Planning Maestro
8 Reviews 4.5/5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★A cloud-based budgeting and forecasting application designed by Centage. Previously Budget Maestro.
Product Overview
Planning Maestro by Centage is a cloud-based planning and analytics platform designed for small to midmarket organizations. Previously Budget Maestro, this software offers sophisticated financial intelligence for budgeting, forecasting, and performance reporting. These features make it accessible and valuable for businesses of various sizes.
Planning Maestro software stands out for its ability to synchronize profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow while ensuring GAAP compliance, offering both short-term and long-term financial health views. Additionally, it comes equipped with 40 customizable GAAP/IFRS-compliant reports.
Pros
- Generates accurate financial forecasts
- Integrates with general ledger
- Synchronized P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements
Cons
- Collecting online payments is "pay-per-use"
- Payroll is a monthly add-on
- Limited export functionality
Target Market
Small to mid-market companies across various industries that require sophisticated yet accessible financial planning and analysis tools. It’s particularly suitable for organizations transitioning from complex spreadsheets to automated budgeting and financial forecasting software.About Planning Maestro
Video Overview
Features and Benefits
- Quick Setup: Planning Maestro offers a user-friendly setup with real language prompts, wizards, templates, and menus, eliminating the need for programming or complex formulas.
- GL Integration: The software seamlessly integrates with General Ledger systems for secure data exchange, enhancing budget creation, comparisons, and forecasting while minimizing data entry errors.
- Accurate Planning and Forecasting: Utilizes built-in financial intelligence and rules based on your assumptions to maintain continuous accuracy, with a centralized database for a consistent data version.
- Automated Financial Statements: Generates forward-looking balance sheets and cash flow statements, allowing for in-depth analysis and responsive decision-making.
- Enhanced Decision-Making: Offers advanced reporting capabilities for greater business visibility, directly drawing data from your GL and sales systems.
- Scenario Analysis: Supports unlimited “what-if” scenarios, enabling the assessment of various business impacts on revenue and cash flow.
- Team Collaboration: Encourages collaborative budgeting with role-based access, allowing teams to explore potential actions while maintaining an accurate, consolidated budget model.
Product Overview
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User Reviews of Planning Maestro
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The consolidation of our 80 departments is seamless now. No more excel formula errors.
Good solution when it was on premise, went cloud based and doesn’t function well
Good reporting capabilities
Once the solution went SaaS based it became very difficult to work with.
Just implementing it now. We are not sure what it may do or not d, but we are taking advantage of 1-hour training sessions with the vendor who has been very patient with us.
Just seems to be the fit we’re looking for!
None
Budget Maestro has saved us a lot of time for me. When I do a forecast compared to Excel, Budget Maestro probably has saved me 2 — 3 days in putting our numbers together.
Budget Maestro and Analytics Maestro have helped us to not only improve the overall budgeting process, but has enabled the University to capitalize on our growth opportunities today while better preparing our institution for the future.
Budget Maestro was very intuitive and the workforce planning module was especially attractive as we needed to get a better handle on our personnel expenses across each business unit. The ease of use, coupled with robust reporting and drill down capabilities made Budget Maestro the right choice for us.
There’s a lot of power packed into this system. It’s not surprising that Budget Maestro stands out because of all the different tools and features it has. I would say, what made it really unique to us, and what I like most about the software, is that it has the ability to create a balance sheet and a cash flow.
The ability to use Budget Maestro to analyze and budget labor and related benefit costs has been invaluable, particularly in light of the unknowns and challenges related to the Affordable Care Act.
