NetSuite Planning and Budgeting- All you need to know
Planning and budgeting are essential to safe and rational business decisions, but most finance teams use clumsy, inefficient processes and questionable tools that produce questionable results. Poor planning and budgeting processes can hinder midmarket organizations that are experiencing or aiming for high growth in a volatile business environment. Since forecasts and goals are set ahead of time, new opportunities and challenges will appear as they become available.
NetSuite announced the launch of Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) in October 2017. Originally based on Hyperion/Essbase Planning, a long-time pioneer in enterprise performance management (EPM), it was re-engineered for the cloud by Oracle in 2014 as part of Oracle EPM Cloud and is now the leading cloud planning and budgeting system.
NetSuite Planning and Budgeting is a comprehensive solution for planning, budgeting, and forecasting that enables quick adoption of world-class financial planning across the entire business, with flexible and customizable deployment options. Two separate editions of Planning and Budgeting are available: the Standard edition and the Premium edition.
With NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, you can plan operational costs, capital expenditures, staffing needs, revenue, and financial statements, as well as access to interactive dashboards and support for multiple currencies.
NetSuite Financials is seamlessly integrated with the module, which offers comprehensive integration with Microsoft Office tools.
Video clip- NetSuite Planning and Budgeting
Using NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, finance teams can automate labor-intensive processes by quickly and easily creating budgets and forecasts, modeling what-if scenarios, and generating reports – all within one collaborative, scalable solution. Finance staff can turn their time from data entry and formula maintenance to strategic analysis activities that impact the business more directly. Through automated consolidation, troubleshooting, reporting, and data loading, time is reallocated from manual consolidation to more strategic analysis.
Key Benefits of Planning and Budgeting
NetSuite Planning and Budgeting Features
NetSuite Planning and Budgeting provides organizations with market-leading forecasting and budgeting capabilities, as well as reporting and scenarios planning capabilities—all in one scalable, collaborative solution.
1. Budgeting and Forecasting
Budgeting processes at the company and departmental levels can be automated. Prebuilt workflows based on best practices assist with closely tracking tasks, such as review and approval. NetSuite’s general ledger is dynamically populated and updated to incorporate changes to accounting segments in the budget templates. Make more informed decisions, based on actual data from NetSuite financials, by creating real-time forecasts in just minutes.
2. Scenario Planning and Modeling
Plan multidimensionally based on any number of factors, such as location, product, customer, or expense. With no formula errors posed by regular updates or monthly maintenance, it’s simple to model complex calculations such as revenue, operating and capital expenditures, headcount, cash flow, and sales.
3. Revenue Planning
Plan sales and revenue in accordance with the company’s objectives. Establish revenue and sales forecasts based on the drivers of each business unit in collaboration with finance, sales, and service. Follow up on actual performance against objectives and the resulting impact on cash flows and balance sheets.
4. Operational Expense
Connect your operational assumptions to financial outcomes with flexible driver-based planning. Facilitate a planning process that addresses corporate finance and line-of-business considerations.
5. Workforce Planning
Aligning needs and priorities of your organization with those of your workforce to ensure organizational objectives are met will simplify workforce planning and related efforts, such as headcount, salary and compensation planning.
6. Trended Financial Statements
A company’s income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are integrated according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The actual-to-budget trending provided by these financial statements is seamless and can be customized to meet industry-specific requirements. Direct and indirect cash flow methods are supported.
7. Data Synchronization
Data accuracy and accessibility are ensured by pre-built data synchronization with NetSuite ERP. Plans, budgets, and forecasts are automatically updated with the most recent financial and operational data.
8. Planning and Management Reporting
Quickly and easily create budget and actuals dashboards. The NetSuite Report Builder lets finance and business managers create web-based reports that are easy to use, yet powerful. Using the system’s secure, collaborative, process-driven approach, creating financial and management reports becomes a breeze, while drill-through capabilities let finance team members and business managers better understand variances between budgets and actuals.
9. Microsoft Office Integration
Microsoft Office tools, including Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, are compatible with Smart View for Office. Excel lets users create data grids incorporating Excel formulas and formats for customers, items and expenses categories on the fly. When data grids are rendered in Excel, you can perform common planning actions such as spreading and allocating.
Business Editions to Fit Your Budget
Integrated into NetSuite SuiteSuccess, Planning and Budgeting is available in two different versions – Starter Edition and Premium Edition – to meet the needs and budgets of your business. This version is the ‘starter‘ edition of the software for those who want an easy-to-use budgeting and planning solution right out of the box. Emerging businesses and organizations can take advantage of Planning and Budgeting’s core benefits without over increasing their costs.
Starter Edition features include:
- Financial Reporting
- Variance Analysis and Reporting
- Trended Revenue/COGS Planning
- Trended OpEx Planning
- Balance Sheet and Cash Flow
Premium Edition:
In order to accommodate and facilitate future growth, the Planning and Budgeting Premium Edition is designed for organizations that have already reached the point where a more robust planning and budgeting application and process are required. In this edition of Planning and Budgeting you will receive a necessary and foundational version that can be customized a bit to meet your needs. The following features are included in the Planning and Budgeting Starter Edition:
- Price x Volume Revenue/COGS Planning
- Driver-based OpEx Planning • Detailed Workforce Planning
- OpEx Modules (T&E, CapEx, Others)
Planning and Budgeting using Oracle NetSuite is powered by a powerful calculation engine that can accommodate a wide range of business logic with in-memory aggregation and instant financial planning analysis and reporting.
Conclusion
According to Mint Jutras, 81% of small and medium businesses are running their businesses directly with disconnected spreadsheets and manual processes.
The planning and budgeting needs of a company going through or targeting high growth are unique. Essentially, forecasting and goals must be fast, less resource-intensive, and create forecasts and targets that are current, relevant, and actionable. In a more sophisticated sense, planning and budgeting are vital to managing uncertainty, creating tight links between strategy and operations, and helping organizations move ahead with confidence during uncertain times. With cloud-based applications, these benefits can be achieved with minimal upfront investment and deployment effort while introducing best-practice planning and budgeting approaches.
NetSuite PBCS is the answer for companies preparing for future growth. Boost profitability and efficiency with NetSuite PBCS’s pre-built, best practice budgeting templates fueled by automated financial reports.
