Posted on 20th May 2011
IBSS helps Public Sector Organisations Optimise Budgeting Processes
Budgets are coming under scrutiny across the public sector. The pressure is on to make cuts wherever possible. This is driving many organisations within the NHS and local authorities to look at advanced, integrated budgetary control management systems to ensure they cut costs without impacting service.
The Integra Budgeting and Forecasting module provides a fully-integrated solution that gives organisations control, visibility and a high level of flexibility for spending and financial planning. Through every step of the budgeting process, the module creates seamless workflows to facilitate greater accuracy and faster resolution.
Like many public sector organisations, Mole Valley District Council used Excel spreadsheets held on network drives accessible by managers and accountants onto which data from the accountancy system was downloaded each night.
Brian Stuart explains, "Our previous setup was quite unreliable because the overnight interface between the spreadsheet and the accountancy system would periodically fail. There were also file usage conflicts because there was only one Excel file for each council service, despite several managers holding budgets within any one service. The budgeting module was installed at Mole Valley DC in 2010, and has quickly made a positive difference to how budgets are managed, monitored and controlled."
West Hertfordshire NHS Trust recently implemented the Integra Budgeting and Forecasting module having previously used an alternative system.
Satish Kumar from the Trust comments, "Having a budgeting system that is properly integrated with our financial systems has made a huge difference to the speed with which we can put budgets together and the overall accuracy of them. Our previous system caused a lot of frustration for users, because every change took a long time to calculate. With Integra, data is pulled in seamlessly and complex calculations take an instant."
At North Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, Integra has been the finance management system for more than 15 years. The Trust installed the Budgeting and Forecasting module in 2009, to replace a manual system based on Excel spreadsheets.
Nina Phillips from the Trust explains, "The Budgeting module gives us a robust audit trail of comments and authorisations for each strand of the budget. Once all budgets are ready, they can be uploaded to the General ledger at the press of a button. It is a great tool that has made the whole process much more accurate and far less cumbersome. Users are delighted, and both accountants and managers feel much more confident and in control of the budgets."
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