside, can all help drive the success of your business in any given year. Driver-based budgeting (DBB) takes those critical drivers into consideration, tying the drivers most likely to influence performance directly into the budgeting process. By doing so, DBB gives you long-term visibility into how those drivers affect your company’s strategy and goals, using a rules-based approach to focus your budget around strategic objectives and tell a story as to what contributes to your organization’s performance and how. To accomplish that, DBB looks beyond your line items to the data underneath—identifying what’s driving your performance, good or bad, how those drivers correlate with the resources you’re allotting and who’s accountable for them. That goes beyond financial, taking into consideration non-financial drivers too and incorporating them into your budgeting process. It also includes both internal drivers and those external to your organization. Some examples of internal and external drivers include: Internal Drivers External Drivers Traffic Market size Demand Market changes Market share Competitor market share Number of customers Buying trends Sales volumes Interest rates Sale price Regulatory requirements Unlike traditional budgeting, which starts with a line item and works its way backward, DBB begins with an operational driver and ends with its financial outcomes—allowing you to look at the business activities and resource requirements needed to accomplish those goals and directly allocate towards them. In doing so, it links your budget items directly to the people and resources connected to them. A driver-based process can help you align and focus your budget and provide you with insights that let you make decisions more efficiently and keep your executive team informed. But it can also get complicated the more complex your organization is and the more key drivers you have in play—and may mean a shift of focus for your individual teams. Introducing it successfully takes executive support and a clear line of sight to the data you require. But with those in place, DBB can help you open up visibility into company performance—and help you better understand what it’ll take to keep building towards success. Learn about how to apply driver-based budgeting to your business. Predictive Budgeting Often used as a system of oversight, predictive budgeting relies on predictive analytics to aid the corporate budgeting process and help ensure long-term alignment with strategic goals. It often lives outside of your traditional budgeting process, and is used as a way to check yourself and ensure your budget is on track with organizational objectives. Predictive budgeting lets you create intelligent drivers or ranges of possibilities by drawing on broad sets of data, leveraging statistical algorithms and applying machine learning to look into the future—determining potential short- and long-term outcomes through the application of historical data. In doing so, it allows you to better understand your budget’s potential flaws: where it may not align with your organizational goals, when department managers might have added extra padding into their resource requests or opportunities you might have missed to support your business’s key drivers. Predictive budgeting can also help to: Make cash-flow projections and better understand the cash flow needed in the budgeting cycle ahead. Identify your critical drivers and better understand the business activities you can invest in for your optimum financial outcome. Recognize areas of the business that need attention and identify any holes in your budget that might set your plans up for failure. But as the next frontier in planning, successful predictive budgeting relies on a specialized team member or extra training for your existing team to get right. The right data is also critical—including, ideally, at least a few years of historical data—as well as the technology that will allow you to access that data across disparate data sources and apply modeling and analytics to see what the future holds. With all of that in place, though, predictive budgeting can help you build a better budget and layer data-driven storytelling into your budgeting process. It can also reduce inefficiencies and ensure long-term budget alignment with your strategic goals. Rolling Forecast vs. Static Budgeting Just as important as staying ahead of your budgeting needs is ensuring your budget is keeping up with ongoing performance. Rolling forecasting can help with that. By adding and dropping a week, month or quarter every cycle, a rolling forecast always has a view into the future, letting you look 13 weeks, 12 months, four quarters or 18 months into the future at all times—whatever makes the most sense based on the business process or planning outcome to which it's being applied. In that way it differs from a traditional static budget, which is tied to a fixed timeframe. By working on a moving timeframe, rolling forecasts help maintain visibility into recent performance while better projecting future needs, allowing you to remain agile to new trends and requirements while continuing to move the planning horizon forward. This is specifically useful if you’re at a high-growth company, have to make medium- to long-term commitments like hiring decisions or inventory purchases, or need to keep up with an ever-changing industry. But rolling forecasts can also work alongside more static budgets, incorporating elements of both so that rolling forecasts become an extension of your annual budgeting process. They may be introduced as a process of review at regular intervals to keep up with current performance and changing market conditions—or may be applied only to certain areas, like revenue or cash planning, with a more traditional approach used elsewhere. For your rolling forecasts to be successful, consider these six best practices: Always keep your business-wide objectives front of mind. Align your rolling forecast with your company strategy and iterate your forecast as those goals and plans change. Choose a timeframe that works for your business. Match your timeframe to the rate at which your company is evaluating progress and the pace of the industry around you. Make a choice on how granular you want to get. Focus deeper analysis on the drivers that promise to most impact your strategic goals and ongoing performance. Choose the right technology to facilitate your forecasts. Choose a tool that ensures your forecast has the inputs it needs to be useful across your business strategy and KPIs. Incorporate the best data available. Leverage areas where your data is clean, then use forecasting to build transparency and accountability, for even cleaner data over time. Measure along the way to track execution. Use dashboards and visualizations to track execution so that you can see how your forecast keeps up with ongoing performance. Just remember: however you approach your budgeting process, keeping it aligned to your organization’s culture, strategy and future objectives will be key to its success—and your business’s continual achievement. Now go out and build your organization a better budget!  

All businesses engage in budgeting and forecasting activities to some degree—and if you’re an executive, finance leader or operations professional, improving your budgeting and forecasting processes should always be a top priority. Budgeting and forecasting help you formulate strategies, plan for the future and align your goals across the entire organization. Both processes are crucial components of every company’s growth journey, especially during periods of change. But even though budgeting and forecasting are similar, there are some key differences that set them apart. It’s important for finance leaders to understand these differences so you can prioritize what’s important and allocate your resources accordingly. In some cases, you might even want to assign budgeting and forecasting to separate teams so you can keep a clearer focus on each specific process. So what is budgeting, what is forecasting and why are they both so critical? To appreciate what they are and how they contribute to organizational success, let’s unpack budgeting and forecasting and drill into challenges, best practices and major differences between them. Read on to discover: What Is Budgeting? Budgeting is the process of planning your company’s revenue and expense figures for a specific period of time. It involves identifying available cash flows and allocating financial resources for your company’s required spending.  Here are the primary characteristics of a typical corporate budgeting process: For an annual budget, the process usually takes between three to six months to complete. When finished, the final budget includes detailed financial documents such as the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement. The budget provides measurement metrics that management can use to assess financial progress. Employee compensation plans are finalized during the budgeting process. The budget is not normally disclosed to external parties. The Benefits of Budgeting Budgeting allows you to chart your organization’s path and assist your management team with strategic business planning. The process results in a clearly defined plan that’s reflective of your company’s financial and operational goals. Typically prepared annually, budgets provide important guidance regarding what your business can expect to accomplish that year.  Budgeting also has plenty of other benefits, including: The budgeting process forces management to examine your company’s financial activities and assess the viability of each individual expense. Budgeting requires detailed documentation of all the sources and uses of cash, ultimately enabling management to anticipate cash flows with accuracy. Since budgeting often starts from the bottom up, many cross-functional stakeholders are involved in the process. This instills a sense of ownership among employees and motivates them to meet their budgeted goals. You can periodically compare the budget with up-to-date financial results, providing real-time insight into how your company is performing. (A variance analysis of the actual versus budgeted income statement is a good example of this.) Since individual responsibilities and internal hierarchies are often accentuated during budget season, this clarity of roles can promote rapid responses to challenging situations. Budgeting makes it clear exactly where and when financial resources are needed so you can allocate them accordingly and keep the business on track. However, because budgets are prepared so far in advance and based on a fixed set of assumptions, they can quickly become outdated as soon as those assumptions change. This is where forecasting takes over—when budgeting can’t meet certain time-sensitive needs. What is Forecasting? Forecasting is the process of analyzing historical trends in order to predict future business results based on your company’s most up-to-date actuals. Done over a compressed time frame, forecasting typically focuses on major expenses and revenue line items.  Here are the main characteristics of the forecasting process: Forecasting is performed regularly after financial statements are released, usually right after a month-end or quarter-end close cycle. Forecasts generally show summarized projections of revenue and expenses. Key performance metrics are updated based on forecasted numbers, ultimately providing insight into how your business is performing. Publicly traded companies must disclose their high-level forecasts to investors. The Benefits of Forecasting When done efficiently and with reliable data, forecasting gives you the insight you need to reallocate resources proactively and help your managers make data-driven business decisions. There are plenty of other benefits to forecasting, including:  Forecasting reveals business trends that help you determine if you need to adjust course. It’s easier to manage cash flows and capital requirements if you have a well-informed prediction of where future expenses are likely to fluctuate.  You can capitalize on financing and investment opportunities if you present reliable forecasts to your investors. You can draw on your forecasted numbers as the logical starting point for your next budget. Forecasting allows managers to focus their attention where it’s needed, especially in the short term. Budgeting and forecasting are complementary, but they’re definitely not the same. Before we get into best practices and common challenges with budgeting and forecasting, let’s break down the key differences between them. Budgeting vs. Forecasting: Key Differences We already know that budgeting is figuring out how much money your company will need to spend in order to achieve its desired business results. Forecasting, on the other hand, is about proactively analyzing the budget and using both historical and real-time data to predict what those business results will look like. Check out the table below to better understand the key differences between budgeting and forecasting:   Budgeting Forecasting Projected Timeframe: 1–5 years Periodic Forecasts: The rest of the current fiscal year. Rolling Forecasts: Usually the next 5 quarters or more. Average Preparation Time: 3–6 months 1–4 weeks External Disclosure: Not Disclosed Disclosed (at least for public companies) Reliability: Less reliable later in the year when the numbers are outdated. More reliable because they’re based on up-to-date actuals. Best Used For: Formulating high-level strategies and business goals. Targeted decision-making in specific areas. Think of it this way: Your budget is your road map, highlighting key financial checkpoints for every phase of the business journey. But once that journey has started, it’s common for circumstances to change, ultimately outdating the original assumptions that were made when the budget was created. For proactive finance teams, best practices involve regularly reviewing your budget against the changing business environment, forecasting accordingly to determine where the numbers are headed, then adapting your plans as required. How To Build a Budget Budgets should always be as thorough and as detailed as possible. Generally speaking, your budget should include the following information: All planned revenue—including the types of revenue, value and when to expect it. Fixed costs for your business (employee salaries, rent, utilities, insurance, property taxes, etc.) Variable costs (supplies, travel and vehicle expenses, professional services, maintenance, etc.) As you build your company’s budget, it’s crucial that you follow these steps:  Review and understand all the required inputs for your budget (see above.) Analyze previous budgets and other historical data. This will help you determine your expense and revenue expectations for each fiscal month and year.  Consult with cross-functional stakeholders such as sales leaders, budget owners and C-suite executives so you can formulate the plan as a team. Determine if any capital expenditures (equipment, infrastructure, property, etc.) are required during the budgeted period. Prepare financial statements—balance sheet, income statement and cash flow—using your budgeted numbers. Identify KPIs and other performance ratios to see how the budgeted results stack up against previous years or anticipated changes in market conditions. Review the final budget and start looking at opportunities for strategic growth (investment and divestment opportunities, adding or reducing debt/equity, etc.) How To Generate a Forecast As you progress through your budgeted period, you should update your forecasts periodically as soon as your latest actuals are confirmed. This will give you a clearer picture of how your business is performing against your budgeted goals. Here’s how to generate reliable financial forecasts: Identify the key metrics (sales volume, marketing expenses, etc,) you want to focus on with your forecast. Ask yourself: “What am I trying to determine here?” Gather your latest actuals and input them into your forecast template. Determine the time frame for your forecast. (Periodic forecasts typically look ahead to the end of the budgeted period.) Calculate trends based on your historical and year-to-date actuals. Apply those trend calculations to your real-time numbers to come up with forecasted results. If you know of any variables that could skew your forecast (an upcoming influx of cash, merger, geopolitical conditions, etc.) be sure to account for those when you deliver the forecast to your stakeholders. Periodic forecasts are beneficial, but they usually only project out to the end of the current fiscal year. Rolling forecasts, on the other hand, are even more useful because they extend beyond that timeline. Rolling Forecasts Rolling forecasts are generated monthly, quarterly or weekly to help you plan for a defined period that’s beyond the scope of the annual budget—such as the next five quarters, for example. So instead of just projecting out to the end of the fiscal year, most rolling forecasts will predict the next 12 months or more. Once a fiscal month or quarter has been actualized, your forecast just “rolls” over to the next period so you never lose sight of your long-term business trajectory. Rolling forecasts are important for the following reasons: Businesses that prepare continuous rolling forecasts have more reliable information about long-term trends and performance, ultimately allowing you to mitigate risk and plan for the future proactively. Rolling forecasts use real-time data so they stay relevant all the time. You can tweak your forecasts on demand with up-to-the-minute numbers, which is helpful in fast-paced business environments where you might need to pivot on the fly. By projecting out beyond your current year, rolling forecasts ensure your future budgets and strategic plans are as well-informed as possible. Common Challenges With Budgeting and Forecasting Every organization approaches budgeting and forecasting differently, with the complexity and scope of your processes determined by your company’s size, structure and industry. But budgeting and forecasting challenges can persist for any finance team—and the first step toward solving them is recognizing what those challenges are.  Here are some common challenges that might be holding back your budgeting and forecasting efforts: Disparate and Disconnected Data Sources According to the 2020 Vena Industry Benchmark Report, data silos are a challenge for 57% of finance teams. If you’re spending too much time wrangling numbers from your ERP, CRM, HRIS and other data sources, you won’t be able to analyze the story those numbers are telling you. This slows down the budgeting and forecasting cycle and makes it harder to plan proactively when business conditions change. Data silos also make it difficult to collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders, leading to unreliable budgets and forecasts that don’t capture a holistic view of your business. Manual Processes in Excel The 2020 Pulse of Performance Management Survey revealed that 82% of finance teams still use offline Excel spreadsheets for budgeting, forecasting and other core FP&A activities. But the same poll also found that 54% of the Excel faithful aren’t happy with their spreadsheet processes—saying they’re too labour intensive, they take too long to complete and they’re difficult to manage across the entire business. It’s clear that finance teams everywhere are comfortable and familiar with Excel. But once your organization reaches a certain level of maturity, offline spreadsheets won’t have the processing power for advanced budgeting and forecasting. Using Excel alone to manage your budgets and forecasts can lead to version control issues, data integrity problems and formula errors from keying in numbers manually. Ever had a template crash when you’re pushing towards a deadline? (Because that’s what often happens when you treat Excel like a database.)     No Workflows, Audit Trails or Data Validation Measures Budgets and forecasts have a lot of moving parts, which means keeping your contributors aligned is a pretty important job. But if you’re searching your inbox for template files, chasing down colleagues for numbers and constantly losing sleep over whether your data is accurate, it’s tough to keep track of your progress and maintain a healthy work-life balance—especially when you’re spinning over “final” budget version 14.1-a. That’s why you need to have workflows, audit trails and data validation measures in place. Confident budgeting and forecasting is a whole lot harder without them. How A Complete Planning Solution Makes Budgeting and Forecasting Easier According to this report from Deloitte, emerging technologies are reimagining the future of finance—and the teams that don’t embrace this evolution risk falling behind the eight ball. For budgeting and forecasting in particular, a complete planning solution can help you get ahead by making your processes faster, easier and more reliable. Read on to find out how. They Automate Manual Data Entries So You Can Spend More Time on Analysis A complete planning solution leverages both relational and OLAP cube database structures so you can bring all your financial information into one source of truth in the cloud. By integrating directly with your ERP, CRM, HRIS and other source systems, you won’t have to input numbers manually while building budgets or generating forecasts. Instead, the cells in your templates would be mapped right back to your data sources so the values just flow in automatically whenever you need to refresh them.  Here are some other benefits of automated data entries for budgeting and forecasting: You’ll be able to reduce budgeting and forecasting cycle times by up to 50% or more. Your budgets, forecasts and actuals can be viewed from the same template so you can more easily spot variances and identify emerging trends. You can drill down into transaction-level details right from your budget and forecast templates. That way, you always know where your numbers are coming from. With all that time saved, you won’t have to waste days wrangling data for budgets and forecasts. Instead, you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: Planning for the future of your business. They’re Flexible and Easy To Use So You Can Drive Teamwork and Transparency Across Your Business According to the 2020 Pulse of Performance management survey, ease of use is the most important feature for a budgeting and forecasting solution to have. Automations certainly help with usability, but your software still won’t get used if it's clunky and difficult to manage. In order to keep cross-functional stakeholders involved in your budgeting and forecasting processes, you need to choose a solution that’s flexible and accessible for everyone. Here’s how a complete planning solution fits the bill: Some solutions leverage a native Excel interface so you don’t have to abandon your comfort and familiarity with spreadsheets. You can even map your existing Excel templates back to the database, enabling a much smoother transition for you and all your colleagues. Complete planning solutions don't usually require any maintenance or management from your IT department. They are truly “finance owned,” allowing you to organize budgeting and forecasting in a way that makes sense for your business. Cross-functional stakeholders can all work from the same connected template. If somebody needs to change something, audit trails let you track, validate and approve those changes. You can also add commentary so everybody knows what’s going on. They Give You Room to Grow With Scenario Modeling, Dashboards and More If your business is always evolving, your budgets and forecasts are evolving too. However, if you don’t have the ability to level-up your processes as you grow, you’ll have a hard time adapting to the ever-changing needs of your organization.  A complete planning solution makes it easy to facilitate growth with a range of enterprise-grade features that complement budgeting and forecasting, such as: Scenario Modeling: This makes it simple to test your budgets and forecasts against an unlimited range of potential future business scenarios. With more insight into what might happen down the road, your budgets and forecasts will be as well-informed as possible.  Customizable Workflows: Want to add an additional executive review step to your budgeting process? That’s what workflows are for. This feature makes it simple to see exactly who’s doing what as you move through the budgeting and forecasting process. Automated email reminders make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Data Visualization With Dashboards: Let’s face it—graphs are prettier than spreadsheets sometimes. Dashboarding is especially helpful for forecasting because you’ll be able to actually show your stakeholders where your business is headed. Your budgeting and forecasting processes might not require all these features right away, but growing with a complete planning solution makes it easy to leverage them when you need to.

10-Q. 10-K. 8-K. 13D.  The list of SEC filings you’re expected to complete can start to sound a little like the calls in a football game—and can be just as indecipherable if you’re an outsider. But for those finance professionals focused on reporting at a publicly held company, they’re a regular part of the office lexicon. And if that’s you, you’re likely already well acquainted with them—from Forms 10-Q, 10-K and 8-K, to Schedule 13D. After all, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) expects you to be. One of the most critical of those filings is Form 10-K. An annual SEC-mandated report, the 10-K offers a summary of your company's financial performance. Depending on the size of your company, it must be filed within 60 to 90 days of the closing of your fiscal year. While usually lengthy and time consuming to complete, it plays a vital role for investors—providing them with comprehensive information around the health of your business. It’s therefore a key piece of your SEC reporting. So what do you need to know when completing your Form 10-K? Start by considering the following: What Is a 10-K Financial Report? While it shares some overlapping information with your Annual Report, Form 10-K is a separate document required by the SEC—generally containing more detail than your Annual Report. If your company is public, you’re required to file the 10-K annually so that investors can better understand your business’s investment potential. To facilitate that, your 10-K will be made accessible alongside those of other businesses in the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) database.  Signed by your CEO, CFO and controller or chief accounting officer to validate its accuracy, your 10-K is broken down into four unique parts. Here’s what they each looks like and some of the more prominent elements you’ll need to include: Part I is where you describe your business: the products and services you provide, any subsidiaries you operate and the market you work in. It also includes: A list of risks you’re facing The properties you own  Information on ongoing lawsuits Any discussion of unresolved comments you’ve received from SEC staff on previous reports Part II is where you disclose any information regarding your company’s equity securities—including market information, number of shareholders, dividends and so on. It also includes: Select financial information from the last five years  An analysis of your business results over the past year Your exposure to market risks Audited financial statements, with written explanations Information on your company’s disclosure controls and procedures 3. Part III is all about the people who make your business happen and ensuring they’re kept accountable. It’s where you list: Your directors and executive officers, with information on their backgrounds Your company’s code of ethics  Compensation policies Compensation paid to top executive officers over the past year Any information on shares owned by directors, officers and stakeholders Any relationships and transactions between your organization and its directors, officers and their family members  4. Part IV compiles any exhibits and documents, such as your company’s bylaws, list of subsidiaries and so on. There’s clearly a lot you need to put in place to get your 10-K up to code. But there are a few best practices you can apply to make sure you remain on schedule and compliant and to ensure your 10-K is investor-ready and telling your company’s full story by the time you need to submit. Three Tips for Completing Your 10-K  1. Consider It Through an Investor’s Eyes Form 10-K is a critical piece of disclosure with a list of inclusions you’re required to submit. Ultimately, what you include is there for a reason, though—to inform investors and give them information they may not find in your Annual Report. Your 10-K helps build the story you’re telling about your organizational health and allows investors to make better decisions on where they should put their money. And while it must follow specified SEC standards so that it’s easily comparable with other organizations, there is room to share your story more completely in the commentary you offer. Use that commentary to address any concerns investors may have, putting yourself in their shoes and remaining transparent on any potential red flags that might exist. This is your chance to give them a better sense of those risks and challenges—whether they’re within your control or not and whether they’re long term or short term in nature. 2. Pay Close Attention To How Your Business Has Changed Most financial teams will use last year’s 10-K report as a starting point for the new year’s version and go from there—but you should also take some time to recognize the changes your company has gone through in between. After all, those changes will play a big role in the story unveiled through your financial reports and may become a focus for investors as a result. So start with that as you frame the narrative you build, using those changes as a point of entry to drive your explanations and disclosures. In doing so, you’ll give investors a better understanding of where your company is in terms of its performance and why those changes happened—whether they were due to an acquisition, a shift in financing, market changes or something else completely.  3. Take a Team Approach As your organization grows and there are more stakeholders involved, the process of gathering all of the information needed for regulatory reporting becomes even more complex. Automation and technology, then, become more and more helpful in accumulating that information. But people are still as critical as ever. Data and commentary contributors, accounting policy teams, legal experts, senior management and internal and independent auditors are just some of the people who may be contributing to the process. You may start out with your core finance team and auditors but also have reviewers across the business looking at specified sections depending on their expertise.  Taking a team approach, with multiple voices involved, will get you a full range of ideas on the details you convey and add multiple sets of eyes when it comes to ensuring your reporting is complete and accurate. To achieve alignment and make sure nothing falls through the cracks, you’ll also need strong communication, clear leadership and established roles assigned to everyone on your team.  Putting the Right Checks and Balances in Place As with any kind of regulatory reporting, having the right checks and balances in place is key to a successful 10-K. Your accounting and legal teams should give it a thorough evaluation to ensure all of the information is accurate, consistent and complete, and that it meets SEC requirements. Keeping up to date on SEC guidelines and maintaining a checklist to ensure you’ve compiled all of the information you require will also help. The right technology, meanwhile, can make it easier to keep up with your reporting needs by compiling data into a central location, providing version control and ensuring you’re pulling the most recent data available. But of course, the 10-K is just one of multiple forms the SEC requires from you. So even after it’s been checked and double-checked, don’t stop there—there’s still plenty left to do. The information you’ve already compiled, though, will make your 10-Q, Annual Report and other external reporting all the easier to complete.

Numbers tell a story. We already know that: we’re all experienced data-driven storytellers here. But raw data, even after it’s been summarized in your reports, does not a full story make. Like the words of a novel, you’ll get more out of the values you report on when you start putting them together in new and meaningful ways.  That’s where financial ratios come in. By tracking changes over time, your ratios enable you to see how performance shifts from one period to the next, identify any trends that could be in the works and set goals and track progress towards them. They allow you and your investors to compare your business to those of your competitors, to see how you’re faring compared to market norms. And they’re pivotal in finding new lenders, setting stock prices and demonstrating the health of your organization as a whole. So what are the ratios you should be paying attention to—and what plot twists will they add to the story your reporting tells? Let’s take a look. The Five Types of Financial Ratios Financial ratios enable you to perform quantitative analysis to understand your organization better. There’s an entire list of financial ratios you can draw from to better tell the story of your business—all of them falling under one of five main categories: Profitability Ratios determine your organization’s ability to generate profit relative to revenue, operating costs, balance sheet assets and shareholder equity.  Liquidity Ratios measure your company’s ability to pay off its current debt without raising extra capital. Efficiency Ratios calculate how well your business manages its assets and liabilities internally. Leverage Ratios determine how much of your organization’s capital is assumed through debt and evaluate how reliant you are on debt for growth. Market Value Ratios calculate your publicly held company’s current share price, helping investors evaluate whether those shares are overpriced or underpriced. Each category incorporates a range of different ratios designed to help finance teams, like yours, get to the information needed, and for investors and analysts to better understand the health of your business. Together, these ratios can begin to offer a fuller picture of your company’s performance. Examples, Calculations and Use Cases The most popular financial ratios aren’t necessarily complicated to compute—in fact, what are often deceptively simple calculations can offer a wealth of meaningful information. Just look at these examples: Financial Ratio Example Calculation Use Cases Profitability Ratios Profit Margin Gross Profit Margin = Gross Income / Revenue  Operating Profit Margin = Operating Income / Revenue  Net Profit Margin = Net Income / Revenue  By demonstrating what percentage of sales has turned into profits, your Profit Margin showcases the degree to which a business activity makes money. The numbers you plug in will vary depending on the type of profit margin being measured (i.e., Gross Profit Margin, Operating Profit Margin, Net Profit Margin). Return On Assets (ROA) ROA = Net Income / Average Total Assets ROA measures your company’s efficiency in generating earnings from assets by showcasing how much profit your company can gain from those assets. Return On Equity (ROE) ROE = Annual Net Income / Shareholders’ Equity ROE demonstrates how well your organization is handling shareholder contributions. It measures the profitability of your organization as it relates to stockholders’ equity. Liquidity Ratios Current Ratio Current Ratio = Current Assets / Current Liabilities By looking at current assets in relation to current liabilities, your Current Ratio helps investors better understand your organization’s ability to pay off short-term debt obligations. Quick Ratio Quick Ratio = (Current Assets - Inventory - Prepaid Expenses) / Current Liabilities  By examining how easily your organization can use near-cash assets to pay down its current liabilities, your Quick Ratio measures your organization’s ability to meet its short-term debt obligations using its most liquid assets. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) DSO = (Accounts Receivable / Net Credit Sales) x Number of Days Your DSO provides valuable information on your cash conversion cycle by measuring the average number of days it takes for your business to collect payment from a sale.  Efficiency Ratios Asset Turnover Ratio Asset Turnover Ratio = Net Sales / Average Total Assets The Asset Turnover Ratio demonstrates how efficient your company is at using assets to generate revenue. It examines the value of your company’s sales or revenue in relation to the value of its assets. Inventory Turnover Ratio Inventory Turnover = Cost of Goods Sold / Average Inventory By measuring how often a company has replaced inventory during a specified period, the Inventory Turnover Ratio helps you better determine pricing and know when to purchase new inventory. Receivables Turnover Ratio Receivables Turnover = Net Credit Sales / Average Accounts Receivable By measuring your business’s ability to collect the money you owe, your Receivables Turnover Ratio helps investors and analysts understand how quickly your short-term debt is collected and paid. Leverage Ratios Debt Ratio Debt Ratio = Total Debt / Total Assets Your Debt Ratio measures the ratio of total debt to total assets, which determines the extent of your business’s leverage or the percentage of assets financed by debt. Debt-to-Equity (D/E) Ratio D/E = Total Liabilities / Total Shareholders’ Equity By calculating how well shareholder equity can cover outstanding debt, your D/E Ratio helps determine how much of your business is financed through debt—and how prepared you are for a crisis. Interest Coverage Ratio Interest Coverage = Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT)  / Interest Expense Your Interest Coverage Ratio lets creditors, investors and analysts know whether your company is a good risk for future lending by measuring how easily your organization can pay interest on its outstanding debt. Debt-Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) DSCR = Net Operating Income / Debt Service By looking at the cash flow your organization has available to pay your existing debt obligations, your DSCR lets investors know whether you have the income available to pay off your debts.  Market Value Ratios Book Value Per Share (BVPS)  Ratio  BVPS = (Shareholders’ Equity - Preferred Stock) / Average Shares Outstanding Your BVPS Ratio helps investors evaluate your business’s stock price by measuring the ratio between your shareholders’ equity and outstanding shares.  Dividend Yield Ratio Dividend Yield = Annual Dividends Per Share / Current Share Price By calculating, in the form of a percentage, how much your business pays out annually in dividends in relation to its stock price, the Dividend Yield Ratio enables investors to calculate how much they’ll earn from dividends. Earnings Per Share (EPS) Ratio Earnings Per Share = (Net Income - Preferred Dividends) / Average Shares Outstanding By looking at your company’s profit in relation to outstanding shares, your EPS Ratio lets you and your investors know how much money your company earns from each share of its stock, helping to create an estimate of your overall organizational value. What Else You Need To Know About Financial Ratios If you’re a finance professional tasked with reporting, you’re probably using financial ratios in some capacity already—and it’s exactly because they are so widely used that they’re so useful.  Financial ratios provide a common language. By trending your ratios over time, you and your investors can compare your company’s performance from one period to another, and against market norms and competitors. And by using the reported values already available in your balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement, ratios also provide a relatively quick way to analyze your financial health. The richest stories come not from using a single financial ratio, though, but rather by applying a mix of ratios and using them alongside the other information available to you. That might include insights from your KPI dashboards or the information you gather from non-financial metrics across sales, marketing, operations and the rest of your organization. Either way, in doing so, you’ll reveal truths about your company’s performance—as well as the potential value your business might have for investors, creditors and lenders. 

Finance Boring? Never. Is finance exciting? Absolutely, according to Vena’s Chief Financial Officer, Darrell Cox, in his new talk on Plan To Grow, 7 Principles of The Agile CFO. The finance team plays a pivotal role in building out an organization’s growth journey, leading it through change and determining its future success. Sprinkle in some disruption and a dash of uncertainty and it’s pretty obvious that finance leaders are never bored. But what turns a finance professional into an Agile finance leader? The difference between a traditional finance professional and an agile one depends largely on how they view their role and measure their impact. Agile CFOs are trusted business advisors—storytellers who use their finance superpower to bring numbers to life with meaning. They don’t just mitigate risk, they optimize performance. They look forward, not backward. And they harness change to build better businesses. In this on-demand talk, as part of the Transformational Leadership series on Plan To Grow, Darrell outlines the seven principles that guide Agile CFOs: 1. Be Human 2. Be a Storyteller 3. Think Big 4. Think Forward 5. Embrace and Own Change 6. Have a Bias to Action 7. Embrace Technology 

Going beyond the numbers to shape a powerful narrative with your data is an important skill for finance leaders to master.   If you start thinking about the world’s best storytellers, you’ll probably lean towards the Shakespeares, Spielbergs and Springsteens of the world. But what about Agile CFOs? They’re pretty savvy storytellers too. When it comes to running a business, strategic decisions are always driven by data. And as every organization’s data analytics maestro, it’s the CFO’s job to uncover the story behind that data. Agile CFOs, though, take this a few steps further: They’re constantly challenging business plans, leading through change with confidence, fostering company-wide teamwork and telling the story beyond the bottom line. Agile CFOs enable timely, data-driven business planning with the right tools for the job. They’re the driving force behind the company’s plan to grow. Looking for more Agile CFO insights? Check out PlanToGrow.com and watch the free, on-demand talk, “7 Principles of the Agile CFO.” Consolidating your financials and reporting the numbers is one thing, but shaping a powerful narrative to drive informed decision making across the business is another. Agile CFOs don’t just deliver the what, they also deliver the why behind every number and every business plan. It’s called data storytelling—and it’s a skill every finance leader should practice. In this blog post, you will learn: What data storytelling in finance looks like Why data storytelling is important for finance leaders How to master data storytelling for finance-led business planning What Is Data Storytelling? Data storytelling is a creative way of consolidating, analyzing and presenting important data in a format that’s easy to understand. In finance, data storytelling complements FP&A processes, such as budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting, by providing legitimate context and reasoning behind the reported figures. It helps CFOs turn numbers into narratives with input from every arm of the company, ultimately resulting in a more strategic, reliable and well-informed business planning process. Why Is Data Storytelling So Important? Data storytelling is crucial because it helps you make a business case for financial decisions. It also allows you to contextualize and justify financial results. When a company needs to take a necessary action, data storytelling is how Agile CFOs identify, plan for and communicate the path forward to the rest of the company. Let’s say, for example, that you need to implement a hiring freeze in a recession or make a substantial investment in product development to compete with larger competitors. Data storytelling allows you to clearly communicate the projected result of that decision—both financial and non-financial—and align stakeholders across the company on business objectives moving forward. Another example could be if your business overspent on sales and marketing. Data storytelling is how you articulate: Were our quotas too low? Is our advertising budget too high? What really happened here and how can we fix it? Data storytelling puts it all into perspective and that’s why it’s so important for successful finance-led business planning. Top 3 Data Storytelling Best Practices With business conditions evolving as rapidly as they are these days, planning for the future of your company means having to make a lot of quick decisions. Now more than ever, you need to know how the choices you make today will influence the bottom line tomorrow. It makes insightful data storytelling an even bigger priority, which is why Agile CFOs use integrated planning tools to do it well. Make sure you follow these three best practices so you can master data storytelling at your organization: 1. Visualize Your Data With Business Intelligence Dashboards Many people are visual learners by nature and that’s why dashboards are such an essential aspect of data storytelling. When configured properly, dashboards can be used to visualize a range of metrics and KPIs from across your business. They can include graphs, charts and scorecards that bring your financial and non-financial data to life. Given how simple they typically are to read, dashboards make it easy to align your numbers with compelling narratives. A recent survey from BPM Partners suggests they’re growing in popularity too, and for good reason. Well-built dashboards allow you to: Measure real-time performance trends and identify opportunities for improvement Benchmark important KPIs and track results against those benchmarks over time Identify relationships between metrics and report what those mean for your business Provide key stakeholders with a visual guide to their reported numbers Ensure transparency, accountability and engagement across the organization by showing employees how their efforts are moving the needle Every company’s business intelligence strategy is different, and there’s no one right or wrong way to set up your dashboards. It all depends on the story you’re trying to tell, so make sure you build the dashboards you need to tell that story effectively. Check out this dashboarding guide to learn more about how to tell powerful stories with your numbers and guide your business forward with confidence. 2. Eliminate Data Silos So You Can Tell the Whole Story Data storytelling in finance is about more than just revenue and profit margins. In order to tell a complete story with your numbers and convey their impact on the entire business, you need to weave cross-functional operations data into the narratives you build as well. Consider this example: Your company is preparing to launch a new flagship product offering. You’re adjusting your budgets and forecasts and planning for some additional revenue. In addition to the bottom-line projections, the story you tell in your management reporting or your board meeting should answer the following questions: How will this affect headcount? Will we need to hire more staff to accommodate higher revenue targets? If the product launch doesn’t generate as much interest as we expect it to, do we still have enough active deals in our sales pipeline to meet our goals? Is our infrastructure equipped for a more rigorous production schedule? Will we need to invest in a new facility? The answers to those questions shape the narrative you’re trying to develop here, but the specific data you need might not be easily accessible. If critical data is siloed in multiple disparate source systems—such as your ERP/GL, CRM, HRIS and fixed asset tracking system—you’ll have to hunt down numbers manually which is tedious and prone to error. It makes agile, data-driven storytelling a lot more difficult to do. That’s where integrated planning tools come in. With one centralized platform that connects your existing data sources, you can eliminate data silos and build a single source of truth your entire company can trust. Not only will you save time, but your cross-functional stakeholders will also find it easier to participate in the strategic planning process—ultimately resulting in more reliable business narratives that tell the entire story. Discover how to integrate your data sources for faster, smarter and more efficient data storytelling from a single source of truth. 3. Know Your Audience & Inspire Them To Take Action “People hear statistics, but they feel stories.” Those are some wise words from Brent Dykes, a frequent Forbes contributor and author of Effective Data Storytelling. The statement addresses exactly why data storytelling is so powerful: It evokes emotion, inspires action and drives positive outcomes for your business. It’s about rallying your colleagues and planning as a team after drawing them in with a story. After all, people tend to perform better if they know their role in your company’s narrative and can feel the impact of their contributions. That’s why you need to shape stories that appeal to the audience you’re trying to engage. Not everybody is motivated by numbers alone, and Agile CFOs understand this better than anyone. Let’s say, for example, that you’re reporting on a major loss that wasn’t in your quarterly plan. You can’t just send around the same spreadsheet and simply say, “there are the results.” If you want to inspire action, you’ll have to tailor the story purposefully so every department understands how to respond. Sales leaders in this case might need a forecast update so they can realign targets with their team. Operations teams might want a detailed breakdown of transactional data to ensure that nothing was overlooked. Investors will want to know if your three-year plan is affected, and HR leaders will want a heads up if they need to prepare for layoffs. Now, instead of just reporting the numbers, you’re shaping an actionable narrative driven by legitimate financial data. And like any good story, it’s all about the delivery—you need to be clear, assertive and personable so your message doesn’t get lost in the fold. As you continue to tell stories with your data and plan for today and tomorrow, ask yourself: What am I trying to achieve with this narrative? What action do I want to drive? How can I tell this story in an empathetic way that resonates with my stakeholders? What’s important to my audience and how does this story address that? By answering those questions daily and following the best practices above, you’ll master data storytelling and be able to better support agile, finance-led business planning. And with the right tools at your disposal, including dashboards and integrated planning solutions, uncovering the narrative behind your numbers will be a breeze. Data-driven storytelling will grow into a standard process for your finance team as you continue to navigate change and plan for the future of your business. Learn more about how you can quickly get started with data storytelling, or talk to a Vena FP&A expert 1:1 to help you plan for today and tomorrow.

Have you ever started working on an important financial model and thought, “I’m just gonna do this all in Excel.” If the answer is yes, you’re definitely not alone—and that’s because Excel is the universal language of business. Even after more than three decades on the market, Microsoft’s iconic spreadsheet program remains the #1 choice for finance, operations and executive teams everywhere due to its flexibility, familiarity and superior ease of use. But when you start using Excel to scale your key planning processes—such as budgeting, forecasting, reporting and ad hoc analysis—that’s when things get a little more complicated.  Excel is a powerful tool, but it’s not designed to function like a comprehensive business planning application. Version control problems, data integrity issues and tedious manual aggregations will really slow you down if you’re wrangling dozens of workbooks via email. As your business continues to grow, you’re going to need a solution to help you plan efficiently, confidently and in collaboration with cross-functional teammates. You probably won’t want to abandon everything you love about Excel though—and that’s how Vena can help. Vena is the only Complete Planning platform that marries enterprise-class functionality with the comfort and flexibility of Excel. Our Growth Engine technology features a native Excel interface, so you can use the tool you already know to do things you’ve only imagined. Instead of reverting back to spreadsheets outside of an existing planning tool—which according to BPM Partners is something 82% of finance teams do today—Vena gives you the best of both worlds.  Curious to know how it works? Here are three ways Vena makes business planning better with Excel: Mapping Your Excel Workbooks To a Centralized Cloud Database There are times during a planning cycle when business requirements change, forcing you to adjust your numbers on the fly and work with new assumptions. Let’s say, for example, that you’re in the middle of budget approval season and your company wins a big deal that wasn’t expected for another year. Now you’ve got to increase operating costs to service this spike in demand—and update the squeaky-clean budget you’d just worked so hard to finalize. In that situation, here’s what you’d need to do if all your processes lived in Excel: Open up your department budgets and manually key in the changes to specific operational line items (headcount budget, materials cost, etc.).   Copy and paste the new figures into your balance sheet and income statement, then update your cash flow statement accordingly (ouch!).   Ensure your budgeted numbers reflect the new updates by triple-checking your inputs and re-confirming your calculations.   Email the updated workbooks to stakeholders across the business and secure executive approval all over again. This could take days or even weeks depending on the size of your business. And with multiple versions of the same workbook floating around, it’s tough to make sure your teammates are working from the same set of numbers. By the time you’ve sorted it out, there might be even more budget updates on your plate—making it difficult to pivot quickly and keep your business on track for success. Vena solves this problem by providing one central planning database that maintains data integrity between all your unique budget templates. Dynamic mappings back to Excel ensure that as soon as a cell is updated, those changes are applied automatically across your entire dataset. Now, instead of constantly wondering which version of your budget is accurate, stakeholders can rest easy knowing that Vena is their one source of truth. Let’s take another look at the same example from above. Here’s what the process would look like with Vena: You adjust the line item details in your department budgets in Excel.   Vena goes to work on the back end. Dynamic mappings ensure that your cash flow statement, balance sheet, income statement and corresponding budgets are updated and aggregated automatically based on your new inputs.   Stakeholders and administrators are notified of the changes instantly, then prompted to review and approve. Audit trail functionality allows them to see exactly who changed what, complete with additional comments regarding why the changes were made.  By eliminating the need for tedious manual data inputs, Vena frees up time for you to look toward the future of your business. Think about this for a second: What could you achieve today if you had more time to focus on tomorrow? Detailed Analysis Right in the Excel Interface If you’ve ever looked at a revenue forecast and wondered why you landed on that number, you might’ve opened Salesforce, your ERP and an offline Excel model to better understand the details. This highlights another common issue with business planning in Excel alone—it’s great for organizing financial information, but it’s hard to provide the right context when you’re drawing from multiple data sources. Vena connects the dots thanks to seamless integrations with your source systems, including your ERP or GL, CRM, HRIS and more. You don’t have to juggle Excel with your data sources to find the detailed numbers you’re looking for because Vena pulls them in for you and presents them right in your spreadsheets. Excel’s existing analysis functions stay the same as you’ve always known, but now you can just click on a number and use Vena’s drill down tool to see account-level inputs—adding a new dimension of detail to any report you can imagine.    With that kind of power at your fingertips, you’ll be able to: Perform quick, easy analysis of financial and operational metrics   Proactively identify opportunities for cost savings or strategic investments   Ensure transparency across departments and hold budget owners accountable to their numbers   Help management understand how you landed on your reported totals—ultimately allowing them to make informed, data-driven business decisions  This will also help you keep Excel a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. So, if you’re copying and pasting from source systems and struggling with 100-tab workbooks, Vena might be what you need to make your planning process a little less stressful. Purpose-Built Excel Templates, Plus the Freedom To Customize Your Own Ask any finance leader who’s ever implemented a planning solution and they’ll tell you that usability should be one of the most important factors in your vendor choice. There are plenty of great solutions out there, but they can often be rigid, clunky and difficult to adopt across the business. If your teams are working in Excel and uploading files to a planning solution afterward, ask yourself: Are you really making the most of the tool you spent months rolling out? With Vena’s Excel interface, you don’t have to force your teams to learn an unfamiliar platform. This will maximize adoption across the business, greatly reduce the learning curve and accelerate your time-to-value. Plus, everything you’ve already mastered in Excel—such as graphing, charting, formulas, shortcuts and more—doesn’t have to change when you make the move to our solution. You can even map your existing workbooks right to our central database and leverage Excel’s flexibility to build new templates and use cases on your own.  Alternatively, if you’re looking for a little more guidance, you can also take advantage of our purpose-built templates and solution configurations, which cover a range of business planning processes from FP&A to financial close management. Check out this table below to learn a little bit more about the endless possibilities with Excel and the power of Vena. Solution Configuration Use Cases Finance-Led Planning Budgeting, Forecasting, What-If Analysis, Financial Reporting, Management Reporting, Dashboards Extended Planning Cash Flow Modeling, Workforce Planning, CapEx Planning, Sales and Revenue Planning Beyond Planning Financial Close Management, Consolidations, Account Reconciliation, Tax Provisioning, Incentive Compensation Management, Project Management Excel at More With Vena As we all lead our businesses through this era of finance transformation, there’s one thing we know for certain: Excel is here to stay. So instead of looking to replace a tool you’ll probably just fall back to anyway, it’s time to think about ways you can embrace your Excel expertise with Vena. Automated aggregations. Analysis right in Excel. Purpose-built planning templates and the flexibility to customize your processes. No matter how you choose to approach your company’s unique growth journey, you’ll always be well-equipped with a scalable solution that’s naturally comfortable.