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Why your budgeting journey should be with Questica

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Many public sector organizations are looking to remove the technology barriers preventing them from operational efficiency, collaboration, and data-based decision making by moving off legacy systems to modern cloud-based software solutions. This digital transformation includes how these organizations develop and manage their budgets. Many still use outdated, disorganized and time-consuming spreadsheets to prepare their complex annual budgets. This exposes the organization to greater financial risk resulting from multiple versions of the same spreadsheets, and greater potential for broken formulas leading to inaccurate data and reporting.

 

Before your organization chooses which budget software vendor to partner with, we’d like to offer a few considerations. You may have noticed a number of companies who originally provided transparency tools to the public sector have recently ventured into the budgeting software market. However, how effective is pop-up budget software versus solutions developed by software experts who have been working with public sector leaders and evolving their solution for decades?

 

Questica has been a market leader specializing in budgeting, performance and data transparency software since the company was founded 20 years ago. Our powerful, multi-user budgeting software is a mature and proven solution that has been successfully implemented by hundreds of public sector organizations. In 2018, Questica was recognized by Government Technology in their annual GovTech 100, which showcases one hundred leading companies serving state and local government in unique, innovative and effective ways.

 

The Questica suite of products are part of a budgeting preparation, management, performance transparency and data visualization solution that enables your government, healthcare or education agency to improve and shorten budgeting cycles. With more than two decades of experience focusing specifically on budgeting software for the public sector, our solution has evolved to be both feature rich and user-friendly. This translates into a tool for our customers that fosters collaboration and empowers users to access meaningful analytics that help to shape long-term strategy. Quite simply, these are objectives that are not easily achieved through new solutions. When it comes to budgeting software, it’s hard to go from A-Z without learning the rest of the alphabet.

 

Budget

Questica Budget empowers your organization to successfully take charge of budget assembly, tracking, analysis and reporting. Everything you need for managing an annual or multi-year budget (operating, capital, salary and position planning) is in one place. We integrate with over dozens of ERP systems to ensure you can easily and accurately monitor and report on your planning and spend. With the performance module, you can leverage financial and statistical data already contained in Questica Budget to effectively measure the performance of your programs and track the progress of your organization’s goals and objectives. In addition, your organization can use Questica’s Budget Book powered by CaseWare to create, collaborate, edit and publish an awards-compliant Budget Book.

 

OpenBook

Questica OpenBook is a data visualization tool that makes transparency effortless for your public sector organization. Share the story of the budget and communicate financial and other information to stakeholders in a user-friendly and visually appealing format. For example, Questica Budget users can specify a Geographic Information System (GIS) location that will place your capital project on a map. By connecting Questica Budget to OpenBook’s visualization tool called Project Explorer for Capital Budgets, your agency can then create an interactive map of all of your capital projects, and include the budget, actual spend, funding sources and additional resources, such as documents, images and videos for each project.

 

Here are a few more reasons why Questica leads the public sector budgeting software market:

 

We did the hard stuff first

We take pride in having the depth of experience that comes from working with public sector organizations, and learning how to refine our products to truly meet the challenges of our customers. Many features and reports in Questica Budget were designed collaboratively with customers over the last 20 years, and our performance module and OpenBook transparency visualization solution were designed to work seamlessly with our core Budget product to provide an end-to-end dynamic budgeting experience.

 

In partnership with customers

Questica makes it a priority to work alongside our customers to have a better understanding of the budgeting challenges organizations face today and anticipate in the future. This partnership begins right from the start. We don’t just provide technical support after implementation, but want to immediately engage in an open discussion and collaboration of ideas and best practices to ensure you maximize the value you receive from your Questica solutions.

 

Our partners are your partners

We are honored to have formed partnerships with a number of leading companies. By forming these partnerships, Questica is able to introduce new tools that complement our Budget suite. For example, Budget and OpenBook directly integrates with the budget simulation tool created by our partner, Balancing Act. By using these tools together, our customers can share their budget and allow stakeholders to dive-in and interact with the budget numbers, building trust through engagement and a two-way dialogue.

 

Implement best practices

Questica’s products can help your public sector organization put into action the best practices advocated by the associations our customers belong to such as the Government Finance Officers Association (“GFOA”), the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (“ICMA”), the Healthcare Financial Management Association (“HFMA”), the Association of School Business Officials International (“ASBO”), and the National Association of College and the University Business Officers (“NACUBO”), and others. Best practices include using technology for budget planning and management, and for sharing information with stakeholders.

 

Finding the right budgeting solution for your public sector agency requires more than choosing a company that specializes in transparency or that has created a pop-up solution with a sleek user interface. Choosing budgeting software is a big decision and can be a significant investment. You want to ensure that your organization is choosing a partner that knows the ropes and has a proven track record of successful implementations that are reliable, on time and on budget. Many new budget solutions available in the software market continue to experience challenges around implementing and meeting organizational requirements and timelines. Choosing a company with the depth of experience that comes from building a product from the ground up, working alongside customers, and forming partnerships to create a quality budgeting system is critical. Questica customers are confidently running their budgets with accuracy and efficiency, knowing they have an experienced partner they can trust to help fulfil all of their budgeting goals now and in the future.

 

About Questica

Questica Budget is a powerful, multi-user budget preparation and management software suite that helps your public sector organization run operating, salary and capital budgets with accuracy and efficiency. Integrating with dozens of financial systems, Questica Budget has everything you need in one place to develop, track, monitor and adjust your budget, plus generate custom reports and create what-if scenarios. Imagine no longer having to enter data into error-prone Excel spreadsheets, and having time to analyze and plan for the budget. In addition, Questica’s OpenBook transparency and data visualization software makes sharing financial information effortless. Your stakeholders will have a better understanding of your budgeting goals when the budget is brilliantly visualized with descriptive text, informational pop-ups, charts and tables. To learn more about Questica’s products and how our software solutions can help you manage the budget with confidence – watch a product video, read one of our case studies or request a demo today!

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