New UI for Forecaster Budgeting

A new version of the Forecaster budgeting application, released in Mar. 2007, delivers a cleaner user interface (UI) and support for Windows authentication. Forecaster 7.0 will be easier for workers without finance backgrounds to use and learn, and it will help those workers contribute to the periodic process of budgeting. Although Microsoft will continue to support it for several years, Forecaster 7.0 will be the last stand-alone version of the product, which will be subsumed by the forthcoming PerformancePoint Server 2007 performance management, financial reporting, and budgeting application. Consequently, current customers can anticipate further UI changes and data migration to PerformancePoint.

What Is Forecaster?

Forecaster is a Web-based application designed to help small and midsize organizations create, populate, and track budgets. It allows financial planners and workers in other departments to access, update, and track budgets, using a browser. Budget data are stored in a SQL Server database (Oracle is also supported). A Windows client application, which provides all of the functionality available to browser users, also helps administrators create budget models and baselines and administer the Forecaster application and database.