The budget planning system provides a highly customizable shell that allows the administrative user to design new input sheets and reports, using Microsoft Excel (not required on client PCs). The system is very flexible and unfussy in that it allows almost limitless permutations of input sheet design. Most spreadsheets in common use can be adapted as input sheets or reports in the system, usually with no system-imposed change in appearance. Graphs are set up simply by naming ranges of data in the input or report templates. The system has been designed so that new data requirements not originally specified (eg collecting staff strength numbers at each cost centre), can be easily accommodated without application or database design changes.

This design has the great advantage that the spreadsheet literate customer can implement his/her business rules in the system without seeing these rules obscured by being converted into some arcane software language, and the interface changed from friendly spreadsheet to cumbersome 'previous record/next record' type forms. The business rules and interface layer of the system has been strongly differentiated from the shell and data transport layers, giving the customer a high degree of interface design ownership.

The system has an advantage over other budgeting systems in that it can easily make explicit the full workings of any account item amount. For instance, without a formal system one common budgeting approach may be that each person creates their own set of spreadsheets to assist in the calculation of different account items, then enters each result calculated in this way into an account schedule. This schedule is then passed on as hardcopy or sent electronically to the department responsible for consolidation. At this point, the recipient sees only the account item totals and has lost the view of the detailed workings. The system allows these working calculations (using common templates) to be included and viewed by all users authorised to access the cost centre concerned.

The depot manager then loses his ability to make changes to the budget (but can still view it), and his area manager then acquires these rights. This process repeats until several changes and reviews have taken place and the budget arrives at head office, where the final review / approval process takes place. It is possible to hand rights down the tree again, if necessary. It is also possible to hand over rights from say, cost centre level to head office level, in a single handover action.

The system deploys a custom-built data transport layer that takes cognizance of the high unreliability and noise of South African communications lines. It ensures that all data changes made by client users and the administrator are cascaded to all participating sites. This layer has also been successfully used in other non-budget related live sites. The system architecture ensures that every client installation can continue entering budgets uninterrupted even when the server (local or remote) goes down. Interaction with the network is kept to a minimum; therefore system performance is not degraded by constant, long distance handshaking, and runs as a local application. Auto-upgrade features allow most system changes to be implemented invisibly and without user interaction. Highly economical and efficient data storage and compression ensure that the system's impact on network storage and bandwidth is minimal.