As quarter- or year-end looms, we start hearing about the need to tie up our budgets and forecasts. And hear about them again.  And again!  We are all fully aware of how critical these numbers are for intelligent decision making, both strategically and for day-to-day operations. On the flip side, we are all also painfully aware of the time and effort required to arrive at a final accurate budget that is the core of the CFO’s promise to stakeholders.

Arriving at a single version of “The Truth” for a CFO is an ongoing challenge, one involving inter-divisional processes and budget data sources, varied data and spreadsheet formats, multiple currencies and countless logged hours by many staff at all levels in order to reach The Truth.

How can you obtain The Truth without a single, accurate and consolidated version of your budgeting and forecasting data from all sources?  You can’t, without costly and time-consuming labour, corrections and revisions – hence the challenge.

When it comes to budgeting and forecasting the goal is obviously to arrive at The Truth, but also to set in place strategies and processes to consistently and sustainably get there while minimizing the time and cost to do it.

The challenge within a complex corporate structure using Excel spreadsheets to drive the budgeting process is consolidating the data from the spreadsheets into an accurate working corporate budget.  Your current Excel-based process requires manual input of data from multiple sources, each with their own templates and/or specific data requirements, which the office of the CFO has to merge. The data from each source is stored in the spreadsheets at the local level, re-stored and managed at the corporate level, emailed back and forth as revisions and so on.

The solution – a system that automates the budgeting and forecasting data consolidation process and eliminates the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of emailing spreadsheets all over the place, without eliminating the basic Excel formats and tools that everyone is familiar with.  Why not simplify the entire process with a solution that lets staff enter their budgeting data locally in a familiar Excel template designed specifically to their needs, with the data then automatically and securely consolidated in real time at the corporate level?

At True Sky, we make your budgeting and forecasting process faster, simpler and more secure. With True Sky you arrive at The Truth without all of the traditional headaches and lost time. To find out more, get in touch today: 1 855 878 3759.