My scenario is this:
£20m Manufacturing company
Accounts on Sage MMS
8 Production departments
Production overheads are absorbed in to WIP at annual rates.
750 nominal codes.
The budgeting model I have inherited runs to 30 Excel sheets, 60 000 calculations.
You change one number, the whole thing recalculates.
We go through a few budget iterations, and then someone wants a comparison with an earlier version.
This is a nightmare.
What software is there out there to manage budget creation?
We are looking for budgets broken down in to months.
Tom Cadogan
Replies (12)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
No to 13 periods
BUT Winforecast will work on weekly periods changing during the year, e.g. four week months, five week month etc etc, you can design your own 52 week year splitting the months in any combination, and you can set this in the "other options" tab.
Answer
No, however in the new version, Financial Forecasting you can, but that is only available in the single user non consolidation version.
No not in
my version, which may have been superceded, but i do not know due to Sages incredily stupid and arrogant attitude, more of this later, dealt only with months or periods one to 12; there is a work around thats is unwiledly email me if you want the details.
not so sure about SFF that may do it, i ve just seen the answer below so it obviously does.
Sage winforecast and 13 periods
If you will excuse asking a supplementary question.. Does anybody know if Winforecast can handle thirteen 4 week periods?
It depends on your requirements
WinFC is probably a good place to start however it is recommended to get 2 half days of training to get the most from the product. Depending where you are in the country choose your reseller carefully. Feel free to call me if you need me to recommend anyone in your area 0161 304 8922.
Sage again
The older version of Winforecast Professional will do all that you need admirably.
The latest version, (at least the one that I have seen) is not quite so good, it doesn't appear to be based on the old Win4cast but on the Sage Forecasting which came into being around Version 9 or so of Sage Line 50.
Look at the new one by all means, but the older Winforecast professional V5.1 is a great product.
I do recommend Sage sometimes
the old win4cast product
now called sage financial forecasting sounds exactly what you need
emaail me if you need some more info or go to the web site
Use multi company if you have it
Hi Tom
Me again!
We use a dummy company to run our P&L budget. We enter the figures as one-line journals by month and build up the entire year. This is then pulled together with the actuals in Excel, using ODBC links to the database. I'm not sure if the version of Sage you use is very good with these, but if it is Excel freindly, it's a good way to go.
If you have a base budget and enter any amendments as additional journals, these can be modified, or voided, at will to see the new picture without losing the basis.
I'm with Ian
Yep - WinFC - I did the first UK review of what is (was) a fab product. I still have and use it.