However, as the organization grew, the error ridden and time consuming process limited the effectiveness of fund and resource allocation for the more than 30 critical programs in place.  Pat Keppler, Finance Manager, and her leadership team knew that in order to manage effective growth and continue to support the needs of its community, they needed a more strategic financial tool. With deep expertise serving the non-profit community, Pat and her team turned to Budget Maestro from Centage to better manage the budgeting & forecasting process, and lay the foundation for long term success.  

“When you are responsible for ensuring the financial foundation is set for the success of critical mental health programs for more than 20,000 children, Excel is not the tool to rely on. With a high margin for error, it would be irresponsible not to improve the financial process through advanced automation tools, designed to support strategic budgeting and forecasting,” noted Keppler.   

For the non-profit industry, the ability to budget, per program, is of critical importance. Each program, vastly different than the next, is uniquely designed to meet certain objectives and to appease the requests of key funders. As a result, Pat is required to manage various budgets based on a number of parameters - % of manager time/salary, number of staff, amount of funding allocations of support costs to all departments, etc. To report on the accuracy of these parameters within each budget is extremely difficult in a traditional spreadsheet. By automating the budget process, Pat can easily report on the funders requirements and, with the click of a button, prove the program budget is being allocated appropriately and/or if a change is needed, Pat can easily do so which will cascade down and be reflected throughout the budget.    

By better managing balance sheets and cash flow fluctuations, something not possible with traditional spreadsheets, Pat is empowered to easily create valid projections of funds, grants, and charitable contributions, and regulate seasonality and unknowns through continuous forecasting. Budget Maestro also enables Pat to develop accurate income forecasts – related to program services, contributions, gifts and grants – and take advantage of “what-if” scenarios to account for auctions, walks or runs, galas, etc. Pat can now change assumptions and see the immediate impact on revenue, expenses and cash flow. This functionality puts Pat in a more strategic role, helping to educate her leadership team and guide their decision making as new programs were evaluated.    

According to Pat, “Managing the budget in excel was nerve-wracking and time consuming. I was always concerned about the integrity of the data and my time was spent down in the weeds of data entry. By automating this process, I can spend more time working side by side with the staff to strategically evaluate budgets and identify opportunities for improvement across our programs.”

Across the board, Pat has realized significant time savings.  Previously, Pat would spend up to 3 days inputting personnel data into a spreadsheet to allocate appropriate personnel to assigned programs. Each time she made a change, the risk of error was so high she needed to rebalance to ensure its accuracy. Now, personnel information is transferred seamlessly into Budget Maestro in less than one hour. Additional changes are easily executed with a simple click of a button, ensuring confidence in the accuracy of the numbers.

Budget Maestro also easily populates a new budget for a new program, which previously took a week of manual data entry to develop. The same holds true for re-budgeting. Each time a program needed to be re-budgeted, Pat had to re-budget the entire agency which lead to errors and consumed days of her time. In Budget Maestro, Pat can re-budget a department, add new programs, and eliminate programs within minutes, avoiding the risk for human error and compromised data.  Pat can now also turn programs on and off depending on expense trends like seasonality to stay razor focused on the programs that need to be managed at the moment.   

By accurately staffing and funding these programs based on up to date and accurate budgets, Pat and her team are helping provide a safe environment for at risk children and their families.  Pat notes, “I am grateful to Budget Maestro for not only making my job easier, but helping to ensure that we can allocate funds and resources to critical programs, designed to assist in the development and well-being of our community members.”