Questica News

Questica partners with Balancing Act to provide better transparency and engagement for government agencies

Wendy McLean-Cobban

Today, Questica, a leader in public sector budgeting, performance and data visualization solutions, and Balancing Act, the leader in public sector participatory budget simulations and taxpayer receipt software, jointly announced a referral partnership to give government agencies access to a complete budgeting, performance, transparency, and citizen engagement toolkit to better enable data-driven budgeting and decision-making, while increasing data accuracy, saving time, and improving stakeholder trust.

 

“It’s exciting to be able to partner with a great company like Balancing Act,” states Craig Ross, Vice-President, Business Development, Questica Inc. “Balancing Act not only provides complementary products, but we also share a number of common customers, a similar company culture and a focus on providing superior customer service. Our partnership and tight solution integrations will help government agencies to significantly improve their budget collaboration and workflows while building trust and accountability.”

 

Questica Budget, a web-based, multi-user budgeting preparation and management solution now provides a direct integration to Balancing Act’s budget simulator to not only local governments to solicit feedback from citizens but to also incorporate this feedback back into their budgets and programs for better outcomes for their communities. As well, Questica’s OpenBook transparency and data visualization online tool connects to Balancing Act, allowing citizens to dive deeper during the budget simulation – right down to individual department and program level of the budget

 

Government agencies using these integrated solutions can:

  • Easily inform and collaborate with elected officials, agency staff and citizens during the budget process, and throughout the year.
  • Create and share proposed budgets using interactive charts, tables and dashboards that allow stakeholders to better understand how government agencies allocate funds for programs and services.
  • Connect budget with service levels and policy options by giving stakeholders the ability to allocate the budget funds — expressing their priorities and preferences — but also requiring them to balance spending and revenue, while taking into account demand for services, legal and financial constraints.

“We hear all the time from customers that they want to do budget engagement,” says Chris Adams, President, Balancing Act, “but they don’t have the time during a busy budget process. The integration with Questica Budget makes getting current budget information into Balancing Act a snap. And, by integrating with OpenBook, customers now have a way to provide additional context for their transparency efforts and to maximize their value by providing an easy way to interact with it on the Balancing Act simulation.”

 

About Balancing Act
Balancing Act was created by Engaged Public, a Colorado-based public policy consulting firm founded in 1998 and specializing in engagement-driven strategies and public policy leadership development. Engaged Public’s mission is to bridge people and policy through meaningful, productive dialogue and other innovative tools. We created our first online budget simulation in 2007 for the State of Colorado. Since then we have added scores of local and state governments to our list of partners and continued to evolve the software adding Taxpayer Receipt, Meeting Mode, and a number of other features that make Balancing Act the best budget simulation available. Balancing Act is on the 2017 and 2018 GovTech 100 lists.

 

About Questica
As a leader of budgeting and preparation software since 1998, Questica’s goal is to make public sector and non-profit finance better for everyone. Over 600 local governments, colleges, universities, K-12 schools, hospitals, healthcare facilities, and non-profit organizations throughout North America have eliminated spreadsheets, opting for smarter planning, budgeting, management, transparency and sharing with our solutions. Our highly scalable solutions have been implemented at organizations managing an annual budget of just over $10 million to others with multi-billion-dollar annual budgets. Also listed on 2018 GovTech 100 Index which showcases the 100 leading companies serving state and local governments in unique, innovative and effective ways.

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