Financial Planner
The EFP Difference in Budgeting and Planning
EFP offers organizations – big or small, the ability to predict what is going to happen to the business using a dynamic and user-friendly solution. EFP uses the best practice approach throughout the solution as it looks at how you currently do things and suggest streamlined working methods that still make sense for your business. All these are initially done within the bounds of EFP´s off-the-shelf offering.
Once your process is streamlined, EFP will automate specific tasks to cut down the budget cycle time significantly. EFP prefers intelligent process streamlining before automating, because automation only makes things faster, not necessarily better.
The budget workflow in EFP
a way of working that works!
EFP applies good budgeting practices that are designed to minimize errors and inconsistencies and engage front-line managers with the unique perspective of their departments to collaborate with the finance department so that top-down guidelines may be combined with bottom-up knowledge.
To start, EFP will let you map your organizational tree into the solution.
This organizational tree will contain information such as positions, people holding the key roles, tasks assigned to that position, and permissions attached to each position. With EFP, your finance department will also be heavily involved in the account mapping within the solution to define the reporting and budgeting structures clearly.
Here is a simplified view of the process:
The EFP Dashboard – A curated view to highlight numbers that matter
When logging in to EFP, you immediately see your EFP dashboard. This dashboard contains graphs that are relevant to your line of work. Setting up this dashboard requires no coding at all. It is all done via the web with just a few clicks on the button and without need for any IT assistance.
In this dashboard, you have access to graphs and a list of your assignments and tasks. You will also have access to team announcements set up by your administrator. Whether you want to display gross margin, revenue, budget versus actual, the choice of what you want to see in your dashboard is all yours to decide.
Want to set up multiple dashboards to cover sales and finance? You can do that, too.
Budget Worksheets and Input Sheets – Smart features that make inputs and adjustments easier
Business users and budget stakeholders only see the worksheets they are allowed to access. The web input sheets have an intuitive design, eliminating the need to ask questions on how to use the solution. EFP is always simple and easy to use.
The assignments on the dashboard give a personalized overview on the budget planning tasks.
The input sheet features smart actions like in-line analytics, export to Excel®, search, edit, expand sheet, spread method, or commenting for improved collaboration.
Excel-like capabilities in the web-based view allow stakeholders to use formulas or cell references.
Business Rule Engine – Automate Complex tasks with rules
One of the main reasons why EFP is the FP&A solution of choice for many customers is because of its business rules engine. The capability of handling highly complex calculations in a simple way through its built-in business rules engine showcases EFP’s depth and sophistication as a budgeting solution.
You can have multiple pre-built rules such as direct and indirect cash flow, consolidation, and more. EFP’s business rules engine supports complex HR calculations as well. No matter how advanced the rule you want to run, all of these are accomplished without hard coding or IT assistance.
Unlimited what-if analysis – Model Different Scenarios
EFP allows you to identify best- and worst-case scenarios, you learn how to anticipate change triggers, you get to streamline and fast-track your response. EFP enables you to deal with disruptive times by making the speed and accuracy of your response shorter to mitigate risks.
You can input both historical data and assumptions about future performance. From there, you can derive various ratio analyses and other performance metrics such as profit margins, cash in hand, etc. With EFP’s what-if capabilities, you can toy around with various circumstances using any two assumptions. You get to observe its effect on the financial model while adding flexibility to your financial and valuation models. With this capability, you can predict outcomes in almost all possible departments in your organization – Sales, marketing, HR.
Power BI Support – Enable a deeper and quicker analysis
Enable deeper and faster analysis by integrating with in- house Power BI models. This direct support for Power BI and tabular cubes in the cloud will ensure you get a complete picture of the business.
Live and rolling forecasts – Make resource decisions as close to real-time as possible
EFP gives you timely vision into the next twelve months at any given point in the year. EFP allows you to re-calibrate your forecasts and resource allocation every month or quarter, depending on what is actually happening in your business. This reality-tested approach to target setting keeps everyone in your team honest and agile.
Uncompromising security – Protect your data integrity
EFP is AICPA SOC II compliant and GDPR-compliant. With EFP, you also get a multi-layered approach to handling data security. You get cell-level, role-based level, and server-level enforced security. To add to this, EFP also hosts data in trustworthy countries with the lowest risk of state intrusion.
About Epicor Financial Planner (EFP)
Epicor Financial Planner (EFP) delivers full financial reporting, planning, budgeting, performance manage- ment, and consolidation capabilities that complement your selected combination of ERP and line of business systems. It is designed to support a multitude of moderately complex to very complex business issues and is designed to scale as your business grows in revenue and complexity. To see a demo of Cloud EFP today or to inquire about its pricing, please contact your Epicor Account Manager.