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I'm new within an organization and how they currently track budgets.
Are spreadsheets the only means for tracking budgets? I find myself wanting to do comparisons and sensitivity analysis (what-if). Spreadsheets seem limiting, but I may be missing the boat. Also, I'm looking for a better tool that doesn't force me to have to maintain an excel document.

Are there better tools out there that allow me to track my budget, along with actuals and allows me to track by projects and G/L?

Any information you can provide would be helpful. Thanks.

--Drmaltz
disc - OBJECT THINKER

jhack's picture

Dr Maltz,

There are many tools out there. The choice is based on many factors, including how much you're willing to spend, number of users, size of organization, complexity of budget, and formality of process. Budgeting and "business intelligence" tools often work together and are sometimes called "performance management." When you say "track my budget," it sounds like that's what you're looking for: "I missed my numbers - what happened?"

[Full Disclosure: I work for a company that sells budgeting and BI software and will therefore not discuss specific products]

Excel provides flexibility and familiarity at the cost of complexity and unreliability. Excel is inexpensive (most folks already have it), and the more robust the tool, the more you'll pay for it.

As with all software tools: know your needs first, then look at products.

John

stephenbooth_uk's picture

[quote="DrMaltz"]
Are spreadsheets the only means for tracking budgets? I find myself wanting to do comparisons and sensitivity analysis (what-if). Spreadsheets seem limiting, but I may be missing the boat. [/quote]

What-ifs were one of the things that spreadsheets were used for when they first appeared on computers (spreadsheets actually pre-date computers (as we understand the tool) by some time, originally they were calculated by hand although often the job title of the person doing the calculation was "Computer").

What do your peers use? Is there a company standard tool? Talk to your finance department and find out, if there is then you should probably be using that. As John said there are a whole heap of tools out there to manage budgets, ranging from templates for Excel through dedicated tools (e.g. SAGE) to fully loaded enterprise financial tools from people like Oracle, SAP and others. what you get depends on what you need to do, how complex your systems are and how much you're prepared to spend.

If there's no corporate standard tool then try talking to your peers and see what they use. Maybe they have a template you can steal and will show you how to use it or can point you to an existing tool that already used internally.

Other than that your choices basically boil down to either push for a tool to be acquired (probably not a good idea when you've recently started) or create one yourself. Do you have a direct who is a bit handy with Excel and/or Access? Could they put something together for you.

Buy or build, get your requirements down and analysed then decide what you want.

If you have some philosophical issue with Excel specifically, try OpenOffice.org.

Stephen

DrMaltz's picture

[quote="stephenbooth_uk"]
What do your peers use? Is there a company standard tool? Talk to your finance department and find out, if there is then you should probably be using that. As John said there are a whole heap of tools out there to manage budgets, ranging from templates for Excel through dedicated tools (e.g. SAGE) to fully loaded enterprise financial tools from people like Oracle, SAP and others. what you get depends on what you need to do, how complex your systems are and how much you're prepared to spend.
Stephen[/quote]

Basically, everyone uses Excel. No there is no corporate standard tool such as Oracle , SAP, peoplesoft.. We currently use excel to track our department budgets, but I was looking for something with a little more umph.. (i.e. alerts, color highlights, specialized reports) my requirements are simple, to be able to track budget associated at a project and g/l level with estimated budget amount and actuals.. determine how estimated payments will be applied (i.e. monthly, quarterly, etc..)

stephenbooth_uk's picture

For things like changing colours based on the value of a cell (or another cell or even the result of a calculation based on a number of cells) you can use conditional formatting. Excel can do some reasonable reporting, if you're prepared (or have someone who is prepared) to learn the functions and maybe some VBA.

What you've described should not be beyond the capabilities of Excel, maybe Access for some of the reporting. If you're prepared to do a bit of development work (or have someone who can do it for you). Both of these tools have way more functionality under the hood than most people are ever aware of.

Stephen