Most finance teams in growing businesses build budgets in spreadsheets, export actuals from the ERP each month, and spend days stitching the two together. The numbers are out of date as soon as they are finished, and scenarios multiply as file versions. Business Central can carry much more of this work, provided the structure is designed properly.
Start with the structure, not the template
Good planning depends on the same structure as your actuals:
- Accounts: plan at the level you report, which is often summarized rather than every posting account.
- Dimensions: department, location, product line, project or fund. Plan using the same dimension values you post with, so variance reports line up automatically.
- Periods: monthly is common; some teams plan quarterly beyond the current year.
Budgets in standard Business Central
Business Central includes G/L budgets with dimensions. You can enter or import budget figures, copy budgets between years, and compare budget with actuals in financial reports and analysis views. For many smaller organizations this is enough for an annual budget.
Where teams usually need more
- Forecasts that change: a rolling forecast that blends actuals for closed months with forecast for the rest of the year.
- Scenarios: base, upside and downside versions with different assumptions.
- Drivers: revenue from volume and price, staffing cost from headcount and rates, rather than typing every number.
- Workflow: department managers submit, finance reviews, leadership approves, with a record of who changed what.
- Variance commentary: explanations captured alongside the numbers, not in emails.
Designing scenarios
- Agree which assumptions vary between scenarios: volume, price, hiring, timing of projects.
- Keep each scenario as a separate, named version rather than overwriting.
- Lock approved versions so they can be used as the baseline for variance.
- Report scenarios side by side using the same layout as your actuals.
Approval and control
- Who can edit which department or entity's numbers.
- Submission deadlines and status per department.
- A version history for audit and board reporting.
Reporting
- Budget versus actual, by month and year to date, with variance in amount and percentage.
- Forecast versus budget, to show how expectations have moved.
- Drill-down from a variance to the transactions behind it.
- Power BI dashboards for leadership where helpful.
Our extension
Our Financial Planning & Analysis extension helps finance teams build budgets and forecasts and compare them with actuals inside Business Central, rather than in disconnected spreadsheets. Because every organization plans differently, we demonstrate it using your own structure and scenarios.
Next step
Send us an FP&A enquiry with an example of your current budget file, and we'll show how it could work in Business Central.