Microsoft Forecaster 

What is Microsoft Forecaster

Take control of your finances, contain cost, and prevent fiscal surprises

Microsoft Forecater is a fast and affordable budgeting and planning application that can help organization control their finances, contain costs, and prevent fiscal surprises. It allows you to distribute budgeting data and financial information throughout your organization, collaborate with management, plan, and achieve your business objectives.
 Forecaster 7.0 brochure
 White Paper "World-Class Financial Planning and Control with Microsoft Forecaster"

Microsoft Forecaster overview

Increase collaboration 

• Works like Microsoft Office Excel.
• Save time and improve the quality and accuracy of the final budget
• Automatic e-mail notification 
• Access notification guidelines from a centralized location 

 
Additional customizable Workflow features help the Budget Administrator keep budget contributors on track. So business managers can gain quick access to how their teams are progressing with budget goals. Predefined security assignments and routings safeguard your data.

Click for larger image

Through the use of supplemental memos and line item detail, managers can understand the rationale behind important numbers and assumptions made by other department managers. Such understanding helps reduce time spent in meetings. And department managers can interact with each other to help ensure their budgets complement one another.

Click for larger image

Automate data summary

Reorganize your company's chart of accounts more efficiently with the help of Rollups feature. View the parent-child relationships within your data that control how your posting data is summarized. Define your Rollups by using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface, and then run a simple Restate function to consolidate your data.

 
Help reduce duplicate entries and the potential for error.  Enter data directly into accounts, or use copy/grow functions, calculated accounts, or spreadback methods. Microsoft Forecaster helps improve numeric accuracy and provide immediate access to reports based on those numbers.  By entering a change based on numbers or percentages, budget administrators can make an adjustment that ripples through the entire plan.
Click for larger image

Budget and control expenses more effectively

You can budget and plan for accuracy by accessing up-to-date and historical information from your organization's general ledger and financial reports. This helps managers save time. Your organization can shorten its budget time cycle, reduce printing and mailing costs, and create valid, accurate budgets that tie directly to your strategic plans.
Click for larger image

Keep business performance on target

 Streamline tasks that comprise the budgeting process. Create individual budgets. Change the budget model. Consolidate budgets. And collaborate with interrelated departments. This streamlining of tasks helps give you more time to construct a budget that is based on valid data and assumptions so your budget is more predictive of the future. 

Click for a larger image