The implementation of the product was smooth. The reporting capabilities of the program have exceeded my expectations. In addition, every person I've been in contact with at Centage has expert level knowledge of the program and any issues have been resolved immediately.

The best part of this software are the drivers we use to manage our sales budget. We have several LLCs that are within this program. The ability to expand the way we create our budgets has given us greater insight into where we can save money. The elimination of finding "human error" input in an excel budget has alleviated so much time.

I have yet to find anything I don't like about this product.

Centage has been great to work with, from implementation to today, they have been a true partner on our budgeting and forecasting journey. I've always been happy to recommend them and their software.

Planning Maestro brought a platform that allowed us to integrate into our existing accounting platform and create a structured environment we could use to refine our budgeting and forecasting process.

I don't have anything negative to say. When I have run into issues with the software I have always reached out to Centage and we have found ways to incorporate what I need into the software.

I do like the preview of the expense and how it will look like on the P&L. It really helps me make sure that my spread method is correct. I like analytics maestro. I can use excel to build reports. Also, it is easy to use the data to create charts and graphs and make the financial data consumable to those budget owners, who may not have a fiance background. I also like the ability to refresh and update the data quickly.

Reporting. In analytics the idea of building is great, reminds me a salesforce. But it is sooooo slow on the virtual desktop. From what I understand this will continue to be the case in BM9. Also the reporting within the software is slow as well. It takes anywhere from 1-3 minutes to run any report. Also, the inability to create a version and it to show up in all plans. For example, if we want to create version of our 3+9 Forecast

Very pleased with how it has scaled for us as we grew from 6 locations to 55.

Cloud-based and scalable as we built out the company organically and through M&A

Some of the drivers are a bit tricky to understand.

Their support team is always available to help you through any questions or difficulties you encounter. The training provided is top notch and thorough and your trainer sets up your financial report formats for you to match your current statements. My trainer is still my primary contact person for help and all I have to do is send him an email. The software itself has enough built-in power and flexibility it can handle all kinds of retail, distribution, or manufacturing scenarios, like for my company it is the need to build up inventory before a selling season and to do this for many different products and different selling seasons. Budget Maestro is capable of generating fairly accurate balance sheets and cash flow statements, in addition to income statements, as it has sections within it devoted to the balance sheet side of forecasting. Combining Link Maestro and Analytics Maestro to Budget Maestro provides the only solution one needs to not only generate a budget or forecast but to then generate all the financial reports, statements, breakdown analysis needed by management. With Budget Maestro I can drive my revenues, expenses, and inventory levels by units, not revenue dollars, which is a lot more accurate for forecasting when dealing with a wide variation of products, product costs and retail prices.

Financial statements and reports utilizing proper accounting format rules can be very hard or impossible to attain by generating them within Budget Maestro. To attain the proper formatting that I am trained in and accustomed to providing to my management team I have to export the reports out to Excel and apply the spacing, headers, underlining, and so on inside Excel. However, now with their recent addition of Analytics Maestro, this issue is gone as Analytics Maestro is an Excel add-on so that you create and format all your needed standard and custom reports inside Excel and use Analytics Maestro to drop in the numbers and data you want in each report or statement.

We needed a budgeting package that would be (1) easy to learn and use for our end-users, (2) able to automatically integrate with 3rd party general ledgers and (3) provide a powerful set of customizable analytics and reporting tools. Planning Maestro has successfully met all three requirements, and allowed us to provide more accurate budgets/forecasts/reporting with faster turn around.

A common issues I have with multiple software vendors: Enhancements and usability improvements can take a long time to roll out.

Simple to use, not very complicated. Has all the features needed for small companies and their budget needs.

Although simple to use, features are limited. They have a new web based version that should alleviate many of our limitations but we still have not had that rolled out. We were supposed to have the web based version last year but are still waiting for the roll out. They also are used to smaller companies and over the last few years we have grown dramatically so we have basically out grown the product.

Solid business performance management software package.

1. Very powerful forecasting tool that can handle both simple and complex aspects of forecasting. Handles multiple departments, entities, and the consolidation of them with ease. 2. Very easy to import actual data in order to perform variance analysis. 3. Easy to import almost all information necessary to set up a "plan" the first time. 4. What-if analysis allows you to look at the financial impact of making changes in your business without having to change your primary "plan" 5. All reports can be exported to Excel 6. Report layouts can be customized. 7. Very easy to create a 5 year forecast that allows increase/decrease assumptions to be customized in numerous ways, and using as many timeframes as desired. 8. Handles lines of credit and term loans, both fixed and variable rate, very easily.

1. Can't run a statement of cash flows based on "actual" data, only on "plan" data. 2. Not very easy to run a "plan" balance sheet for a future year as a stand-alone report, must either start the report on a month just after you have "actual" data or create an "actual/plan" version that houses a combination of data so it can be used for beginning balances. 3. If using Desktop version, additional modules need to be purchased to handle pre-paid insurance automatically and forecast inventory.

Too business support management even when someone lacks with a bit in attention to detail allowing for easy corrections and edits

Gets the job done and has changed how we handle our budget and how we look at budgeting. Little to no consultation with a robust budgeting, forecasting and integration with their analytics tool, Analytics Maestro, Budget Maestro.

Deoendi on company size workflow process is lacking. Some forecasting issues of budget and balance but creating and actual plan minimises the issue.

I found this product very easy to learn. That said, I am a CPA. Excellent tools for budgeting and forecasting. Very user friendly

We had some problems importing and exporting to excel. It took a while to set this system up and train staff to use it.

We were on Budget Maestro for a few years. When Planning Maestro came out, we had the option then to move to something else but we stayed with Centage as PM is a solid budgeting and planning tool. It has good functionality and good support.

ease of use is super important. reporting is good and I love the dump into Excel for more slicing and to import.

copy paste was removed from previous version - bring it back!