Solve the Challenges With Investments and Depreciations

Forecasting for investments and depreciations is, even today, usually done in Excel. This can work fine when you have relatively few investments to keep track of, but apart from the usual problems with Excel – copying and pasting data between different spread sheets for example – additional challenges arise when forecasting investments and depreciation. In this article, we will go over the difficulties that can arise and how they can be managed with a system for budget and forecasting.

In this article I'll talk about

• Challenges in Excel
• Simplify and streamline with a modern system
• What separates Planacy from other budgeting systems?

Challenges in Excel

To avoid far too much manual labor in Excel, many people tend to budget a lump sum for their investments. The disadvantage of this, however, is that the follow-up suffers – analysing deviations for the investment costs becomes difficult if one does not distinguish the different investments in the budget.

Another challenge when working in Excel is managing depreciation, especially regarding the period in which the asset is to be depreciated. Every year, a manual update must be made in Excel so that the value of the asset is up to date, and the depreciation is correct. In addition to the time aspect, the risk of errors therefore increases, and it becomes even more complicated if more depreciations are added, or if any existing assets are sold off.

Simplify & Streamline With a Modern System

With a modern system for budgeting and forecasting, you can automatically retrieve current assets from the fixed assets register, regardless of whether you use an advanced system or store the fixed assets register in Excel. In this way, you always get a clear and updated overview of your assets, as well as depreciation of current assets.

In Planacy, such an overview could look something like the image below:

Create an Investment Forecast

In Planacy, you can easily create an investment forecast for all new investments.The only thing you need to do in order to add a new investment – for example a budget system – is to fill out the total cost, select depreciation period from the drop-down menu and add from which month the investment should apply. Then you get the total depreciation for that year

The fact that you can easily choose the depreciation period and when the depreciation should begin will also simplify things for you later on when you open up a new year – it will automatically be moved to current assets and you can add new forecasts for future years' investments.

Connect With Balance Sheet & Cash Flow Forecast

With Planacy, you can also connect the total depreciations and drive them into the balance sheet and cash flow forecast. In this way, you get a more detailed balance sheet and cash flow forecast while reducing time-consuming manual work. The processes are linked and updated automatically, which means that you can see the effect on the cash flow immediately after the forecast has been adjusted for future investments and depreciation.

Reading tip: Liquidity forecasting doesn't have to be difficult ⭢

What Separates Planacy From Other Budgeting Systems?

Planacy is close to unique in terms of our driver-based system for budgeting. As mentioned above, by using drivers you can easily link processes such as investments and depreciations with the balance sheet and cash flow. By doing so, you’ll always have an updated overview of income and outcome – not many of our competitors can manage that. Planacy can be customised for every unique process, no matter which industry you’re in.