We currently use excel and I am looking for something that is more accurate and user friendly for cash forecasting, ideas?
Answers
I have heard some very good things about PlanGuru. You might want to check that out.
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Ive been working with planguru for two years now and it has been easy to implement, user friendly and very low cost. I have saved so much time in my forecasting that i have more time to dedicate to bringing in revenue.
Any investment in new finance system should, i would suggest, have an ROI associated with them. My first step would be to look at the business impact of using your current
Then I would look at asking if it is just the cash flow reporting system that is difficult to use and has errors? is it the entire planning process that needs to change? Do you want to include operational or functional decision makers in the process as well as finance?
We find that when projects and initiatives are planned at the operational level and have all the finacial facts understood when deciding the future path of the organisation then forecasts are much more accurate and bought into by all contributors. A SaaS delivery model is a great platform to easily get these processes out to a wider audience
just some thoughts when looking to change finance systems
We have success in many cases with TM1 Cognos in regard to cash forecating.
You can check it out.
Depends what you need:
To you need a tool to simply collect the data from your local subsidiaries and leave the specifics how to derive the cashflows to them? In this case I can show you a simple web-based cashflow forecasting system that could help out pretty quickly.
If you need a tool that derives the cashflows according to some rules from your ERP and/or TMS system and which is used only centrally, Excel is not such a bad option. In this case you might need to overwork your solution a little bit to make it more user-friendly and less error prone. Please note, this will only work if you are using it centrally and you have no data feed from local subsidaries. Also make sure, that you setup the rules in such a way, that a change to the rules does not require extensive reworking of the sheets. Ideally you will setup a model with a range of parameters that you can tweak, using VBA code instead of using formulas that nobody will understand after a while and which are just too error prone.
If this does not apply, Excel is not an option. There are a number of tools available that support such a scenario nicely, but the choice not only depends on your specific requirements (and existing system infrastructure) but also strongly on budget restrictins. Please feel free to provide more information, so that I can elaborate on the range of options there.