Planning Maestro Reviews

The best part of this software are the drivers we use to manage our sales budget. We have several LLCs that are within this program. The ability to expand the way we create our budgets has given us greater insight into where we can save money. The elimination of finding "human error" input in an excel budget has alleviated so much time.

I have yet to find anything I don't like about this product.

Planning Maestro brought a platform that allowed us to integrate into our existing accounting platform and create a structured environment we could use to refine our budgeting and forecasting process.

I don't have anything negative to say. When I have run into issues with the software I have always reached out to Centage and we have found ways to incorporate what I need into the software.

There are no pros except maybe the price point for this product.

The initial implementation process was rocky with several changes of support staff and the length of time from implementation to actual deployment took several months, with the deployment never being fully realized. The final product was bugged, with drivers not working properly and accounts set up incorrectly. Uploading date to the software was not seamless and required time to properly configure files; downloading data to Excel had similar difficulties.

Cloud-based and scalable as we built out the company organically and through M&A

Some of the drivers are a bit tricky to understand.

We needed a budgeting package that would be (1) easy to learn and use for our end-users, (2) able to automatically integrate with 3rd party general ledgers and (3) provide a powerful set of customizable analytics and reporting tools. Planning Maestro has successfully met all three requirements, and allowed us to provide more accurate budgets/forecasts/reporting with faster turn around.

A common issues I have with multiple software vendors: Enhancements and usability improvements can take a long time to roll out.

1. Very powerful forecasting tool that can handle both simple and complex aspects of forecasting. Handles multiple departments, entities, and the consolidation of them with ease. 2. Very easy to import actual data in order to perform variance analysis. 3. Easy to import almost all information necessary to set up a "plan" the first time. 4. What-if analysis allows you to look at the financial impact...

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1. Can't run a statement of cash flows based on "actual" data, only on "plan" data. 2. Not very easy to run a "plan" balance sheet for a future year as a stand-alone report, must either start the report on a month just after you have "actual" data or create an "actual/plan" version that houses a combination of data so it can be used for beginning balances. 3. If using Desktop version, additional modules need to be purchased to handle pre-paid insurance automatically and forecast inventory.

Gets the job done and has changed how we handle our budget and how we look at budgeting. Little to no consultation with a robust budgeting, forecasting and integration with their analytics tool, Analytics Maestro, Budget Maestro.

Deoendi on company size workflow process is lacking. Some forecasting issues of budget and balance but creating and actual plan minimises the issue.

I found this product very easy to learn. That said, I am a CPA. Excellent tools for budgeting and forecasting. Very user friendly

We had some problems importing and exporting to excel. It took a while to set this system up and train staff to use it.

everyone can review this within the company, easy to update the budget and export the reports

there no no GL accounts which is very important for us

ease of use is super important. reporting is good and I love the dump into Excel for more slicing and to import.

copy paste was removed from previous version - bring it back!

Their support team is always available to help you through any questions or difficulties you encounter. The training provided is top notch and thorough and your trainer sets up your financial report formats for you to match your current statements. My trainer is still my primary contact person for help and all I have to do is send him an email. The software itself has enough built-in power and flexibility...

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Financial statements and reports utilizing proper accounting format rules can be very hard or impossible to attain by generating them within Budget Maestro. To attain the proper formatting that I am trained in and accustomed to providing to my management team I have to export the reports out to Excel and apply the spacing, headers, underlining, and so on inside Excel. However, now with their recent addition of Analytics Maestro, this issue is gone as Analytics Maestro is an Excel add-on so that you create and format all your needed standard and custom reports inside Excel and use Analytics Maestro to drop in the numbers and data you want in each report or statement.

In addition to providing robust budgeting, forecasting and integration with their analytics tool, Analytics Maestro, Budget Maestro is a true extension of a company's general ledger into future periods. This is accomplished through the unique software architecture, where every budget item, such as revenue, expense or personnel record creates an entry into a "behind the scenes" budget GL in the right...

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The workflow process in this application lacks in capabilities expected from larger solutions. This is probably not an issue in smaller organizations which to my understanding are the primary customer of this software.

I do like the preview of the expense and how it will look like on the P&L. It really helps me make sure that my spread method is correct. I like analytics maestro. I can use excel to build reports. Also, it is easy to use the data to create charts and graphs and make the financial data consumable to those budget owners, who may not have a fiance background. I also like the ability to refresh and update the data quickly.

Reporting. In analytics the idea of building is great, reminds me a salesforce. But it is sooooo slow on the virtual desktop. From what I understand this will continue to be the case in BM9. Also the reporting within the software is slow as well. It takes anywhere from 1-3 minutes to run any report. Also, the inability to create a version and it to show up in all plans. For example, if we want to create version of our 3+9 Forecast

Ease of use and affordability. The ability to design your budget without having to pay someone to configure the software is priceless. We were also able to implement and complete our budget in less than 2 months. This software allows us to budget continuously using the same data while just updating it for any changes. We budget annually, and re-forecast quarterly. This tool allows us to spend more time analyzing the impacts of the various variables and much less time actually creating the budgets to review. Once it is set up to forecasts into the future and all you have to do is edit for any changes. You can also perform endless 'what if' scenarios to see how potential changes would impact your forecasts.

Wow! I can't really think of any cons to this software. I am sure there are some limitations but for our company this fits the bill perfectly.

Simple to use, not very complicated. Has all the features needed for small companies and their budget needs.

Although simple to use, features are limited. They have a new web based version that should alleviate many of our limitations but we still have not had that rolled out. We were supposed to have the web based version last year but are still waiting for the roll out. They also are used to smaller companies and over the last few years we have grown dramatically so we have basically out grown the product.

A windows based product that is easy to learn and use. Can quickly create multiple Versions within a Plan and What-if scenarios. Can quickly import actual data from our ERP system and take the actual, budget, and forecasted data into Excel for custom financial reporting and analysis.

The structure that is in place for customer support. We have been using BM for about 4 years. When we need support it's an urgent need, we need an answer promptly. The current structure of sending an email to get on the support staff's calendar for a call is too slow. Prefer to call, get in the cue, and get an answer immediately.

Centage provides strong customer service and the product has been terrific value for our organization.

Our group has not transitioned over to the new Cloud Based program with Centage as of yet, so we experience limitations on uploading a large amount of data for various dimensional reporting.

We were Maestro's experiment to have virtual training. We were connected through phone and an equivalent of Go-To-Meeting. The instructor was friendly, patient and very knowledgeable about the product. It wasn't until the 4th day in training until we got a glimpse of the capabilities Budget Maestro could do for us. After a few frustrating months of trying to get Budget Maestro going for us they did reach out to us throughout the process and solve our predicament to the best of their abilities. Very good customer service!

From the beginning on, we explained explicitly how complex our business and budget was. We were assured our budget would be 70-80% finished by the time training was over. It was not. Perhaps it was a mis-communication between both parties as i was under the impression all drivers would be built and we would be ready to go, either way, Budget Maestro does want us to succeed and are hoping the new upgrade will be more friendly to our needs. I can't wait to get started and get a real feel for this product.

It is a good alternative to using excel spreadsheets. It's much easier to get reporting done when you have a number of departments and want to report as a total or individual departments. Uploading the information from our accounting software is easy to do. The vendor is helpful whenever we have problems. They can resolve most of our issues pretty quickly. We mostly use it for comparing P&Ls actual to budget and departmental reporting. In the past, we used Excel, like many companies, and found it was very easy to have errors. This is much more accurate. It allows us to break personnel, expenses, and revenue down several levels and also to roll it up.

We are still using an older version because there is one particular report that we like that has not been able to duplicated to our satisfaction on the newer version. The company has been through several refinements of the product but has still not been able to duplicate the report.

User friendly interface and reports Good drill down to get to source documents

Not easily available on any computer in the office - would prefer a more office friendly product that could be easily transferred from one computer to the next. No "out of the office" capability to use the software. No access of information unless it was taken from the computer that was set up for Maestro. Would prefer a web interface option

Eliminates the use of excel spreadsheets and circulation formula errors when dealing with multiple companies or consolidation.

difficult to set up for the first time. Very limited when you have to export to Excel because all data is exported as text format.

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No cons were added to this review

Budget Maestro is a user friendly budgeting tool with some helpful budgeting features including benchmarking, spreading mechanisms, and ease of use. Support from Centage has been good in terms of timeliness of responses and problem solving over the past 5 years. Overall it has been widely accepted within our organization and has helped improve the efficiency and accuracy of our budget process at DEA.

Calculating data at times can be slow due to multiple users in the system at the same time. We have also experienced some space issues as the number of budgets and versions have grown. We would also like to see more reporting flexibility regarding layouts for sizing columns and overall appearance.

Takes all the Excel spreadsheet nonsense out of budgeting. Great reporting package. We greatly appreciate the flexibility Budget Maestro offers our nimble team to make changes on the fly and seamlessly integrate with our ERP system to ensure financial data is accurate and up to date. Budget Maestro delivered value from the moment it was up and running and our team was instantly more efficient. Now, we can spend time on more strategic and meaningful initiatives to support company growth and innovative product development

It does take time to maintain new accounts. However, the benefits exceed the extra time for maintenance.

Runs on cloud as well as on-premise. Free trial is available which should be used before purchasing the full software in order to test applicability. Good GUI

Initial versions of updates have a few bugs which are fixed in later versions.