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For many not-for-profits, personnel expenditures including payroll, payroll taxes, and fringe benefits can be greater than 50% of their total expenses. Yet many not-for-profits have trouble accurately tracking these costs for all of their employees. Recognizing the need to get a more accurate account of their personnel expenditures, Brattleboro Retreat, a not-for-profit regional specialty mental health and addictions treatment center in Brattleboro, VT, decided to replace its manual spreadsheet budgeting and forecasting process. Brattleboro Retreat turned to Budget Maestro budgeting and forecasting software from Centage. Not-for-profits can greatly increase their ability to budget and forecast with confidence, for both strategic and operational needs, with the help of tools like Budget Maestro.

For many not-for-profits, personnel expenditures including payroll, payroll flaxes, and fringe benefits can be greater than 50 percent of their total expenses. Yet many not-for-profits have trouble accurately tracking these costs for all of their employees. An incorrect calculation can lead to over budgeting of your payroll taxes, such as FICA, or an underestimation of how much your people are really costing you. A variance in either direction can significantly affect your bottom line and possibly handicap your ability to fund other revenue-generating programs.

MS Excel is the typical tool CFOs of not-for-profits use to budget payroll expenditures. However, as the organization grows, spreadsheet calculations become more complex and the incidence of errors can increase. The management of multiple spreadsheets, alone, becomes an overwhelming task.

Recognizing the need to get a more accurate account of their personnel expenditures, Brattleboro Retreat, a not-for-profit regional specialty mental health and addictions treatment center in Brattleboro, Vermont, decided to replace its manual spreadsheet budgeting and forecasting process.

Nationally recognized for its premiere treatment in behavioral healthcare, the Brattleboro Retreat offers a high quality, individualized, comprehensive continuum of care including inpatient, partial hospitalization, child and adolescent residential, and outpatient treatment.

"We needed a budgeting and forecasting solution that had strong payroll planning features since payroll is our biggest expense," explained Financial Analyst II, Anne Fecto. So the Brattleboro Retreat turned to Budget Maestro® budgeting and forecasting software from Centage. "Budget Maestro allows us the flexibility to budget by 'position' as our staffing requirements vary throughout the year based on the demands of the programs we offer. We currently have 450 employees including salaried and per diem. Also, Budget Maestro's easy integration with Microsoft's Dynamics GP was also a key factor for us," said Fecto.

Going beyond Excel required implementing a solution that supported revenue planning, operating expense budgeting, and payroll planning all-in-one with the ability to easily generate financial statements and management reports.

"We build our budget by projecting the census multiplied by the rate for each of our programs," noted Fecto. "Based on the census and projected revenue, we drive our staffing requirements for each program. Working with our department managers on their staffing requirements, vacancies, new hires and projected raises, we can plug these variables into Budget Maestro and the system will automatically generate our payroll expenditures that fall into the appropriate period. This way I can account for all our payroll and related expenses and know we haven't missed anything that may impact the departments' expenses."

These benefits, along with Budget Maestro's ability to expand with your organization, and little to no need for IT support, explain why the percentage of Budget Maestro customers from the not-for-profit sector has continued to double from 2005 to 2007. Not-forprofits can greatly increase their ability to budget and forecast with confidence, for both strategic and operational needs, with the help of tools like Budget Maestro.