WIP - Financial Planning & Budgeting Process Automation

Yes. Keboola is extremely flexible – you can implement your specific business logic. If you allocate corporate costs to divisions based on, say, headcount or revenue contributions, that rule can be encoded and the system will do it automatically during consolidation. If you operate on a non-calendar fiscal year or use 4-4-5 accounting calendars, the date handling can accommodate that. Basically, any formula or allocation you currently manage in Excel can be implemented in the platform, but with better control and automation. The benefit is you define it once, and it consistently applies every time, every cycle, without someone having to remember it or do it manually.

This is common. Keboola can actually embrace Excel lovers by allowing them to interface via Excel if desired – for example, using an Excel plug-in where they fetch their part of the budget data, fill it in Excel, and then it syncs back. The key is, whether through a web UI or Excel, the data goes into the central database. We often recommend starting by replicating the existing templates in the new system so it feels familiar, then gradually enhancing. Training and showing the time saved (no more consolidating 50 sheets!) also wins people over. Once a few cycles go smoothly and managers see they spend less time on tedious work and more on thinking about their numbers, they usually become proponents. Plus, Excel isn’t banned – it’s connected. So you get the best of both: managers can still do quick local analysis in Excel if they want, but the official numbers live in a governed system.

Absolutely. One of the huge benefits is that your budget and actuals reside in one platform, so after each month-end, you can compare actual performance to budget or forecast with a click. The system can generate variance reports (and even auto-commentary if configured, e.g., highlighting areas where variance is above a threshold). This beats the manual export-import of actuals into planning spreadsheets. It means forecasts can also be quickly updated with actuals – like a year-to-go forecast that always uses actuals for past months and plan for future months, updated automatically. This tight actual-plan integration closes the feedback loop, allowing continuous improvement of the planning process (e.g., you can easily analyze planning accuracy metrics to see which departments consistently over/under estimate and by how much). In short, yes – variance analysis becomes much simpler and faster, which ultimately helps managers focus on why variances happened and what to do, rather than just compiling the variance data.