Budgeting Problems That Companies Face in Fiscal Planning

Global Data 365
May 21, 2021

Organizations all over the world are putting in more effort than ever before to achieve long-term, successful growth. Fiscal planning, which includes compiling, tracking, and reviewing a company’s income, expenditures, debt, and capital estimates for implementation in the annual budget, is a result of that growth strategy. It’s a big organizational challenge that happens once a year but typically lasts longer than expected.

If you ask every big company’s CFO, they will tell you that during this time of organizing staff, aligning numbers, and handling approvals, they’ve probably missed a few nights (or weeks) of sleep. They are the ones that are largely responsible for determining priorities, benchmarking business results, making changes, and implementing the budget company-wide, even though there are several different participants in the budgeting process leading to budgeting problems. It goes without saying that without the correct structures and processes in place, this can be a challenging time.

Budgeting and Fiscal Planning

Budgeting is necessary to direct daily revenue and expenditure decisions and assign resources. Long-term fiscal planning needs resources and support for financial targets. Although budgeting is intended to keep the business on track and find areas for change, the fact is that it is not a simple job. Rather than focusing on profitability and competitiveness, the budgeting process is often time-consuming and labor-intensive, with little return on investment. Tackling down the root issues, we conducted research and listed the top eight budgeting issues that most businesses face while preparing their fiscal year.

Time

Coordinating, editing, and consolidating various budget contributors’ versions of the same static spreadsheet takes a long time. Many CFOs have reported spending upwards of 250 hours on the budgeting process itself, from time spent reinforcing numbers to missed hours spent tracking down individual budget participants.

Communication

Before, during, and after the budgeting phase, there seem to be a lot of moving parts in a business. Budget developers, contributors, and approvers must all provide feedback at each point, but many businesses lack a tool to facilitate collaboration. They end up budgeting in silos, with no collaboration with other departments or a clear end goal in sight.

Complexity

Trying to deal with deadlines and unanticipated adjustments is another issue that many budget owners face throughout the multi-layered budgeting process. Any change or alteration to a budget result in a complex back and forth hassle of redoing numbers, responding to questions, and re-sending spreadsheets, which should be an easy fix.

Flexibility

When developing a budgeting document for all managers in an organization, it’s crucial that the form or spreadsheet they must fill out be structured and simple to comprehend. The problem is that unregulated spreadsheets lack the structure and marking needed for all budget participants. As a result, many people become engrossed in the information and find it difficult to provide correct answers.

Accuracy

Most businesses end up depending on manual data entry and procedures to put together 30 to 100 Excel files (each with different versions). Manual processes are notorious for causing human error, inconsistencies, and a lack of control since there is no easy way to filter down the numbers.

Optimization

Monitoring and changing the budget during the year is an effective business practice that contributes to increased profits and productivity. But, due to technical limitations and the manual labor needed to combine actuals and budgets, many businesses do not use it.

Cost

The cumulative cost of several annual budgeting projects will stack up once all the time and money that the six budgeting issues above consume are added together. Aside from the labour costs associated with inefficient procedures, many businesses are unaware of the value that good budgeting and fiscal planning can bring to the table.

Value

Perceived importance is one of the most critical factors in the budgeting process. Is the money you spend on planning and budgeting worth it? Operating managers should be able to make informed choices that are in line with the company’s overall financial priorities thanks to fiscal planning.

Key Takeaways for Fiscal Planning

At Global Data 365, we have learned these budgeting problems from our monitoring and analytics customers time and time again. As a result, with our new budgeting tools, we want to improve the way you budget. Our budgeting system is a simple, adaptable, and simple-to-use fiscal planning solution that manages and streamlines the budgeting process in Excel and on the web from more than 140 ERPs. Users can use their existing Excel skills to transform the budgeting process into an easily controlled, systematic process that can be completed in half the time with traditional Excel integration and an interactive web portal.

Here’s how we can help you gain more control over your processes and make your next budgeting period easier:

– By eliminating manual processes and disparate structures, you can save time and money on financial planning.

– Easily create, compile, and report on the budgets on a single forum for budget owners and contributors.

– With planned, automated workflows, you can cut the budget timeline in half.

– For simplified budget and actual reporting, import data directly from over 140 ERPs.

– Improve financial efficiency across departments by increasing productivity with fast, reliable budget numbers.

Budgeting tool that is both affordable and versatile, and that works the way people want a financial planning tool to work. Businesses can reduce the budgeting process, produce more reliable numbers, increase financial results and efficiency, and make better decisions in half the time.

If you’d like to gain control over your budgeting problems, schedule a demo with us today!

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Global Data 365 is composed of highly skilled professionals who specialize in streamlining the data and automate the reporting process through the utilization of various business intelligence tools.

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Financial Reporting vs Management Reporting

Global Data 365
April 10, 2021

Reporting is essential to the growth of any business. The reports provide information and insight for the business leader when making strategic choices that impact not only all the departments but also the company, particularly when it comes to financial and management reporting and analysis. An organization benefits from reporting, as it helps them to evaluate progress regarding their business objectives in an enterprise, and to make strategic decisions to lead the business towards future success.

Many company owners are familiar with the standard financial reports they can expect monthly, but many are not familiar with the types of management reports available that could help boost efficiency and profitability for their companies. There are different kinds of management reports available.

While there are different kinds of strategies in both financial and management reporting, organizations often search for someone who can work in both. That is why it is crucial to know the differences between financial reporting vs. management reporting.

What is Financial Reporting?

Financial Reporting is directed towards compliance and is used for external purposes. Financial reporting is the method of shaping business strategies by supplying company stakeholders with financial reports. Financial Reporting can also be created to inform internal decisions. However, documents normally appear somewhat different from the data and contain different details. After that, the financial reports are sent to third parties. Financial Reports includes the usual weekly, monthly and annual reports that businesses get each month, including:

– Profit and Loss Statement
– Balance Sheet
– Accounts Payable
– Accounts Receivable
– Cash Flows Statement

Depending on the time span, these reports will cover multiple time periods. The intent of the report, as well as the third parties requests. For instance, annual financial reports to shareholders will include a three-month time. These reports are crucial for any organization. These reports are used by banks, investors, and regulators to accept loans, lines of credit, and other decisions. In many situations, financial reports are needed to ensure adherence to certain laws or regulations.

At a given point, these reports represent your company’s financial position. They explain the general impression of the success of your company but fail to provide deeper insight into the details of your business operations. They look backwards and don’t even inform you about the performance of the business in the next month or next year. Modern systems for financial restructuring may be altering this dynamic is due to the accumulation of data in real-time, as well as automated processes of reporting now allow the creation of financial reports that contains details of the current financial reports for your organization.

What is Management Reporting?

With management reporting, companies can have a deeper insight into the financial health of their organization. Management reports provide more insight than financial reporting into the company’s financial situation, performance, and overview of all departments. Management reporting and analysis provide greater insights, which include the ability to segment and analyse information in a broad range of ways. Some of the ways include:

Profit and Loss by Divisions
Realization Rate
Utilization Rate

Management Reporting is focused on parts of the business instead of an overall view of the organization. By segmentation, you can get into the specifics and examine the drivers of the business. For instance, an example would be the evaluation of how the Marketing Department operates over a given amount of time, or how much benefit a sales employee has had over a certain month. Though, you might want to make sure that you are receiving the correct reports that your organization requires to drive strategic decision-making.

Key Comparison: Financial Reporting vs Management Reporting

To enhance the performance and profitability of your business, different types of reporting techniques are available. Even though both contain different techniques, companies require someone who can handle both.

Compared to financial reporting, management accounting is not compulsory and is used for internal purposes mainly. Rather than relying on general accounting data used to reflect a company’s financial situation, management reporting uses main performance indicators, including metrics to evaluate a business’ return on investment (ROI).

Depending on what kind of financial reporting you use to inform your business plan, management reports are always a key commodity and are almost inevitably going to surpass financial reports when it comes to receiving greater insights. Whereas financial reports are simpler, management reports are more open-ended. The financial reports are critical for avoiding cash flow challenges and making more figures. To make informed strategic decisions, you will need management reports side by side. It is necessary to ensure the right processes and systems for the execution of apt financial and management reports.

Importance of Financial and Management Reporting

Some businesses only require financial reports every month for various reasons. Because management reports cost them extra money, they tend not to use them. If your business fails to implement management reporting, you could be losing out on details that will help your business expand or keep you from introducing expensive services that do not offer an ROI. Any business requires financial reporting for compliance, to ensure that the figures add up, and to minimize cash flow. To make informed strategic decisions backed by reliable results, your company will also require management reporting.

The insights gathered from management reporting and analysis are essential to make informed decisions that might be beneficial and profitable for your business. Management reporting also focuses on future data points that help plan for long-term future projects. Any organization will be interested in getting more insight into the whole company’s activities, which tends to improve success, profit, and productivity.

Best Practices of Doing Financial and Management Reporting

There is a dire need for creating great reports that provide data to the primary stakeholders. Reports are meant to be easily readable and comprehendible by others, so it does not harm in putting more time into ensuring all these reports make a lasting impression on the target audience.

Listed below are some of the best practices of creating impactful financial reporting vs management reporting:

– Eye Appealing Reports: Important stakeholders are always busy. Dry, lengthy reports could end up losing their attention or confusing them when they need to search for the data they require. A well-constructed report will make it easier for the leaders to skim through the required information.

– Automated Processes: It is essential to use automation to create reports, as it can save time. The less time is taken to produce a report, the quicker it can reach the business leaders. With the real-time aggregation of data pulled from the entire organization, you will have a report that will contain the latest data.

– Implement Graphics and other Visuals: For a report to catch the reader’s attention, it should include graphics and other visual elements that make it easier to read the report.

– Point-and-Click Design: You can either recruit a graphic designer to create the visuals on the report or use a point-and-click design to navigate easily through the report and deliver it at the right time.

– Multiple Reports: By automating processes, you can make multiple reports that address the operations of the entire department separately. This gives the business leaders an overview of all operations.

In Conclusion

A company’s performance and financial stability rely on both financial reporting vs management reporting. Yet, there are a wide variety of possible results when it comes to producing reports that fulfil their goals and deliver the required data on time to the main stakeholders.

So, whether you are generating reports for external or internal use, the reports must be created in an easy-to-read format that holds the reader’s attention. Here at Global Data 365, we go beyond basic accounting data and offer BI solutions to companies. We help businesses improve performance and profitability by providing insight into the data gathered in real-time through our reporting and analytics solutions.

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