Build Budget Models Quickly Using Pre-Built Data Modeling

Utilizing budget modeling is one of the quickest ways to future-proof your organization. By applying a different set of assumptions, constraints, or situations to create alternative budget models, your decision-makers can easily see the downstream impacts of different decisions. However, if your teams are using different data or calculations to derive their planning, it will be impossible to avoid inconsistencies.

Move beyond guessing and what-if analysis with pre-built data modeling from AppComputing. All your teams will be informing their budgets with actual, historical performance data that’s pulled directly from your existing systems so they can see the potential impacts of an action, or in some cases, inaction. Here are just some of the ways your organization will benefit from budget data modeling.

Use Company Data Models to Increase Accuracy

AppComputing BudgetEngine enables your company to create policies that drive calculations at the corporate level that are used by all your teams. For example, when it’s time to conduct headcount planning, all your assumptions are based on configured calculations for salary and taxes. The system will automatically divide annual salary values into monthly payroll values based on salary changes for each headcount.

You’ll get the flexibility to create policies that accurately reflect your unique business processes and schedules. For example:

• Select from multiple payroll schedules, including semi-monthly or biweekly.
• Configure Social Security Tax maximums. Now, when employees max out their Social Security tax contribution, your data will be automatically updated to reflect the new value in the time period when the max was exceeded.
• Change PTO policy formulas based on years of service or hours per year, including rollover max.
• Setup multiple work locations so you can analyze work-location-based payroll taxes.

Typically, you would have to do all this manually, and for every model. With AppComputing, your users do not have to re-engineer all the programming and formulas to derive the financial statement. You’ll get increased accuracy even when you have multiple users because everyone utilizes the same models and assumptions which increases accuracy and efficiency.

Projections Using Actual Historical Data

AppComputing BudgetEngine enables your team members to use actual historical data for their budget modeling, not estimates or guesses. Modules in BudgetEngine make it easy to connect the application to your other business systems and pull actual data. For instance, in just a few clicks, BudgetEngine automatically imports all your employee records from your payroll system and records the Employee Group, Department, Work Location, and Salary to name a few. So now, when a department head is creating a budget model, they’ll be building it based on actual numbers and historical payroll values from the payroll system. You can also add records for employees to be hired to reflect planned or estimated headcount impacts.

Data from your payroll system in this example is automatically reflected in your financial statement. As your projected months occur, actual values from your payroll system will replace projected values across all budgets where that employee is included. This ongoing updating to actual values gives you’re the highest data integrity with the lowest manual effort because the system does all that for you automatically.

Highly Granular

You’ll get high granularity in your data modeling as well. You’ll be able to see the monthly salary, PTO, taxes, insurance, as well as commission and other costs for each employee. Also, the AppComputing BudgetEngine will automatically calculate and apply accrued, but unused, vacation liability.

Similarly, BudgetEngine connects to your order entry system to inform your budget modeling. In a couple of clicks, you can see the order details and configure the fulfillment option. You can split invoice billing into programs based on percentage completion, unit, or dollar amount.

Choose from a lump sum or ratably over time like a sales contract so you can accurately reflect your company’s processes. The system will also recognize revenue based on a lump sum, or ratably over time. Internal automation makes IFRS compliance easy because it is impossible to recognize revenue before delivery. If attempted, a validation error will be displayed to the user.

Easily Review for Accuracy

Once you configure all your budget modeling, BudgetEngine presents an easy-to-read overview of your budget. Your financial statement is automatically updated to reflect the order values, cost of goods sold, cash receipts and accounts receivable balances. The system will also automatically update:

• Deferred revenue based on the revenue recognition schedule from your fulfillment schedule.
• Cost of goods sold, inventory, sales commissions, and sales tax/VAT.
• Detailed cash receipt calculations based on billing and payments.

Get Started Today

Often, the barrier to adopting data modeling is getting started. If you’re still using Excel for budget analysis and modeling or need better internal controls to create consistency and efficiency, contact the experts at AppComputing today.

Since you are interested in this pre-built data modeling, take a look at this topic, Multi-Entity Consolidation.