Centage (Budget Maestro & Analytics Maestro) - great reporting/budgeting tool
Our main use of the Centage tool has been around reporting actuals. We are a complex company with multiple subsidiaries, multiple …
Overview
What is Centage?
Centage (Planning Maestro) offers a way to plan, budget, forecast and report financial performance by enabling finance teams to see into the future, and test the impact of different scenarios, in order to make faster decisions with confidence. The software streamlines…
Recent Reviews
Popular Features
- Financial budgeting (11)9.898%
- Role-Based Security Model (10)9.292%
- Multi-User Support (named login) (10)9.191%
- Management reporting (11)8.686%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
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What is Centage?
Centage (Planning Maestro) offers a way to plan, budget, forecast and report financial performance by enabling finance teams to see into the future, and test the impact of different scenarios, in order to make faster decisions with confidence. The software streamlines the entire planning process,…
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee required
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.centage.com/pricing
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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The SAP Analytics Cloud solution brings together analytics and planning with integration to SAP applications and access to heterogenous data sources. As the analytics and planning solution within SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud supports trusted insights and integrated planning…
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Product Details
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- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Centage?
Centage (Planning Maestro) offers a way to plan, budget, forecast and report financial performance by enabling finance teams
to see into the future, and test the impact of different scenarios, in order to make faster decisions with confidence. The software streamlines the entire planning process, delivering sophisticated financial intelligence to empowers users to make faster, more informed decisions, so they can react quickly to market changes, take intelligent risks and
capitalize on new opportunities.
Centage Features
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features
- Supported: Long-term financial planning
- Supported: Financial budgeting
- Supported: Forecasting
- Supported: Scenario modeling
- Supported: Management reporting
Consolidation and Close Features
- Supported: Financial data consolidation
- Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
Financial Reporting and Compliance Features
- Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
- Supported: Management Reporting
- Supported: Excel-based Reporting
- Supported: Automated board and financial reporting
Analytics and Reporting Features
- Supported: Personalized dashboards
- Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
- Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
Integration Features
- Supported: Flat file integration
- Supported: Excel data integration
- Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Predictive modeling
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to Web
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Report Versioning
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Predictive Analytics
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)
Centage Screenshots
Centage Integrations
Centage Competitors
Centage Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Reviewers rate Financial budgeting highest, with a score of 9.8.
The most common users of Centage are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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(17)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Many users heavily rely on the Budget Maestro platform for its Analytics Maestro capabilities. With this feature, users can create custom dashboards that allow them to compare actuals against the budget. These visuals have been well-perceived across organizations, as they make it easy to cascade the results to multiple offices with just a simple click. Planning Maestro is also widely used as the primary budgeting system. It provides an efficient and robust platform for creating multiple budget versions, detailed budgeting with descriptions, data linking of expenses to revenues, personnel/salary budgeting, monthly budgeting, simplified reporting, different hierarchies, and work flow. This makes it a valuable tool for developing annual budgets and preparing monthly/quarterly financial statements for management and the Board of Directors. Additionally, many outsourced accounting and CFO staff recommend using Budget Maestro for organizations dealing with cash management and budgeting concerns, as it helps alleviate the fatigue of using Excel-based techniques. Before partnering with Planning Maestro, companies often faced issues when preparing staffing plans, especially when dealing with last-minute changes. Fortunately, Planning Maestro has been able to streamline this process and make it much more efficient. Lastly, the Analytics Maestro Excel add-in tool simplifies the creation of adhoc reports within Excel, allowing users to leverage all the great features of Excel for analysis purposes.
Value-adding platform: According to several users, the Analytics Maestro Platform has been found to add tremendous value to their business operations. They appreciate the newer cloud-based version that eliminates size constraints and allows for seamless usage.
Responsive customer support: Reviewers consistently praise the platform for its extremely supportive and timely customer support. The quick response from the implementation and ongoing support teams in addressing any issues or concerns is highly valued by users.
Detailed budgeting feature: Many users find the detailed budgeting feature of the platform particularly useful as it allows them to work with shared chart of accounts, providing names and descriptions for better organization and clarity in financial planning. The option to upload budgets using excel-based templates simplifies the budgeting process further.
Rollout Time: Some users have found the rollout of the cloud-based solution to be time-consuming, which impacted their productivity and ability to fully utilize the system's features.
Learning Curve: Reviewers mentioned that learning how to use the product to its fullest capabilities with the older version was a time-consuming process. They had to invest additional time and effort into training themselves or their teams on using the product effectively.
Delayed Refreshing: Users have expressed frustration with the delayed refreshing when changing dimensions or budgets in the system. This delay hinders their workflow and slows down their analysis process, leading to inefficiencies in their work.
Users commonly recommend the following:
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Analyze data and structure requirements before selecting a budgeting tool. It is important to thoroughly analyze the data and understand the organization's requirements before choosing a budgeting tool. This allows for a better fit between the tool and their needs.
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Utilize support during the setup process. Users advise taking advantage of the support provided by Budget Maestro during the setup process to avoid any potential mistakes. They appreciate the assistance in ensuring a smooth implementation.
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Consider using Centage or Budget Maestro for budgeting and forecasting needs. Users highly recommend Centage as one of the best budgeting tools for complementing data needs. They also praise Budget Maestro as a reliable budgeting and forecasting tool, citing its efficient implementation team and strong product for end users. Additionally, Budget Maestro is noted for its ability to combine multiple excel spreadsheets into one software solution.
Overall, users suggest thorough analysis of data needs, leveraging support during setup, and considering Centage or Budget Maestro for budgeting and forecasting requirements.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-12 of 12)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Our main use of the Centage tool has been around reporting actuals. We are a complex company with multiple subsidiaries, multiple currencies, multiple geographies and several verticals that cross-over each other.
Being able to report through analytics has shaved many hours off of our reporting cycle.
Being able to report through analytics has shaved many hours off of our reporting cycle.
- Reporting through Analytics Maestro cube
- Budgets with segmentation (product class & departments)
- Integrated with NetSuite
- Integration with NetSuite was slow to set up
- Would prefer to have transactional data in Centage from NetSuite, not just daily summaries
March 19, 2024
Centage is Great for Consolidated Reporting and Planning
Our current system's reports are outdated and difficult to manage. With Centage we are able to bring in our actual data, consolidate, create appropriate intercompany eliminations, and complete all of our financial reporting, including plan data, with consistency and accuracy.
- Reporting Through Analytics Maestro
- Handling complex calculations - called Drivers - to plan
- Compiling, reporting and budgeting with a lot of different dimensions
- A little more speed in making those complex calculations.
- A little more speed deploying the data from actuals into the plan.
February 07, 2024
Centage: The only tool that solves your budgeting problems
We use Centage to prepare annual budgets but also for monthly reporting package. We have a complex business with multiple locations and departments across the locations. We budget at a very granular level. We use a lot of dirvers and calculations when preparing budgets. Centage tool offers a lot of flexbiliby to set up the budgets to match the business specific needs.
- flexibility to match your business needs
- easy to see what calculations are incorporated in the budget and make changes easily
- excellent reporting tool
- upload/download of data is very easy
- Collapsing rows in the reports - it was a good feature in Budget Maestro but removed in Planning Maestro
- Undo button would be good to have
- Navigation is still complicated in some areas and new users have difficulty to learn the tool
February 07, 2024
Centage: It's all Great
We have been a customer of Centage for over 12 years we started with Budget Maestro and have moved to Planning Maestro. We have a very complex budgeting process and Planning Maestro makes it so much easier. We have 40+ programs with up to 10 funders in some programs so very complicated and time consuming if you had to use excel. I am very pleased with this product, but Centage's best part is the customer and service support. Don't get me wrong I do like the product as well and they are always trying to find ways to improve it but supporting us when we need is what makes this company great. Thanks for all you do.
- The ability to enter information as needed.
- The ability to sort and see information in the way we need.
- Customer Support
- Head count is a bit strange as each period is considered one Headcount for a total of 12 per year, so we have to adjust when running reports
- would love to be able to attach related expenses in payroll to a kind of employee instead of doing each individually. It's time consuming.
- Have the help more available instead of having to log into separate place
February 07, 2024
Rollups are a breeze with Centage!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Centage's Planning Maestro to prepare our annual budgets. Centage allows us to import a lot of information rather than having to manually key it. Another great time-saving feature is the ability to build hierarchies to do budget "rollups" for various owners and managers.
- Allow data importing
- Department / company rollups
- Comparison reporting across years and across budgets / actuals.
February 07, 2024
Working with Planning Maestro - Centage
We use Centage's Planning Maestro for Annual Budgeting and Reforecasting purposes. It's really good as all the inputs entered by all the budget holders get consolidated in our income statement in real time. We can manage access to specific accounts, cost centers and project codes to each budget holder, which makes the process more efficient and minimizes errors. We also use they allocations methods, which are very useful in our case. There is also the possibility of managing different versions of Budgets and reforecasts.
- Security setting at the level of the user
- Expense allocation methods
- Reporting of Income statement and others
- Easy definition of parameters such as accounts, cost centers and project cods
- We would need the actuals to be brought from our accounting system GP by project code. This is missing at the moment and we are a project driven organization.
February 07, 2024
My Experience with Centage Planning and Analytics Maestro
Datalogics uses Planning Maestro for its annual plan and any updates. Any company worth its salt knows that planning is >50% of success! Having a real time web-based tool makes the planning process easier. Centage was able to do a one-way integration with our older ERP Dynamics SL, loading our actuals into Planning Maestro. The implementation and support we receive from Centage is very good. We were able to get up and running in the expected the frame.
- Planning personnel with all the related benefit expenses is very accurate and we are able to forecast increases as well.
- Storing separate versions of the budget allows us to finalize for the year and have access to the data while we update the default plan with any changes.
- I ilke the way you can add intelligence see the detail of calculations below th eline item.
- I like writing Planning Maestro reports to see drill downs of any item and tie them to our ERP Budget
- The Analytics Maestro reports are pretty confusing to create and update. I wish it worked as well as Management Reporter. I continue to load budget into Dynamics SL and run reports there at the GL account/subaccount level
- I wish that vendors and customers were based structures that could be auto-updated from my ERP like GL accounts. I have to add them manually.
- Having to manually update our cube seems unnecessary. Shouldn't the cube update itself whenever we make a change?
February 05, 2024
Absolutely great product!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Planning Maestro to determine our budget numbers viewed in multiple ways. We gather information for many departments in our company and input that information into Planning Maestro. We also upload the actual sales and expenses to Planning Maestro, allowing us to create a limitless amount of reports showing our forecast for the year, or showing our actual compared to planned sales and expenses.
- It keeps up with personnel and all aspects of it.
- It allows us to input information into each location and department and filter each section in the same way.
- It is very quick to update the cube and reports to see any changes you have made inside the budget.
- The allocations of personnel do not work well for our company. We have to add multiple lines of each person in admin because our expenses get distributed to many departments.
- The reports inside Planning Maestro should be able to collapse and expand.
- There is not an easy way to track counts of sales from the plan to the report.
August 30, 2023
Planning Maestro - a success!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Planning Maestro to develop our annual budget and prepare monthly/quarterly financial statements for management and our Board of Directors. Before partnering with Planning Maestro, we used an Excel workbook to develop and compile our annual budget. This caused all sorts of issues when preparing the staffing plan, especially if there were last minute changes before finalizing.
For reporting, we previously used our ERP system, which is extremely difficult to create or modify financial reports. The analytics Maestro Excel add-in tool made creating adhoc reports within Excel simple and easy. You can create reports and still use all the great features of Excel for analysis.
For reporting, we previously used our ERP system, which is extremely difficult to create or modify financial reports. The analytics Maestro Excel add-in tool made creating adhoc reports within Excel simple and easy. You can create reports and still use all the great features of Excel for analysis.
- Use of drivers to develop functions that become the foundation of a budget or forecast
- Staffing Module
- Copying or editing large amounts of departmental or business function data/budgets/forecasts
- Implementation and ongoing support teams - thorough and quick to respond/take action
- Copying line item details. Planning Maestro is good at copying large swathes of data, but copying single line items could speed up the process of adding new line item details.
- Speed up the refresh rate of the Analytics Maestro tool
June 29, 2023
Transformative Budgeting
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our firm provides outsourced accounting and CFO staff. We work with many different industries and company sizes. We often get pulled into groups where cash management and budgeting concerns are at the top of the management's list. We see many groups try and do this with Excel and other tools, which has some level of success but often gets left or forgotten due to it being a cumbersome process. We will often recommend Centage's Planning Maestro and its budget tools to help these organizations deal with the fatigue that comes from using Excel-based techniques.
- Planning Maestro can simplify and automates the budgeting process, by creating an environment where teams can collaborate and update data as needed.
- The software uses historical data to generate financial forecasts. It enables users to create various scenarios, perform what-if analyses, and assess different business decisions on financial outcomes.
- You can have real-time dashboards and reports, offering insights into key financial metrics, variances, and performance indicators.
- Slightly heavier lift to get people trained on the new system compared to other tools on the market
June 19, 2023
Planning Maestro high benefit to cost ratio
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Planning Maestro as our primary budgeting system. PM provides an efficient, relatively simple but robust, budgeting platform that allow us to have multiple budget versions, detailed budgeting with descriptions, data linking of expenses to revenues where applicable, personnel/salary budgeting, monthly budgeting (if preferred), simplified reporting, different hierararchies (data organization), work flow, etc for modest price. We could also use it for cash flow and balance sheet projections if we desired to do so.
- Detailed budgeting even for shared chart of accounts with names and descriptions
- Multiple budget versions, easy to copy versions
- Easy navigation
- Several layers of security rules
- Uploading of budgets using excel based templates
- Several options for filtering
- Personnel or salary budgeting
- Monthly budgeting
- When changing dimensions (chart of accounts) or budgets, delay refreshing until line edits are completed
- When refreshing data bases, add option to exclude static versions so they don't add processing time
Our company used the Budget Maestro platform since about 2014. Our team utilized the platform heavily for its Analytics Maestro capabilities being able to create custom dashboards for comparison points of actuals against the budget. The visuals we were able to produce were well perceived across our organization and the features made it possible to cascade the results to a high amount of offices with the simple click of a button.
- Analytics Maestro Platform adds tremendous value.
- Newer version offering is cloud based which adds value on size constraints.
- Customer support has always been extremely supportive and timely on responses.
- Took some time to roll out the cloud-based solution.
- The older version (not cloud-based) we used took about an hour to refresh after data load.
- The older version did take some time learning how to use the product to its fullest capabilities.