Planning Maestro Reviews

Pros
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 GL accounts, in the correct amounts and the proper accounting period. What this means is, the financial statements you get in this application are always synchronized to the underlying budget. The balance sheet and statement of cash flows will accurately represent the forecasted financial position of the company to the extent of the accuracy of the budget itself. The financial statements and all other reports can be easily generated by users without relying on IT. The software can be directly integrated to popular ERP or accounting software GLs and the Analytics module which is integrated to Budget Maestro can also be integrated to other data sources such as CRM, inventory management, warehouse management, sales reporting data and others. Another feature I like to use is creating multiple versions of the budgets or "what-if" scenarios, each automatically generating a unique set of financial statements and reports, exactly matching that particular version of the budget. You can see how your financial position changes in future periods as you change the budget version. This helps in finalizing a budget that is reasonable and also closely aligned to company goals and plans.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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 it can handle all kinds of retail, distribution, or manufacturing scenarios, like for my company it is the need to build up inventory before a selling season and to do this for many different products and different selling seasons. Budget Maestro is capable of generating fairly accurate balance sheets and cash flow statements, in addition to income statements, as it has sections within it devoted to the balance sheet side of forecasting. Combining Link Maestro and Analytics Maestro to Budget Maestro provides the only solution one needs to not only generate a budget or forecast but to then generate all the financial reports, statements, breakdown analysis needed by management. With Budget Maestro I can drive my revenues, expenses, and inventory levels by units, not revenue dollars, which is a lot more accurate for forecasting when dealing with a wide variation of products, product costs and retail prices.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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!

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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 of making changes in your business without having to change your primary "plan" 5. All reports can be exported to Excel 6. Report layouts can be customized. 7. Very easy to create a 5 year forecast that allows increase/decrease assumptions to be customized in numerous ways, and using as many timeframes as desired. 8. Handles lines of credit and term loans, both fixed and variable rate, very easily.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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

Rating breakdown

Pros
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.

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

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

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

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

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

Rating breakdown

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

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Rating breakdown

Pros
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

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
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

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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Budget Maestro is extremely useful in budgeting in forecasting because it allows the user to provide inputs on so many different levels, and this information rolls out through the budget to the correct line items. Adding costs or revenues is easy, and being able to drill down into details to find answers has been priceless. Importing values for the budget also saves a TON of time! This program is AWESOME!

Cons
With any program that is going to provide so much detail, there is a great amount of set up time to ensure accounts and other items are set up properly. Once this is complete, its just a matter of learning the program to meet your needs. Training time will have to be considered, but I think it is worth the time and the money.

Rating breakdown

Pros
1. Lesser data redundancy than excel. 2. Lesser chances of an error in data entry. 3. No requirement for validation of excel sheets. 4. Easier to audit.

Cons
1. Cost is a little high 2. Initial setup time longer than expected.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Available on-premise and cloud based, can be used on demand from any location. Intuitive user interface. A synchronized system in terms of logic and automatic calculations from data that is input in the system. Free trail available

Cons
Little costly

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Driver Based Modeling Good integration with many ERP and account systems. Accessible anywhere through an internet connection with any browser-based device. Collects and consolidates all profit/loss data.

Cons
Can be a little overpriced for a small sized company. Requires time to configure and get used to it and then can perform tasks at a high speed.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

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

Cons
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

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
I love the way this product is so easy to use and track all of my spending. I don't know what I would do without it!

Cons
Sometimes the report downloads are not very easy to analyze in Microsoft excel. There are times when I have to manually scrub the data to make it useable.

Rating breakdown

Pros
My budgeting task has become much easier in comparison to using spreadsheets. I also appreciate the level of detail that I can enter within Budget Maestro. Also, the Link Maestro product is a great add-on for importing from MAS90.

Cons
My only complaint is the amount of formatting I have to do when exporting a report to a spreadsheet. It would be great if there were more features for report formatting.

Rating breakdown

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

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 2/10

Pros
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.

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Pros
Was able to get up an running in a few hours. My trainer, quickly understood my objectives and helped setup my structure. Imported my chart of accounts exactly as I have them setup in my Dynamics GP in just a few minutes.

Cons
Interface looks old.

Rating breakdown