Budgeting, Consolidation and IFRS 16 with CCH Tagetik - Natra case study

Formed in 2011 with the merger of Australian Jockey Club and Sydney Turf Club, Australian Turf Club (ATC) operates the four Sydney metropolitan racecourses and hosts some of the country’s biggest races. In addition to more than 100 race-day events, ATC also hosts many varied non-race day events at its facilities.

In 2015, ATC resolved to revamp its planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes to better reflect its event-based business model. At the heart of the business model is ATC’s Race Day Calendar, which has the date of each race day event and the planned attendance. From this calendar, ATC’s finance team projects revenue and variable costs, such as casual wages, food and beverages, based on predetermined rate calculations. Non-race day events are added to the calendar, along with revenue and expense projections. 

In the past, ATC relied on spreadsheets to do all forecasting and budgeting – a practice that had significant shortcomings. The spreadsheet models were very complex and required significant time and effort to prepare prior to each cycle. Once prepared, they then had to be sent out manually to all users.

CCH Tagetik’s unified solution, used by 32 finance and business professionals throughout the organisation, integrates the annual budget, a two-year rolling forecast, ATC’s five-year plan, and the information collection and production of monthly management reports. Each month, actual data is loaded automatically using the built-in CCH Tagetik ETL from ATC’s event-based management system.

Actual data is used for seeding the next forecast and for comparison to budget and forecast in the monthly management reports. The solution provides continuous feedback to users by back calculating the rates used in the driver-based processes. In addition to managing all financial aspects of ATC’s Race Day Calendar and nonrace day events, the solution also manages all operating expenses with itemisation and textual explanation and salary budgets based on assumptions set up by HR.

With CCH Tagetik’s comprehensive built-in financial intelligence and functionality, ATC also has the ability to expand the application for automated balance sheet and cash flow forecasting, financial consolidation and annual report production, and the creation of executive dashboards and analytics.