Top 10 Elements SMBs Need for Financial Planning Software
Posted by John Orlando on Wed, Mar 23, 2011 @ 09:23 AM
If you’ve decided you need to move off of spreadsheets, and have determined which type of solution and vendor fits your business and budget, the next step is to evaluate specific aspects of budgeting and planning software. 
The best solution for budgeting and financial planning delivers these 10 Key Elements:
1. It is easy to implement, use and own. At the core, you need a solution that has the financial logic built directly into the screens your team will use. Line managers can enter data they know from from everyday operations without having to develop or maintain complex formulas or macros.
2. It closes the data gap. You need a solution that ties every user’s data into the same centralized relational database. This allows everyone to see the same financial data, or whatever portion of the data they need to see.
3. Reporting takes center stage. You must get a financial planning solution that provides easy and comprehensive reporting options. The best options provide reporting without costly and time consuming programming. You want your users to produce insightful reports at any level of detail with just a few clicks of a mouse.
4. It makes collaboration easy. Look for a solution that is designed with the non-financial user in mind. Data entry screens that are intuitive to use, easy to enter data and to run reports without relying on IT.
5. It shows you the low-hanging fruit. You'll need to generate multiple views of your business to enable you and your managers to see where the greatest business opportunities exist. You get clear answers to questions such as: who are my most profitable customers? Who are my most efficient managers?
6. It enables you to go from reactive to proactive. It will give you the right numbers when you need them, enabling you to move more quickly both when opportunities appear or when disasters loom. It also gives you flexibility: your forecasts are no longer cast in stone. As the conditions surrounding your business change, you can update your forecast to reflect today’s reality.
7. Your P&L, balance sheet and cash flow information is available anytime. Your P&L is a short-term look at what happened last month or last quarter. Your balance sheet is an indicator of the underlying strength of your business. Cash flow tracks ability to cover expenses and fund growth. The right financial planning software will automatically tie these statements together to ensure 100% accuracy and synchronization.
8. It does not require IT resources. The right solution should be implemented easily by your finance team, with virtually no IT support. Your finance team – and others – should be able to import data from other sources, create financial models and make changes as needed, generate financial statements and run management reports without using precious IT resources.
9. It does not require changes to your existing account structure. The software should work with your existing Chart of Accounts with no need for you to modify them. It should not require you to truncate account names, condense accounts into fewer levels or make you perform other tricks to make your business fit into the tool.
10. It grows with you. You need a solution that keeps pace with your company in both size and cost. Spreadsheets are hard to scale to large numbers of users, and you risk mistakes proliferating with more and more people working in those spreadsheets. Larger solutions, like BPM, won’t shrink when you need to scale back.
Effective and efficient financial management is a critical function in any business, regardless of size. No single tool is perfect for every company. And no business wants to change financial management systems frequently. It is vital that the SMB fully understand the capabilities and drawbacks of the financial planning systems they are considering.