In the previous post we discussed the functionality of Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Fixed Assets in Sage X3. This blog post will move on to talk about the Budgeting and Planning application and its features available in Sage X3. Budgeting is an important aspect to any company, no matter how big or small, in order to see where the company has been and to plan accordingly for the future. Sage X3 integrates with your enterprise data to help make quicker and more informed business decisions while shortening the planning and budgeting process.
Budgeting and Planning
Free yourself from time-consuming spreadsheet mechanics and focus on strategic budgeting and planning. With Sage Budgeting and Planning, you improve the flow of key information, such as business drivers and transaction data, through templates, automatic distribution and consolidation of the budget, central control over budget revisions, real-time seamless integration of data sources, and built-in security mechanisms. With more control over your budgeting and planning process, you can create effective, more accurate budgets and forecasts, and render a true analysis of company performance.
Utilize Bottom-up or top-down budgeting processes—or a combination of both: Whether you need to allocate a revenue target or cost projection from the top down, or consolidate several different budget plans from the bottom up, Sage Budgeting and Planning accommodates your organizational structure and provides a purpose-built solution. Strong management capabilities allow for seamless integration of budget submissions from multiple departments, using “Plan Sheets” that have a familiar spreadsheet look and feel.
- Integration with all enterprise data
- Integration with General Ledger (GL)
- Email notification
- Spreadsheet-like control
Integrate your budget with enterprise data sources: Once your system is set up, Sage Budgeting and Planning integrates financial information from your general ledger. You can also calculate and deploy values from other data sources including Microsoft® SQL Server,® Access,® Dbase,® Excel,® Visual FoxPro,® and any ODBC- or OLE-DB-compliant database.
Analysis features provide more powerful insight: Sage Budgeting and Planning gives you additional power to analyze budget and actual data with Dimensions and Microsoft SQL 2000 Analysis Services. Within a data cube, you can view data in several dimensions (such as by territory, product, and customer), change an assumption or driver, and return it to the plan.
Advanced Reporting Capabilities using OLAP Cubes: Sage Budgeting and Planning allows you to use Microsoft Excel Analyzer to retrieve information from your OLAP cubes so you can present numbers clearly and effectively. Additionally, you can build multidimensional cubes and launch the Analyzer Tool directly from Sage Budgeting and Planning.
Other Features
Management Features:
- Strong Management capabilities allow for seamless integration of multiple department budgets, using “Plan Sheets” that have a familiar spreadsheet look and feel.
- Automatic integration of your most important financial information is available directly from your general ledger.
- Comprehensive security lets you limit the use of Plan Sheets to authorized users as well as define their ability to view, edit, or modify information.
- Access your information quickly and easily
- Transfer information directly from the source
- Automatically update users on activity in the planning process
Analysis Features:
- Create “what if” analyses to reorganize budget structures so you can view the impact of potential changes to your plan.
- Extract important data and create relationships between data points to illustrate patterns, trends and exception that indicate how your business is doing—and where it is going.
Calculation Features:
- Apply calculations to a group of columns and spread back to individual periods using factors such as seasonal trends, business drivers, and prior year balances.
- Global formulas can be used by anyone in the system, eliminating the need for users to rekey standard formulas.