Archive | financials

Better Planning and Budgeting

Over at Intelligent Enterprise, an article entitled “How to Get to Better Planning and Budgeting” provides five questions every finance organization should ask: Is the planning and budgeting process as strategic as it could be? Are the budgets as accurate as they should be? Does your planning really help increase your company’s agility? Could your…

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Planning vs. Budgeting

Openly, I get annoyed when people use the term planning to describe budgeting. While the terms planning and budgeting are often used interchangeably, they’re not the same thing. Budgeting is how you allocate resources (typically financial) to reach specific objectives. Budgeting helps you create an estimate of income and expenses for a specific time period. Budgeting manages money…

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The Risk of Spreadsheets

Unless you were trapped on a desert island over the last few months, it’s unlikely that you missed the Société Générale scandal and the resulting teeth-gnashing about the need for stricter controls and oversight in the financial services industry.  While I’m all for better access and process controls leading to improved segregation of duties, I…

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