Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting: What Every Business Needs to Know

When done well, budgeting helps organisations stay financially on course, even when things don’t go exactly as planned. Learn how to keep things on track so you avoid surprises and stay focused on your goals.

Spreadsheets were never designed for collaboration, yet they are the single most used program among teams and co-workers. They often start out as a quick document for storing, formatting or calculating information but evolve into important documents and are often the core records for an organisation.

Inaccurate cash flow forecasting can be a costly mistake for companies. In today’s volatile market, relying on static annual budgets or manual spreadsheets leaves financial leaders without the agility to respond to uncertainty.

A business’s success heavily relies on having a strong strategy. However, what's even more important is implementing that strategy while tracking and measuring the performance. This can easily be done by investing in enterprise performance management (EPM) software.

The newest iteration of planning, analysis and reporting systems is a powerful game-changer that unites company departments and boosts competitiveness. It’s called xP&A – the abbreviation of extended financial planning and analysis.

Where many businesses start small, a simple spreadsheet can adequately perform the limited tasks required of it. As the company grows, your spreadsheets can get more complex and harder to manage, by which point it feels like it will be too difficult to move to a different reporting tool.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, what is it, and what is the difference?

CPM, or Corporate Performance Management, is a process within corporate management aimed at measuring and optimizing the performance of an organization. CPM encompasses a range of activities, including budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, and analysis.

If you’re working in a large organization, you’re probably aware of how time-consuming the budget process can be. In this article we’ll give you tips on how to save time and still create a successful budget process

We know it can be challenging to succeed with your planning, budgeting, and forecasting process. Therefore, we have gathered our best tips for you to succeed!

Spreadsheets often start as just a list for storing information and there is minimal process documentation, support or maintenance for these worksheets. Despite the fact that desktop applications such as Microsoft Office are included in the standard configuration of users' PCs, very little formal training is ever given to spreadsheet users.

Budgeting sits at the heart of sound financial management. This is why choosing the right technique is crucial for CFOs – it shapes resource allocation, cost control and strategic agility. Incremental and zero-based budgeting are two leading methods that offer distinct approaches.

Budgeting aligns resources with strategic goals, and there are two primary approaches: top-down and bottom-up. Which method wroks best?

Financial planning has changed. Traditional annual budgets can’t keep up with rapid shifts in the market, evolving customer needs, and internal performance dynamics. That’s why many finance teams are turning to a rolling forecast model.

Explore the top PowerBI alternatives for 2025. Discover how Mercur delivers integrated planning, budgeting and reporting without the high cost and complexity.

The ability to process information swiftly is essential. If your business can’t manage your data efficiently, your company’s financial performance will surely underperform. At Mercur we have developed our own database Veloxic which helps Financial Planning and Analysis.

Scenario planning gives you a clear, practical way to test assumptions, spot risks and opportunities, and make better strategic choices so your organisation stays resilient when conditions change.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, effective reports and dashboards are crucial for decision-making. Our user study using eye-tracking technology revealed seven key insights into what captures attention.

Traditional models of forecasting rely on historical data and beliefs. It uses techniques that identify patterns, which are simple to use. However, with these methods, there are some challenges because they are not dynamic with today’s market, and can’t effectively analyse complex data.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support decision making in key areas such as budgeting, capital allocation and even corporate strategy and as a result, it is increasingly being deployed in corporate performance management tools (CPM).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significant potential to enhance decision-making for Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) by providing data-driven insights, automating routine tasks, and enabling more accurate forecasts.

Management reporting helps you see what’s really happening in your business. In this guide, we’ll explain what managerial reporting looks like and share practical tips.

Choosing budgeting software is partly a finance and partly a strategic decision. The right tool helps organisations organise planning cycles, adapt as the market changes and increase accountability across departments. But not every platform will be a good fit.

This blog explores what IBP is and the typical IBP process. We highlight business benefits and how the right software can be a game-changer for your organisation.

In many organisations manual budgeting processes over-burden staff and create masses of data which overwhelms department heads and stops them seeing the bigger picture.

Many organisations cope with fragmented planning and data quality issues, which slow down their forecasting cycles. This forces organisations to take practical steps to turn ambition into execution.

The real challenge today isn’t collecting data, it’s making sense of it and fast. Organisations turn to business intelligence (BI) to convert raw data into insight.But how do you actually do it right?

Excel has long been a target for hackers; just one click on a malicious attachment can infect your entire network. So, how can you keep using spreadsheets while not sacrificing your safety?

Senior executives are demanding more detail in their management reports. The amount of data available to finance departments has exploded and decision makers see this as an opportunity to get more insight into how the business is performing.

Struggling to keep plans aligned in a changing market? Discover how EPM helps finance teams move faster, stay accurate and lead with real-time insights.

Uncertain times create the need for more frequent forecasts and time for analyzing and comparing different future scenarios. We give you 5 tips on how to simulate future scenarios using scenario planning

How can you make your budget process more successful and maximise the effort that was invested in creating it? Of course, there are many factors to consider but we’ve chosen to highlight five key areas that will enable and help you create a smoother, value-creating and collaborative budget process.

Management Reporting refers to the process of creating, analyzing, and presenting information about various aspects of an organization's performance to enable decision-makers to make well-informed decisions about the future.

Traditional budgeting has long been the cornerstone of financial planning in businesses. But today it can become more of a limitation than a strength. That’s where the concept of Beyond Budgeting comes in.

Today's finance leaders steer more than just budgets and reports. The digital transformation ramps up with the increase of corporate complexity, and so does the role of CFOs.

Thirty years after its debut, Microsoft Excel is still the preferred tool for budgeting and planning projects. However, its popularity is declining, due in most part to the rise of technology and subscription-based pricing for a myriad of SaaS-based products.

Spreadsheets are an essential tool for all types of organisations and businesses rely on them heavily, particularly for financial computations. The most popular spreadsheet program globally is, of course, Microsoft Excel, it’s used by an estimated 750 million people.

In this post, we explore how AI is evolving from a theoretical concept into a valuable resource for decision-making. Get useful insights for finance teams at any stage, from early exploration to actively using AI-powered solutions.

Financial forecasting is critical for any business that wants to adapt to change. But finance teams keep usingfragmented models and manual processes. The 3-statement financial model is the solution.

In today's post we'll break down why KPIs matter, which ones offer the most insight for finance and executive teams and how to ensure they're actually driving results.

Without solid financial planning and analysis (FP&A), businesses operate in the dark. In this post we go deeper into the process of FP&A and why it’s important for businesses.