Optimized Budgeting and Reporting
Virginia Commonwealth University
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Key Takeaways
Optimized Budgeting and Reporting for
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
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Overcoming Financial Complexity
VCU faced challenges in managing its $1.6 billion operating budget amidst departmental siloing, inconsistently timed state-mandated salary increases, and the need to support capital and strategic initiatives. These complexities needed a change from traditional spreadsheet-based modeling to a more integrated, connected solution.
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Increased Collaborative Synergies
Through Synario, VCU fostered closer collaboration between its Budget, Treasury, and Controller’s offices, creating a unified approach to financial planning and reporting. Quarterly reviews and centralized data access improved cross-departmental coordination.
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Enhanced Strategic Decision-Making
Moving away from error-prone spreadsheet models, VCU adopted Synario to:
- Simulate multiple scenarios—such as tuition rate adjustments, salary increases—helping leadership make informed, data-driven decisions.
- Stay ahead of the curve on ensuring capital project planning stayed sustainable.
- Analyze debt service coverage ratios, against Moody’s and S&P ratings with Synario’s scorecard tool.
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Preparing for the Future
By streamlining capital planning and providing tools to project debt service and cash flow, VCU positioned itself to navigate upcoming challenges, including demographic shifts and rising costs, while maintaining financial stability.
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Financial Planning Efficiency
Synario enabled VCU to integrate operating budgets with long-term financial statements and cash flow projections, ensuring leadership had a comprehensive view of the university's financial health.
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Increased Projection Accuracy
By using Synario for its enrollment and tuition projections VCU has gone from a $6 million variance in its budget, to 1.4 million or .3%, which represents a 78% increase in forecast accuracy.
Budgeting and Forecasting Challenges VCU has Overcome
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) serves nearly 29,000 students across undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. The institution’s $1.6 billion annual operating budget supports a diverse set of initiatives, ranging from core academic programs to auxiliary services.
Numbers changed for illustrative purposes
However, managing this complex financial ecosystem posed significant challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, VCU experienced declining enrollment—a common trend across higher education. Simultaneously, state-mandated salary increases, and inflationary pressures strained the university’s resources.
Further complicating matters was the university's need for increased collaborative processes. Departments like Budget, Treasury, and the C’s office operated in silos, each maintaining their own models and datasets. These barriers made it difficult to align short-term budgetary decisions with long-term strategic objectives.
Leadership often relied on models, which, while flexible, introduced inefficiencies and risks. Presenting financial data to stakeholders, including external rating agencies like Moody’s and S&P, required manual consolidation of disparate data sources.
VCU recognized that achieving its goals would require a powerful solution capable of improving accuracy, fostering collaboration, and enabling strategic foresight.
Finding the Right Financial Modeling Solution
For years, spreadsheets served as the foundation of VCU’s financial modeling. While familiar and flexible, spreadsheets came with inherent limitations that became increasingly untenable as the university’s needs grew more complex.
The possibilities of formula errors and inconsistent logic undermined confidence in live presentations, and consolidating data from multiple stakeholders was a manual process that required time. Spreadsheets also lacked the ability to easily integrate operational budgets with long-term financial forecasts, leaving significant blind spots in strategic planning.
Recognizing these shortcomings, VCU began exploring alternative solutions that could provide greater accuracy, efficiency, and scalability. The ideal solution could unify data across departments, support dynamic scenario modeling, and facilitate clear communication with leadership as well as rating agencies (Moody’s, S&P) and departments like treasury and the controller’s office.
VCU selected Synario, being that it has features designed to address the unique challenges of higher education.
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You flick something in Excel and you're like… I think it looks like this… right? But that level of confidence is much, much greater with having things in the Synario platform overall.”
– David Patrick, Director of Budget, Planning and Analysis, Virginia Commonwealth University
The Implementation of The Synario Software
The switch to Synario represented a pivotal shift in how VCU approached financial planning. The process began with the centralization of data from Budget, Treasury, and the Controller’s offices into a single, unified platform.
This step alone addressed one of the university’s most pressing issues: the fragmentation of data and workflows. With Synario, all teams could access and contribute to a shared dataset, ensuring consistency and accuracy across financial reports.
Additionally, Synario has been beneficial during periods of transition in workforce. The consistency it provides makes the prospect of turnover less daunting, as there’s decoding of previous spreadsheet logic, which keeps the level of trust in both the reporting and the process high.
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Synario keeps things consistent, right? So before, if you were to work in an Excel sheet or you were to work really well with a certain person, when they leave, or if they leave, then there's a big hole there, right? And then you almost have to rebuild that entire trust process and rebuild the whole process of the new person. Having a system and a framework really allows that to be more consistent with time and just more seamless overall.”
– David Patrick, Director of Budget, Planning and Analysis, Virginia Commonwealth University
Tuition Modeling and Rating Agency Reporting
Synario’s dynamic scenario modeling capabilities were transformative. The platform enabled VCU to simulate the impact of various financial decisions in real time, from tuition rate adjustments to salary increases and capital project prioritization.
For example, leadership could quickly assess how a 3% tuition increase would affect both short-term revenues and long-term financial stability. This ability to model multiple scenarios with ease provided leadership with the insights needed to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Numbers changed for illustrative purposes, reports as shown in Synario
Another critical benefit of Synario was its ability to prepare for meetings with external stakeholders, particularly rating agencies like Moody’s and S&P. Previously, preparing for these meetings required a labor-intensive process of manually compiling data from multiple sources.
With Synario, VCU could generate detailed, accurate scorecards aligned with agency metrics, significantly streamlining the reporting process. This not only saved time but also improved the university’s credibility and transparency in discussions with external partners.
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Synario is a real benefit to know when [Scorecard updates] are changing, to know how the system and how our scorecards are going to react to those changes really is a huge benefit in lift for us as a university.”
– David Patrick, Director of Budget, Planning and Analysis, Virginia Commonwealth University
Benefits of Planning and Modeling in Synario
The adoption of Synario delivered far-reaching benefits that touched many aspects of VCU’s financial management. One of the most immediate impacts was the dramatic reduction in manual errors.
By replacing spreadsheet-based models with Synario’s flexible planning process, VCU eliminated the risk of formula mistakes and ensured that financial data was accurate and up to date. Leadership presentations, with the platform providing stability and transparency became more efficient and Inspired confidence.
Synario has helped the VCU budgeting office become more involved in capital planning, and much earlier. The platform provides a clear view of the university’s long-term debt capacity, allowing leadership to strategically prioritize projects with the greatest potential impact.
Synario has highlighted critical pinch points in debt capacity projections, enabling VCU to adjust its plans proactively and avoid overextending its resources.
Debt Capacity and Ratio Reporting
Numbers changed for illustrative purposes
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We in the past needed a tool to monitor our ratio for annual days, cash on hand and our monthly days cash on hand… and show it to leadership when we needed to and use it for our capital planning going forward.”
– Brian Brennan, Budget Analyst, Virginia Commonwealth University
The ability to simulate various financial scenarios proved invaluable in navigating complex budgetary decisions. VCU leveraged Synario to model enrollment fluctuations, tuition changes, and state funding adjustments, providing leadership with a clear understanding of potential outcomes. This capability became particularly important during state budget negotiations, where VCU had to account for variable salary mandates and other legislative changes.
Improved communication with non-financial stakeholders was another significant outcome. Synario’s user-friendly interface allowed VCU to present complex financial data in an accessible format, making it easier for deans, trustees, and other non-financial audiences to engage with the information. This fostered greater transparency and trust across the institution, strengthening buy-in for critical initiatives.
Perhaps most importantly, Synario enabled VCU to create a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility. Quarterly cross-departmental reviews, facilitated by the platform’s centralized data and reporting capabilities, ensured that all stakeholders were aligned on the university’s financial goals and strategies. Synario was the key to providing a hub for VCU’s teams to join forces and bring their data together to build out accurate and holistic projections of the university’s current and future health.
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This section here is not possible without creating additional synergies between Treasury, the controller's office, and the Budget Office… just having the platform itself has allowed us to really create those synergies. We need [these] quarterly to go over things—it just allows everyone to be a lot more informed with what's going on at the institution and how it's impacting us in different ways.”
– Brian Brennan, Budget Analyst, Virginia Commonwealth University
This newfound synergy between Budget, Treasury, and the Controller’s office transformed how VCU approached financial planning and decision-making.
Optimized Budgeting and Reporting Light the Way
VCU’s transition to Synario marked a turning point in its financial management journey. By centralizing data, enabling dynamic scenario modeling, and fostering collaboration across key departments, the platform addressed longstanding challenges and set the stage for long-term success. Synario allowed VCU to move beyond reactive financial management, empowering the university to proactively navigate challenges and seize opportunities.
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