Case Study: Goodwill Southern California achieves streamlined, error-free budgeting and improved visibility with Workday Adaptive Planning

Visibility, Collaboration Takes Growing Pains Out of Expanding Nonprofit

Goodwill Southern California is a nonprofit that delivers job training and placement services across Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, operating 60 retail stores and serving over 44,000 people. As the organization grew to more than 1,900 employees and hundreds of department codes, its Excel-based budgeting process—used by 25+ contributors—became error-prone, hard to consolidate, and offered poor visibility into actuals versus plan.

The finance team implemented Workday Adaptive Planning, rolling out a permission-based, web solution with internal training so more users could participate without breaking formulas. The change enabled automated imports of actuals, clearer reports comparing budget to performance, an audit trail, reduced time spent on budget preparation, and broader accountability—now nearly 50 people engage in planning and reporting with improved accuracy and satisfaction.

Goodwill Southern CA

Jonathan Martin

Budget/Information System Specialist