Intelligent, Automated, Budget Platform Defines the Next Generation of Budgeting and Planning Systems

Centage Corporation, a leading provider of cloud-based budgeting and forecasting software, today announced Budget Maestro 9; a completely new version of its popular budgeting and planning software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). To learn more about Budget Maestro 9, please register for our webinar, “Introducing Budget Maestro 9” on Thursday, June 29th at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Budget Maestro 9 redefines budgeting technology, in that it automates the creation and maintenance of budget models by deploying built-in financial intelligence and rules to self-program and self-maintain them. As a result, financial professionals can define and create complete and accurate budget models in a matter of days, and adjust the model structure nearly instantaneously.

“The need for greater agility from a budget model that easily accommodates many, many iterations is what we hear most often from our customers,” said Barry Clapp, president and chief executive officer of Centage. “We developed an intelligent budget model that can re-program itself when things change, freeing the financial team to concentrate on the numbers that drive the business, rather than programming the model.”

“We’re excited to learn of the many new enhancements in Budget Maestro and Analytics Maestro in the Maestro Cloud. The added ease of use and navigation, and streamlining of screens features, along with sharing of a common interface for drivers will make the system even more useful and stronger,” said Angelito Santos, director of budget systems, reporting and business processes at Brandeis University.  “We also like the slice and dice views for reporting, and the sharing of based upon definitions across versions, and we’re glad that we’ll be able to make changes to budget lines for specific activity versions.”

“We developed the new version utilizing the latest leading-edge technologies that make the system most flexible and easy to use while maintaining all the underlying features and function strengths that have made Budget Maestro such a highly competitive product,” said Piyush Jain, vice president of engineering for Centage. “We’ve eliminated the pitfalls associated with spreadsheet budgeting and strive to make legacy tools which require complex programming, obsolete.”

“Centage’s latest release delivers a new and easier to navigate UI, more out of the box functionality, unlimited dimensions, multi-step allocations, more support for transactional level details and it has been optimized for the latest cloud architecture,” said Craig Schiff, president and chief executive officer of BPM Partners. “This combination of power and ease-of-use is a major step forward for solutions targeting SMBs.”

A few key new features of Budget Maestro 9 include:

  • Completely new Data Model – powerful and intuitive: Using a multi-dimensional model, with unlimited dimensions allows for sophisticated hierarchical modeling, enabling users to aggregate data and visualize relationships while maintaining the flexibility to customize the information to their organization’s unique business operations. By bringing all relevant data together financial teams can uncover a new level of analysis and a more detailed view of how budget attributes relate to one another.
  • Streamlined, intuitive, interface: Administrators can easily set up universal defaults and controls, ensuring budgets are easy to build and maintain. Intuitive single-screen workspaces keep budget contributors focused, providing the data and tools needed to complete the budget and make changes on the fly.
  • Integrated connections to financial and non-financial sources: Any data source can be used to populate a budget model or cube from ERP or CRM systems, creating a financial model that is more useful for detailed reporting. The system has the built-in intelligence to automatically glean the base structures from the ERP and to auto-create the dimensions for the budget model for rapid deployment.
  • Flexible self-service iterative reporting: Users can slice and dice unlimited dimensions with drag-and-drop ease. Time is a dimension which allows for pivoting and slice-and-dice of time periods in data entry screens and reports. Plus, self-serve analytics lets budget owners drill down to transaction level detail in reports. The underlying data becomes demonstrably more useful for understanding root causes and opportunities, and ultimately choosing the right course of action.

“Budget Maestro 9 seems so much easier to navigate with a couple of clicks to get right to a comfortable working screen,” said Karen DePasquale, assistant controller for JN Phillips Auto Glass Company. “It also really simplifies the use of its built-in functions, for example it can set up allocations and spread methods in a far more intuitive and straightforward way.”

Clapp adds, “Our goal at Centageis to help create a platform that contains all the information a company needs to evaluate the financial performance of their business so they can most accurately project future plans. The products enabling that should be simple and intelligent enough to eliminate the need for users to continuously intervene in order to maintain the system.”

Intelligent, Automated, Budget Platform Defines the Next Generation of Budgeting and Planning Systems

Centage Corporation, a leading provider of cloud-based budgeting and forecasting software, today announced Budget Maestro 9; a completely new version of its popular budgeting and planning software for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). To learn more about Budget Maestro 9, please register for our webinar, “Introducing Budget Maestro 9” on Thursday, June 29th at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Budget Maestro 9 redefines budgeting technology, in that it automates the creation and maintenance of budget models by deploying built-in financial intelligence and rules to self-program and self-maintain them. As a result, financial professionals can define and create complete and accurate budget models in a matter of days, and adjust the model structure nearly instantaneously.

“The need for greater agility from a budget model that easily accommodates many, many iterations is what we hear most often from our customers,” said Barry Clapp, president and chief executive officer of Centage. “We developed an intelligent budget model that can re-program itself when things change, freeing the financial team to concentrate on the numbers that drive the business, rather than programming the model.”

“We’re excited to learn of the many new enhancements in Budget Maestro and Analytics Maestro in the Maestro Cloud. The added ease of use and navigation, and streamlining of screens features, along with sharing of a common interface for drivers will make the system even more useful and stronger,” said Angelito Santos, director of budget systems, reporting and business processes at Brandeis University.  “We also like the slice and dice views for reporting, and the sharing of based upon definitions across versions, and we’re glad that we’ll be able to make changes to budget lines for specific activity versions.”

“We developed the new version utilizing the latest leading-edge technologies that make the system most flexible and easy to use while maintaining all the underlying features and function strengths that have made Budget Maestro such a highly competitive product,” said Piyush Jain, vice president of engineering for Centage. “We’ve eliminated the pitfalls associated with spreadsheet budgeting and strive to make legacy tools which require complex programming, obsolete.”

“Centage’s latest release delivers a new and easier to navigate UI, more out of the box functionality, unlimited dimensions, multi-step allocations, more support for transactional level details and it has been optimized for the latest cloud architecture,” said Craig Schiff, president and chief executive officer of BPM Partners. “This combination of power and ease-of-use is a major step forward for solutions targeting SMBs.”

A few key new features of Budget Maestro 9 include:

  • Completely new Data Model – powerful and intuitive: Using a multi-dimensional model, with unlimited dimensions allows for sophisticated hierarchical modeling, enabling users to aggregate data and visualize relationships while maintaining the flexibility to customize the information to their organization’s unique business operations. By bringing all relevant data together financial teams can uncover a new level of analysis and a more detailed view of how budget attributes relate to one another.
  • Streamlined, intuitive, interface: Administrators can easily set up universal defaults and controls, ensuring budgets are easy to build and maintain. Intuitive single-screen workspaces keep budget contributors focused, providing the data and tools needed to complete the budget and make changes on the fly.
  • Integrated connections to financial and non-financial sources: Any data source can be used to populate a budget model or cube from ERP or CRM systems, creating a financial model that is more useful for detailed reporting. The system has the built-in intelligence to automatically glean the base structures from the ERP and to auto-create the dimensions for the budget model for rapid deployment.
  • Flexible self-service iterative reporting: Users can slice and dice unlimited dimensions with drag-and-drop ease. Time is a dimension which allows for pivoting and slice-and-dice of time periods in data entry screens and reports. Plus, self-serve analytics lets budget owners drill down to transaction level detail in reports. The underlying data becomes demonstrably more useful for understanding root causes and opportunities, and ultimately choosing the right course of action.

“Budget Maestro 9 seems so much easier to navigate with a couple of clicks to get right to a comfortable working screen,” said Karen DePasquale, assistant controller for JN Phillips Auto Glass Company. “It also really simplifies the use of its built-in functions, for example it can set up allocations and spread methods in a far more intuitive and straightforward way.”

Clapp adds, “Our goal at Centageis to help create a platform that contains all the information a company needs to evaluate the financial performance of their business so they can most accurately project future plans. The products enabling that should be simple and intelligent enough to eliminate the need for users to continuously intervene in order to maintain the system.”