InetSoft Webinar: Web Budgeting Application Demo

This is the continuation of the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft in January 2018 on the topic of "Web Based Reporting, Budgeting, and Forecasting." The speaker is Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft.

You will see that I have a Web budgeting application. This is really the same application. So in the first example we log on, and we were just presented with our entry sheets. When I click here, what you are going to see is really where we have taken the time to create much more of an infrastructure or an environment out of the application that fits the customer requirement. The first thing you will notice that is I have some multiple tabs here, and these are more position specific or persona specific.

I have an information tab that list my milestones so everybody can see what dates we are going to use, our schedule, some instructions for completing the budget, as well as some policies and procedures on what numbers should go in here, and how we calculate benefits and overheads. You will see that I have a budget holder. I have a budget controller level. I have an analyst level and an administration level. So before I even get started here what would an administrator do?

When they start new year, they might upload data from a previous year and populate it. They might want to produce some reports. They might want to actually set up specific entry dates. This is just a simple example. I don’t want to spend too much time with the administrator functions because these are really typically all the administrative tasks that you would do.

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If I come in now as a budget holder, this looks a little bit different from our first example where I was just presented with a little budget sheet. You will see that I have really what we call a Quick List or a complete schedule. Then on the left hand side you will see more of an explorer type menu. I have data entry processes. I have processes that I do as a budget holder, and then I am given some budget reports that I can review.

When we talk about a simple budget process, you would think that all the information would be in a single template which is sent out. But in reality a lot of times sales will be entered by one person, and expenses are entered by another. So if I come into here I will go into sales. You see now I am just presented with some more information because maybe I have multiple locations and specific types of business.

Here we have a retail catalog and an Internet store, as an example. Again, you have free form entry. One thing you will notice over here is that we have approval level, so when somebody is done not only can they save their data, work on it resave, but when they are ready to submit it to an approval level, they can actually submit it. Then whoever is assigned to this budget holder or this template, they can approve it.

The other thing we can do at this level is we could have worksheets and scenarios. Let’s come down here to expenses as an example. If I come down to expenses, and I don’t want to enter just one summary line for advertising, but I want to actually break that down for myself because I want to know that what I am going to spend in magazine advertising versus trade shows, I can actually create a worksheet.

I can come to that worksheet that is behind the scenes, and again you are seeing a grid format. I can begin to enter the information for my detail. Again my budget controller doesn’t want to see this. This just for my purposes, and then it will add to the total. When I am done, that total would then be populated into my spreadsheet. The other thing you will notice in this example is some color coded schemes because in the first example, I simply had a bunch of account lines. But here I am starting to show totals.

If I try to enter numbers in these cells, they are actually locked, and they can't be modified because they are totals or subtotals. You will notice then in this example I have a white cell. That means it's open for entry, and I could do that entry at any time. Also in this scenario you will see that salaries is locked.

Salaries is locked because the salaries’ budgeting is being done by separate people in a separate task which I will go to in just a second. And then as a budget controller, I can come in any time, and these yellow cells are actually locked as well because maybe at the budget controller level, these are based on their advertising budget, or maybe your advertising is done at the corporate level and it is distributed down to all the properties.

Individual managers want to see it because it impacts their house profits, but for the most part they cannot enter or adjust that number. They can only see the number on their budget worksheet. So there is a lot of functionality that you can see for allowing for different permissions and security.

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