Gaining Buy-In/Manager Accountability with Easy to Use Budgeting and Forecasting Software

How do I get department managers to submit accurate budgets and take ownership of their budgets?

“These aren’t my numbers!”  Is that a familiar refrain in your organization around budgeting time? Do line managers complain they can’t recognize their budgets and their input was ignored after Corporate Finance adjusts what it sees as unrealistic or inaccurate department budgets?

Welcome to the typical budget tango, which pits executives pushing hard for revenue and profit goals against line managers pushing back to reflect market realities, against a backdrop of imperfect technology.  By the end, everyone involved in the dance is as mistrustful as they are exhausted.

Agreeing to make a change

Any company can alleviate the pain of this process. Companies that value the firsthand knowledge line managers bring to the table can go even further, establishing a budgeting process that reflects the VP of Manufacturing’s views on production forecast, capacity planning and contribution margins, and the VP of Sales’ views on the sales mix, what customers really want, and where the cost saving opportunities lie.

Company managers don’t expect you to run their machines or manage their channels. Maybe it’s time to stop expecting them to create budgets using complex spreadsheet models.

Fostering a climate of cooperation

Is it unrealistic to engage managers in the budgeting process, have them welcome accountability, inform the budget with their inputs, and create a budget that connects the top-down strategic plan with the bottom-up operational plan? Can you really translate field know-how into a higher quality budget?

Yes, because with Budget Maestro / Planning Maestro:

• Managers don’t work in spreadsheets, saving them the aggravation of working with an unfriendly, unfamiliar tool, and you the aggravation of fixing the inevitable mistakes. They can’t break the model.
• Managers use simple, menu-driven prompts written in real English and presented in a Windows environment, to prepare budgets using the G/L accounts known to them.
• You can provide managers with regular reports, or let them run their own reports, and drill down into the data.
• You decide which managers can access which portions of the budget.

Finance spends less time fixing spreadsheet errors and more time working with line managers on their needs and assumptions. Technically, our solutions can’t ensure that you talk to managers, but they can pave the way for a helpful, productive dialogue that leads to more accurate and realistic budgets, and a shift in attitudes as managers become invested in the budgeting process.