A Leader in Automated Budgeting & Planning Software Solutions for Small to Medium-Sized Organizations: Centage Corporation

“Headquartered in Natick, MA, Centage Corporation was named among America’s Fastest-Growing Companies in The 2016 Inc. 5000 List.”

Established in 2001, Centage Corporation recognized that many financial professionals at small to midsize organizations struggled with the time-consuming and error-prone process of budgeting and forecasting in Excel. Budget Maestro was developed to meet these needs by offering a unique solution based on pre-programmed financial logic that automates and streamlines the budgeting process to provide a more reliable way to budget and plan. In support of the growing needs of their client base that used Microsoft Dynamics to be able to automate the exchange of information between their GL and Budget Maestro, Centage developed an easy, reliable and secure integration called Link Maestro. In 2014, Centage received
a series A round of funding from TVC Capital and Northgate Capital to help rapidly scale revenue and enhance product functionality. With some of the proceeds Centage purchased BI-Metrix (the OEM provider of Analytics Maestro) to add the robust reporting solution to the suite of products, offering greater visibility through accurate, reliable graphical
representations of budget data.

Budget Maestro solutions

• Budget Maestro: Designed to be easy-to-use, scalable, and automate the time-consuming and error-prone tasks of the budgeting and forecasting process with unique built-in accounting rules and formula-free calculations, this solution offers organizations a more reliable way to budget and plan.

• Analytics Maestro: Provides formula-free financial dashboard reporting. By extracting key data from Dynamics GP, this robust reporting solution provides greater visibility into the business through accurate and reliable representations of budget data, driving better decision making and increased accountability throughout the organization.

• Link Maestro: Automates the exchange of financial information between Dynamics AX, GP, and NAV, SL, along with several other of the most popular mid-market GLs and Budget Maestro–making it quick and easy to start the budgeting process and conduct month-end variance reporting and analysis.

Market positioning
The Microsoft market is a perfect fit for Centage products as the stability of Microsoft’s back office systems makes it easy for Centage products to be integrated and add value. Centage’s solutions are complements to Microsoft products and have the ability to help customers derive additional business insight from the investment they have made in their foundational systems. These systems are the predominant backbone of the SMB market and the information contained within can be used to improve the financial health and operations of these companies, which is ultimately Centage’s mission.

Apt for various verticals
Centage’s suite of budgeting, forecasting, and analytics tools were designed to extend the same features and functionality utilized at large enterprises to the SMB market to help improve the financial performance of their organizations. Centage’s target areas include Construction, Education, Energy & Utilities, Insurance, Professional Services, Retail, Software and Wholesale Distribution, with the largest concentration of customers in Healthcare, Manufacturing and Non-Profit. Budget Maestro’s extensive built-in logic and accounting rules provides pre-programmed allocations for inventory functionality for
manufacturers, payer mixes for healthcare, project budgeting for construction, and utilization rates for consulting organizations, and so on.

Budget Maestro is distinctively different
Because of the product’s unique built-in financial logic and accounting rules that automatically create all of the journal entries behind the financial transactions, customers can create budget models within days, not weeks or months. This built-in logic also generates the debits and the credits associated with accounting transactions, allowing users to generate an integrated forecasted balance sheet closely tied to the P&L budget, at the push of a button, which is unique in the industry. It ensures that the future period balance sheet is accurate and complete, GAAP compliant and automatically updated every time—even with the slightest change to a budget line item—whether based on actuals or assumptions.

Budget Maestro seamlessly integrates directly with the Dynamics suite of products, along with many other GL systems, allowing users to quickly and easily import a trial balance to use as the basis for building a plan. This powerful feature can be used at any point during the year to import an existing budgeting model and run unlimited “what-if” scenarios for planning
purposes, viewing the implications to the balance sheet and cash flow of any forecast model. The GL chart of accounts is also enforced inside all budget and planning scenarios.

Strategic budgeting ensures success of community support programs
A Dynamics GP customer, Wood’s Homes is a non-profit organization that provides programs for at-risk children and their families. The organization’s finance manager, Pat Keppler is responsible for more than 122 financial statements, across 35 programs, many backed by 5-6 different funders. With over 7,000 account codes, and associated individual budgets, the organization needed a strategic financial tool to better manage their budgeting process. By automating the budget process with Budget Maestro, Pat can easily analyze based on the funders requirements at the click of a button, drill down into the assumptions to make sure the program budget is being allocated appropriately, and make changes that are reflected throughout the budget.

In addition, Pat can easily create valid projections of funds and grants and regulate seasonality and unknowns through continuous forecasting. “What-if” scenario capabilities allow her to change assumptions and see the immediate impact—allowing more accurate decision making as new programs are evaluated.

Clients speak
“Budget Maestro and Analytics Maestro have helped us to not only improve the overall budgeting process, but have enabled the University to capitalize on our growth opportunities today while better preparing our institution for the future.”
– Michael Dei, Planning and Budget Director, Financial Operations, Houston Baptist University

With regard to Centage’s training and support team’s implementation: “Every time we call in, we’re being helped right away. I feel like they put us first. They do an excellent job.” – Brad Jones, Financial Analyst, The Gideons International

Future thought out
Centage’s mission is to provide financial professionals with the most strategic, sophisticated, yet easy to use, budgeting, forecasting, and analytics solutions on the market to effectively manage the financial health of their organizations. Centage anticipates the customer adoption trajectory to continue for the remainder of 2016 and into 2017 as momentum for the cloud-based version of Budget Maestro continues and critical new functionality is added to the comprehensive platform.

Meet Barry

Barry Clapp, President and CEO – With over 30 years of experience in sales, marketing, and business management, of technology-based businesses, Barry has held a succession of jobs in software and Internet related businesses. At DigitalGlobe, a satellite imagery company, he served as vice president and was responsible for $25 million in worldwide sales and support. As vice president at Advanced Electron Beams, a venture-backed maker of electron beam generation equipment, he managed and grew worldwide sales. Most recently, he served as a strategic consultant to accelerate high growth of several early-stage companies, including Boston Technologies, a supplier of hosted services and high-volume transaction processing and execution for the foreign exchange trading market.

“Our products help companies move beyond Excel spreadsheets and formulas, to streamline their processes, make more informed business decisions, and improve ROI.”