While most recognize that budgeting is an important part of nonprofit finance, the budgeting processor many organizations is tedious and time-consuming … but it doesn’t have to be.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how the MIP Budgeting module can transform the budgeting process from a tiresome chore to an indispensable tool for strategic planning.
Flexibility is Important
When performed properly, budgeting can help you detect problems before they become a major financial headache. But the key to using your budget as a diagnostic tool is flexibility. When your budgeting process entails manual, error-prone calculations and countless spreadsheets, it becomes difficult to quickly and accurately adjust the budget to meet changing conditions.
Say Goodbye to Cumbersome Spreadsheet Budgeting
With the MIP Budgeting module, you have the flexibility of creating an unlimited number of budgets for multiple fiscal years, including cross fiscal year budgeting for grants. Projects can be created at the grant, program, department, or project level. You can make budget entries directly into MIP or simply copy/paste from external spreadsheets.
Either way, all of your budgeting data is centralized allowing you to more easily manage changes and make better decisions about modifying programs or cutting expenses if things don’t go according to plan.
You’re In Total Control
Maintaining budgets in the same MIP system that you use to process transactions provides tremendous benefit. For instance, you can enforce budget controls by checking for available budget in real-time with a single click during transaction entry. Whether a transaction is entered through Purchase Order, Requisitions, or any other integrated module, you choose the level of budgetary enforcement by configuring MIP to simply issue a warning or totally prevent entries that would put you over budget.
It’s All About Reporting
You’re already familiar with the built-in reporting that MIP Fund Accounting delivers … and the budgeting module is no exception, offering a wide variety of standard and customizable budget reports. You can analyze budget vs. actual using real-time data from MIP Fund Accounting. You can even set up best and worst case budget scenarios and perform detailed ‘What If’ analysis. You can look forward to future periods and calculate forecasted financial position or look back at prior years to get a historical perspective for comparison.
With the right tools, the budgeting process can produce many wonderful benefits.
Contact us if you’d like to learn about turning your budget into a valuable planning and forecasting tool with the MIP Budgeting module.
