Too Many Cooks Spoil the Spreadsheet
This is part 6 of 12 in a blog series on understanding the risks of your current planning, budgeting and forecasting process. For the next few weeks, we’ll be posting a new article every Wednesday on budgeting best practices that will look at the challenges of the budgeting process and how to solve them. Catch up on last week’s post, How Secure is Your Business Data?
Planning, budgeting and forecasting often requires participation and input from a handful, or more, of key people. Spreadsheets are:
- Created
- Formulas are put in place
- Data is entered
- It’s sent to colleagues for review and further input.
Over time, you could end up with multiple variations of the same spreadsheet which can lead to data errors, the consequence of which is poor decision-making.
Are you using spreadsheets for your budget?
A spreadsheet for budgeting can be an easy and powerful way to:
- Capture information
- Manipulate data into forecasts
- Plan budgets
– which is why they are found in offices everywhere. However, as spreadsheets are passed around the office for additional input, rows or columns are added, formulas and linked data can be replicated or lost, and you could end up with a budget spreadsheet full of errors. You might not discover the mistakes for weeks or even months.
Gain control over your budgeting process
Gain control over your financial data by implementing a better Excel business budgeting solution. Download 21 Ways Your Budgeting Process Puts Your Business at Risk to learn how a centralized budgeting solution can provide the version control you need to get through the planning, budgeting and forecasting process. A centralized budgeting solution works differently from the traditional spreadsheet. Instead of using multiple spreadsheets or multiple versions of spreadsheets, you have a single, controlled spreadsheet that can be accessed by the people involved in the budgeting process. As colleagues enter data or make changes, they provide their signature, reason codes or notes so you know who made changes and, more importantly, why those changes were made. Audit trails and document control offered in a centralized budgeting solution can streamline the process and improve the integrity of your data.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, as the saying goes, and the same sentiment can be applied to the development of an accurate, reliable budget. With poor document control, data can easily be lost or misinterpreted. Download the eBook created by True Sky, 21 Ways Your Budgeting Process Puts Your Business at Risk to learn some of the best budgeting practices and to see how you can gain control over your spreadsheets for business budgeting with a centralized budgeting solution. Contact us for more information about creating one version of the truth regardless of how many cooks you have involved in the planning, budgeting and forecasting process.
