Budgets can be easily shared throughout the organization

Description

In budgeting software, sharing budgets throughout the organization refers to the easy distribution of financial plans across different departments, teams, or levels. This function promotes transparency, encourages collaboration, and enables all stakeholders to actively participate in financial decision-making processes. This requirement emphasizes that the budget software should have built-in features which allow fast, secure, and easy distribution of budget information in a format suitable to the user.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A mid-market wholesale distribution business uses planning software to design, analyze, and monitor its corporate budget. The budget must be shared and approved by several departments - from production and marketing to finance and senior management - who are spread out across the world.

Solution: The planning software provides an easy-to-use interface where the Finance team can determine which portions of the budget to share with who, how access is controlled, and what format to share it in. This saves them from endless email exchanges and the hassle of maintaining a shared folder on a server.

Considerations

Collaborating on the budget with others in the organization is the best way to get buy-in on goals with involved parties, However, not all data should be shared. That sensitive data could include workforce planning data, specific scenarios (both good and bad), rolled-up financial statements, certain KPIs and so on. Make sure the sharing capabilities are easy to use without being overlay broad and simplified.

Some products allow only administrative users to determine what is shared, while others allow portions of data to be shared between users. When dealing with many collaborators, it can smooth out the process to provide those users with some autonomy. That considered, whenever data is exposed to more stakeholders, risk of data leakage will increase. It is up to management to determine the risk/reward profile.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Ease-of-Use: How easy is it for a user to share a budget throughout the organization using your software?
• Access Control: Can permissions for viewing, editing, and approving the budget be customized according to an individual's role in the organization?
• Version Security: Can specific budget versions and scenarios be assigned a different sharing treatment than others?