Budget Software

Jennifer Johnson

Does anyone use budget software in addition to budgets in FE? I am currently using about 10 spreadsheets that all link together. It is fine for me, but not so much for the department directors. I need an easy way for them to work on their budgets. I would like something that has the ability to budget by projects and grants, with notes that will easily go into Excel then I can use the Excel add-in for NXT. It would be great if it had the ability to add and remove different budget scenarios.

Megan Hennessy

We've been with Power Plan - A Quesitca company - that works wonderfully with FENXT - they are a 3rd Party Vendor that links with FENXT - I've been working with them for over 10 years - used them with FE Database - and now converted from the Desktop version to the SaaS Version. You can find the link in the Marketplace I believe as well.

Lisa Olscamp

We are actually in the process of reviewing both ZAI/Zobrio and Questica. We would love to hear others experience with either of these!

Megan Hennessy

I've been with Questica now for over 10+ years. It's AMAZING - the integration with FE is so smooth - pulls over the whole GL - you can veiw all transatction details of any given expense/revenue - at the moment of budgeting - so you don't have to go looking for it in FE or elsewhere. The NOTES option is fantastic as well - and lets me not forget to mention the PAYROLL section - wonderful! It really gives you a clear picture of everything needed to budget.

Kim Szalkus

Following.

Karen Edwards

We currently use Workday Adaptive (formerly just Adpative Insights). It is not integrated with FE, although I'm told it could be done. It is just way to expensive to pay for the consulting to do it. So, we just import the balances and transactions each month from FE to Adaptive, and we do our financial statements from there. They have a great feature called Office Connect that allows us to pull numbers from Adaptive into our financials which are formatted how we want them. We were also able to get some custom sheets set up at the beginning that will calculate our budget for our HCBS funding (Medicaid) per person served and will calculate the changes when someone's funding changes or they move to a different site. The personnel budgeting (salaries and benefits) is also very good and we had some custom sheets set up for that as well. Those two items were big selling points for me. The biggest detractor is the cost. This is probably because it does way more than we use it for. Consequently, we only have two users set up for it. Getting budget information from cost center managers is still a challenge, and I would like a better process than what we are doing now, which is google sheets.

Alexandra Beygel

HI Meghan,

Thank you for your great feedback about PowerPlan. We have been using them as well for the last 6 years and just switched over to the cloud version this year. I am in the process of testing the new cloud version which seems very similar to the desktop version with a e few enhancements for the end user and admin. Do you have any training materials or admin manuals that you put together for yourself? Would love to see what other organizations are doing in terms of set up and leveraging the system.

Feel free to reach out over email: abeygel@heartlandalliance.org

ps I am a former user of Adaptive Insights but not in conjunction with FE, if anyone is looking for feedback happy to share

Sheila Cohen

We are in the process of integrating PowerPlan. LOVE the transaction detail functionality. Our operations folks appreciate the transparency and ease of use.

Lisa Olscamp

Sheila are you able to talk about your implementation process?

Sheila Cohen

happy to talk about it.

Arturo Sayco

I highly recommend PowerPlan/Questica. Great product and customer support. Contact Brian/Katie Walker.

Alexander Frenkel

@Jennifer Johnson
Hello All,

Could you please let me know if you are still using the Questica and if it does help to do budgeting and reforecasts? Also, what feedback are you getting from your end users.

Alexander Frenkel

@Sheila Cohen
Hi Sheila,

Is it possible to talk about Questica add on? Do you still using it and does your budget managers find it user friendly?