Budgeting 101 Survival Guide Presenter Authored by Zubin

Budgeting 101 Survival Guide Presenter Authored by Zubin Gidwani, Founder Dynamic Budgets Regional Chapters

Who is Zubin? – Former GP customer/end user Assistant Controller & Financial Systems Manager for public Company Maui Land & Pineapple Company – Tired of banging head into desk trying to manually manage 600+ department budgets, prototyped a solution after Microsoft announced the end of Forecaster, launched Dynamic Budgets in 2010. – Active w/ GPUG sinception (2007) – Former member of the GPUG Board of Advisors – Content Steering Committee for Microsoft Convergence and GPUG Summit – Inaugural GPUG ‘All-Star Award’ recipient (Nov 2011) – Implemented GP for GPUG, consulted on their website, developed Share My Code – Microsoft Certified Professional 2004 – Dynamics World - Top 50 Add On Products 2013 Regional Chapters

Top 10 Amusing Hurdles to Adopting a Budgeting Solution 1. 2. 3. We just need to revise the chart of accounts one more time We are about to upgrade, please stand by Why are those accounts even in the system we don’t want to budget those. 4. We budget for annual targets, can’t imagine how we will transition the staff to line item detail and monthly distribution. 5. That revised chart of accounts actually seems worse, stand by… 6. We haven’t recovered from the last install/upgrade, IT manager won’t allow any new products. 7. Don’t have enough time to bring in a new product 8. Haven’t finished year end / audit 9. They never get it right, lets just compare to prior year 10. We need to revise our chart of accounts. Regional Chapters

Poll Questions Your Experience with GP Budgeting 1. No exposure to GP Budgeting 2. Have worked with GP Budgeting in the past Role 1. Executive 2. Controller / Accounting Manager 3. Budget Administrator 4. Financial Planning and Analysis 5. Department Manager 6. Other Expected involvement with the module 1. General understanding so I know what my staff are doing 2. Will be hands on managing the data 3. Need to report budget data and want to understand how its managed Regional Chapters

Today’s Agenda for this audience… • • What does GP native budgeting allow us to do Why would we seek a 3 rd party budgeting product • Step by Step instructions with GP Demo 1. Creating a budget 2. Password protecting a budget 3. Entering / editing budget values in GP 4. Single Account Maintenance / Budget Maintenance 5. Budget transaction entries 6. Applying calculation methods 7. Importing / exporting values to/from Excel 8. Exporting faster with SQL views 9. Combining budgets • • New Features in GP 2010 Avoiding Budgeting Blunders Regional Chapters

Budgeting in Dynamics GP Budget functionality within ERPs is limited to entering and editing period values Budget maintenance is reserved as an administrative function The application interface is not positioned or suitable for field staff to enter data in a distributed fashion Regional Chapters

Budgeting in Excel with GP’s native export template Regional Chapters

Budgeting with custom Excel templates Conditional Total (only include lines which do not have characters in the Skip Column) Total =SUMIF($P 8: $P 19, "", C 8: C 19) Regional Chapters

Budgeting Platform Selection Criteria: • Excel based solution, or a more controlled environment? • Beware of the cost of per user licensing • Amount / cost required effort to install and configure (before even populating baseline data) • Budgeting and Reporting Single software Suite or 2 Best of breed solutions? • If being sold a Suite ask the vendor for separate quotes 1. Reporting only 2. Reporting + Budgeting Regional Chapters

Benefits of Using Budgeting Software vs Excel: • Save Financial Analysts weeks of effort for by eliminating budget template management (3 weeks of a $90 K financial analyst = $10 K) • Save budget managers days of delays and accounting disruptions with transaction-level self-service lookups. Regional Chapters

Case Study: IT Manager needs to budget for annual software maintenance agreements • Which vendors? • How much did I spend last year? • In which month is it due? Regional Chapters

Demo of Dynamics GP’s native Budgeting Functionality • Step by Step instructions with GP Demo 1. Creating a budget 2. Password protecting a budget 3. Entering / editing budget values in GP 4. Single Account Maintenance / Budget Maintenance 5. Budget transaction entries 6. Applying calculation methods 7. Importing / exporting values to/from Excel 8. Exporting faster with SQL views 9. Combining budgets Regional Chapters

<<Live Demo>> Regional Chapters

Features introduced in GP 2010 Regional Chapters

Budget Transactions Post by Batch with User and Date Stamp Regional Chapters

Budget Transactions (Audit Trails for Edits) Data entry is done by entering +/- adjustment amounts from the base values, there is no direct ability to enter the new number… Regional Chapters

Budgets Importing via Excel for mass updates GP supports the ability to Import budgets from Excel and Export Budgets to Excel. Imports bypass the Audit Trail functionality of the budget transactions but get the job done more efficiently for bulk edits. Regional Chapters

Budget Transaction Edit Report Regional Chapters

Budget Transaction Inquiry Regional Chapters

Budget Transactions inquiry only works if you checkmark Maintain History first before posting a batch Regional Chapters

Budget Transactions Notes (Journal Entry or Batch) Regional Chapters

Combining Budgets Regional Chapters

Pay Attention when choosing to delete the sub budget Which of these two are the source and destination budgets? Regional Chapters

Preventing Budgeting Blunders Regional Chapters

Excel Tips & Tricks § Run a Chart of Accounts extract and do a vlookup of budget account numbers to ensure they exist in the COA, as GP will not warn you that unrecognized accounts were skipped during import. § Compare your Financial Report of Imported Budget Values to your import write-back file total. § Never underestimate how creatively your users can break your locked and protected budget templates. § Provide a skip or exclude functionality with conditional totals to allow for alternative scenarios, references, and line item visibility for your calculations. Regional Chapters

What’s the difference between these screens? Regional Chapters

When closing the Budget Maintenance screen, Delete will delete the entire Budget, not just the account in focus when in doubt hit save… Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement Request: http: //tinyurl. com/cobveso Regional Chapters

Budget Calculation Method edits from the Budget Maintenance Window affect all accounts by default If the Range is blank you are editing all accounts in the entire budget Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement http: //tinyurl. com/6 nt 8 kn 3 & Requests: http: //tinyurl. com/86 fwmch Regional Chapters

Budget Calculation Method edits from the Budget Transaction Entry screen by default only apply to the single account in focus If the Range is blank you are editing the single account in focus only Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement http: //tinyurl. com/6 nt 8 kn 3 & Requests: http: //tinyurl. com/86 fwmch Regional Chapters

Delete means delete: the account’s budget vs. unsaved changes Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement Request: http: //tinyurl. com/cobveso Regional Chapters

Lock Your Budgets to Minimize Unwanted edits Restrict access to the Budget Maintenance and Single Account Budget Maintenance to only those who need the access Assign a password to prevent unintentional budget edits / deletions Regional Chapters

Difference Between Actual & Preliminary • All period edits are immediately saved in the database • Preliminary gives you a restore option when you x out of the screen (however, not if you navigate next or previous amongst accounts) Regional Chapters

No validation or Error Log when importing from Excel When importing from Excel GP does not alert you when it skips unrecognized accounts. Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement Request: http: //tinyurl. com/82 l 49 nd Regional Chapters

When Exporting to Excel, GP appears to lock up. When exporting from Excel GP has a tendency to open the Save As pop-up window in the background and locks the application. The workaround is to Show Desktop and then click on the GP program icon to then see the Save As pop-up. Microsoft Connect Product Enhancement Request: http: //tinyurl. com/7 yjncb 7 Regional Chapters

Survival Guide § When in Doubt, hit SAVE § Create budget Exports Frequently and Often § Use a SQL dump to get the data out faster § Restrict Security access to: – Budget Maintenance and – Single-Account Budget Maintenance Windows § Lock your budgets to minimize unwanted “Edits” § Try not to shoot yourself in the foot in Production § Test in Test if unsure… Regional Chapters

How to do it faster… Regional Chapters

Faster Budget Exports http: //tinyurl. com/ko 43 uvk Want your financial analysts to get back to work vs waiting 10 s of minutes for their exports to complete? Have your analysts or IT staff review the sample report I published on the Share My Code site to download thousands on records in under a second. Regional Chapters

Questions? Zubin Gidwani Dynamic Budgets zgidwani@dynamicbudgets. com 650 -332 -6651 Regional Chapters

Questions? Regional Chapters