Budgeting is one of the most important activities that a business must complete – and yet, often this task isn’t given the time or consideration it deserves.

Many organizations budget the same way year after year, usually  using Excel spreadsheets, and for no other reason than that they’ve always done them that way. This means that your budgeting process may have holes or inefficiencies within it that is costing you money, and potentially even endangering the security of your data. Here are just a few of the ways that your current budgeting process could be putting your business at risk.

1. There’s no centralized control. While Excel is a great application for budgeting, you don’t have any central point of control. Instead, you’re forced to work with multiple versions of the budget, possibly across departments or locations. How do you know for sure that you’ve got the most up-to-date version? How do you ensure that the right individuals have access to your spreadsheets?
2. You have to rely on manual data entry and template creation. Instead of being able to use a system that offers easy-to-use, customized templates, you’re working with confusing, inconsistent, or manually created templates. Data isn’t automatically updated, so you have to go in and do it yourself – resulting in a much higher potential for errors.
3. Your data isn’t secure. Without the right precautions, there’s no way to ensure that your data is truly secure. Whether you’re working in the cloud or through a local server, employees may have access to your private data – even if they’re not supposed to. That’s not to mention competitors or outside agents who want access to your numbers. This can pose a real threat to businesses that deal with sensitive information.
4. Lack of audit capabilities. Spot an incorrect entry or missing information? If you can’t identify the point at which that entry was made or went missing, you can’t hold your team accountable. And that means you can’t prevent it from happening in the future.
5. Lack of version control. Going hand-in-hand with the lack of centralized control, mentioned above, is a lack of version control. Spreadsheets may be labeled by version number or date, but when those files are getting emailed back and forth, things get confusing pretty quickly. All it takes is one person forgetting to update the file name, and the rest of the team has to resort to an educated guess about which version is the current one. It’s either that, or go through a painstaking process of checking your data manually.
6. Merge errors. Merging separate spreadsheets or workbooks into a high-level, single workbook is an important budgeting function, as it gives management a more complete view of the business’s finances. But what if the person who merges them makes a simple error, like adding or removing a row or column? That means that the entire workbook is now working on erroneous data, and management is making decisions based on mistaken assumptions.

A robust budgeting and forecasting solution like True Sky can eliminate these issues, making your budgeting or forecasting process more controlled, accurate, secure, and efficient. To learn more about how True Sky can help your business, take a look at this chart.

If you’d like to read about more ways your budgeting process could be negatively impacting your business, read our e-book “21 Ways Your Budgeting Process Puts Your Business at Risk.”