User Reviews
Budget Maestro by Centage
USER REVIEWS - All reviews
Purchased Date: September 01, 2005
Financial Analyst, Dakota Electric Association
April 13, 2010
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Pros
Budget Maestro is a user friendly budgeting tool with some helpful budgeting features including benchmarking, spreading mechanisms, and ease of use.
Support from Centage has been good in terms of timeliness of responses and problem solving over the past 5 years.
Overall it has been widely accepted within our organization and has helped improve the efficiency and accuracy of our budget process at DEA.
Cons
Calculating data at times can be slow due to multiple users in the system at the same time. We have also experienced some space issues as the number of budgets and versions have grown. We would also like to see more reporting flexibility regarding layouts for sizing columns and overall appearance.
Overall
I would recommend budget maestro to other organizations as a useful budgeting tool. It would be important for any organization to analyze their data and structure requirements prior to selecting the budgeting tool which would best complement their data needs.
Purchased Date: January 01, 2010
Controller, Kashan, Inc.
March 22, 2010
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Pros
Was able to get up an running in a few hours. My trainer, quickly understood my objectives and helped setup my structure. Imported my chart of accounts exactly as I have them setup in my Dynamics GP in just a few minutes.
Cons
Interface looks old.
Overall
Highly recommend it, I looked around for a while and found that Budget Maestro offered a lot right out of the box and required very little effort to get up an running. Being able to import Actuals and measure against Budget is a breeze. Built-in cash flow and calance Sheet reporting won me over. I am very happy with my decision.
Purchased Date: July 01, 2006
Financial Analyst, DSSW
July 07, 2009
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Pros
Budget Maestro is extremely useful in budgeting in forecasting because it allows the user to provide inputs on so many different levels, and this information rolls out through the budget to the correct line items. Adding costs or revenues is easy, and being able to drill down into details to find answers has been priceless. Importing values for the budget also saves a TON of time!
This program is AWESOME!
Cons
With any program that is going to provide so much detail, there is a great amount of set up time to ensure accounts and other items are set up properly. Once this is complete, its just a matter of learning the program to meet your needs. Training time will have to be considered, but I think it is worth the time and the money.
Overall
4.5 out of 5 stars. Cant wait to try Planning Maestro!!!!
Purchased Date: February 01, 2009
CFO, S & J Supply Company, Inc.
July 01, 2009
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Pros
1. Very powerful forecasting tool that can handle both simple and complex aspects of forecasting. Handles multiple departments, entities, and the consolidation of them with ease.
2. Very easy to import actual data in order to perform variance analysis.
3. Easy to import almost all information necessary to set up a "plan" the first time.
4. What-if analysis allows you to look at the financial impact of making changes in your business without having to change your primary "plan"
5. All reports can be exported to Excel
6. Report layouts can be customized.
7. Very easy to create a 5 year forecast that allows increase/decrease assumptions to be customized in numerous ways, and using as many timeframes as desired.
8. Handles lines of credit and term loans, both fixed and variable rate, very easily.
Cons
1. Can't run a statement of cash flows based on "actual" data, only on "plan" data.
2. Not very easy to run a "plan" balance sheet for a future year as a stand-alone report, must either start the report on a month just after you have "actual" data or create an "actual/plan" version that houses a combination of data so it can be used for beginning balances.
3. If using Desktop version, additional modules need to be purchased to handle pre-paid insurance automatically and forecast inventory.
Overall
Solid business performance management software package.
Purchased Date: December 01, 2006
Controller, Ambassador Solutions
July 01, 2009
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Pros
My budgeting task has become much easier in comparison to using spreadsheets. I also appreciate the level of detail that I can enter within Budget Maestro. Also, the Link Maestro product is a great add-on for importing from MAS90.
Cons
My only complaint is the amount of formatting I have to do when exporting a report to a spreadsheet. It would be great if there were more features for report formatting.
Overall
I highly recommend this product to anyone who is ready to move beyond the spreadsheet way of budgeting. I find the product to be a real good investment for not just annual budgeting, but also for tracking against actuals and forecasts.
