Case Study: Urban Ventures achieves faster, more accurate personnel budgeting and deeper staffing insights with Centage Planning Maestro

Faster Budgeting and More Valuable Insights for Personnel Planning

Urban Ventures is a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that provides cradle-to-career support for youth and families through 70 local partners. With 50–100 employees and payroll accounting for about 85% of expenses, the finance team—led by VP of Finance Renee Sherman—struggled with complex personnel budgeting and frequent revisions done manually in Excel while using Dynamics GP for GL data.

They implemented Centage Planning Maestro for its seamless Dynamics GP integration and robust personnel forecasting. The tool cut budget revision time from 5–6 hours to about 20 minutes, eliminated error-prone manual reconciliation, enabled detailed scenario planning for staffing changes, and is expected to halve overall budgeting time while improving confidence in forecasts and enabling future multi-year planning and dashboards.

Urban Ventures

Renee Sherman

Vice President of Finance