Forecasting and cost estimation

The system allows to elaborate and compare numerous variants and scenarios of budget forecasts. Thanks to a complex costing function, costs of given budget lines, departments or projects (e.g. investment projects) may be estimated in a reliable way, as well as the demand for resources and materials. The system also supports revenue forecasting and an introductory estimation of financing gap. On the basis of forecasts an offer for the client may be prepared, demand for resources or, last but not least, a final forecast may be chosen and on its basis budget planning may be started.

Templates and budget lines

The system enables the use of previously prepared budget templates. A template sets the structure of budget lines (main and subordinate), line descriptions and preliminary cost assessment. Thanks to the possibility of template creation, also in MS Excel spreadsheet, and inputting templates to the system, work on repetitive investment or department budgets is fast and very efficient.

Multidimensional and multiphase budget planning

Thanks to integrated Workflow, the system enables multi-stage planning and specifying budget forecasts, as well as creating detailed schedules and defining milestones. The system supports multidimensional view on costs and revenue, which allows to divide them for instance according to type, cost center, segments, regions etc. Moreover, the system enables planning and control of many measures, and thus efficient budgeting not only values, but also quantities and prices. Thanks to that construction, production and investment projects can be successfully managed.

Teamwork on budgets

The system supports teamwork on budget, ensuring safe access to critical data. Thanks to access rights managing, employees may plan parts of budgets without access to all information. The system also allows to delegate tasks and assign them to chosen workers on the basis of a given budget line. The possibility to create numerous budget versions and to import data from MS Excel eases work on budget, comparing and planning.

Budget consolidation

Complex mechanisms of joining individual partial budgets into aggregate budgets and projects enable managing all departments or enterprises within one system, as well as analyzing data from the general to the particular.

The system supports budget consolidation, enabling automated aggregation of financial data, copying budgets and updating, so as to ensure information coherence and reliability. Thanks to the option of joining with budgets of other companies from capital groups it is possible to tie values of budget lines which for one company are a cost, and for other revenue.

Planning resources and materials

On the basis of budget planned in quantities and in value and previously prepared cost estimation, the system allows to prepare a plan of demand for resources and materials needed to implement the budget. Materials and resources such as machines and people may be assigned to every budget line. During the phase of budget implementation, the system generates and automatically (on the basis of work time calculation and machines monitoring system) completes staff working record (so called logging work time) as well as machines working record. This allows to currently update the level of budget implementation and to control the level of equipment usage as well as to monitor materials consumption.

Introduction and workflow of accounting documents and tying them to budgets

In the phase of budget implementation, the system allows to introduce and store contracts, warehouse documents, invoices and payments on an ongoing basis and their control in relation to specific budget lines. Each budget line may be tied to a contract and invoice, as well as to other document or task. Every document introduced influences the execution of a given budget line, as well as the whole budget or project in terms of quota, amounts and percentages, and thus enables a detailed analysis of budget implementation, cost control and comparison to plan.

In case of a full but optimal usage of the system, budgets are automatically updated on the basis of processes (Workflow) of verification and assignment of contracts and invoices, which after a completed process are automatically tied to budget lines. The use of Workflow of documents and tasks in the budget significantly shortens the time needed to update data in the budget, eliminates multiple manual input of the same data, and thus limits the risk of errors. Thanks to a mobile solution to introduce and OCR invoices, cost documents may update budgets within minutes after their input in the place of their receipt (for instance in a branch, investment or project location etc.)

Thanks to an earlier processing of each document (verification, assignment, acceptance) there is also a full history of each contract or invoice in the system (who and when accepted it, the history of comments and all changes, connected documents etc.). Those documents are tied to an appropriate budget line, thanks to which it is easy to check what they were related to.

Control of budget implementation level

The system, on an ongoing basis and for each budget, enables tracking the level of its implementation as regards signed contracts and received invoices, control of deadlines resulting from contracts and schedules, registering documents or analysis of used resources and materials.

Thanks to integrated deviation reports, the system enables comparative analysis of plans to their implementation according to values from invoices and contracts, which provides knowledge about the level of budget implementation. On the other hand, comparing the stage of contracts implementation to invoices allows access to information about the degree of costs incurred in relation to what is included in the contracts. All abovementioned analyses enable reliable planning of cash flow and establishing bottlenecks as regards the involvement of resources.

KPI, reporting and analyses

The system has integrated and automatically updated reports and statistics which allow to control the whole implementation of budget, both in relation to costs and to revenues. Moreover, the system enables the implementation of monitoring reports. The level of access is defined for each report individually or within defined user groups (e.g. the board). All reports are available on-line from any device equipped with an internet browser. Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and alerts about exceedances causes automatic sending of reports and statements, e.g. in the form of an attachment, to previously defined e-mail addresses or via text messages with a link to the report (for example to project managers as soon as budget or a single budget line in this budget is exceeded).

Open integration with external systems

eXant BCS may be integrated with other business applications, for example of ERP class and external systems. Apart from information about accounting documents, additionally the information about payments completed may be retrieved, in connection to contracts and invoices. The system is equipped in ready-made solutions to integrate with such solutions as SAP, Oracle EBS, IFS, MS Dynamics, Sage Symfonia, Comarch, TETA.