The Peoples Bank, a community bank with $390 million under management in Winder, GA, has implemented a new budgeting system that has cut its annual budget planning process from six weeks to three, and enabled the bank to publish monthly budget updates for the first time.

The bank had been using a spreadsheet-based system for annual reports, but the spreadsheets had to be aggregated manually to produce a consolidated report. It took two days just to prepare a monthly report for the board of directors, and the time-consuming nature of the system meant the bank didn’t have the resources to produce monthly budget updates.

The bank selected the Vantage solution from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner IPS-Sendero, based in Norcross, GA, a budgeting, performance measurement, and reporting system designed for financial services firms.

The system allows Peoples Bank to use standard reports, or to customize reports with a drop-down menu. Executives can conduct “what-if” analyses whenever they want, and simulate the impact of interest rate changes or other scenarios. The system maintains a full chart of accounts and instrument-level attributes to model cash flows and management assumptions about account growth and interest-rate trends.     

With 62 percent of the bank’s revenues coming from loans, the bank has to know how well those loans are performing and how different interest rate changes might affect the business. Some of this information is also necessary for regulatory requirements. The tools in the new system help the bank better track this information and better analyze current and future risk positions.

The Vantage solution is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, runs on SQL Server 2005 and uses SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 for its reporting.

In addition to cutting the time it takes to produce annual reports from six weeks to three, monthly reports to the board of directors, which used to take two days, now takes two hours. Because of the time savings the bank now has the resources to produce monthly budget updates that show the progress against the budget for different cost centers and accounts.

Peoples Bank chief financial officer Jeff Kraus said these changes have helped the bank make more informed decisions.

“How fast should we grow? Where should we grow? How long will it take to recoup the investment in a new branch? We’ve used Vantage to answer questions like this, and the results have helped to guide our branch expansions,” Kraus said. “The software gives us a better feel for how our decisions affect the bank and how we can make the bank more profitable.”