What Happened When Visit Philly Finally Put Their Budgeting Software to Work

Philadelphia's tourism marketing agency gave eight departments shared budget visibility with Martus, and got support through a fiscal year change.

About the Organization

Founded in 1996, Visit Philadelphia is the official leisure tourism marketing agency for Greater Philadelphia. The organization draws nearly 10 million visitors to its website each year.

Prior to Martus, financial visibility across departments was limited, and the finance team lacked the collaborative infrastructure needed to support effective budget management at scale.

Today, Visit Philadelphia has built a collaborative, department-level budgeting process that gives finance leadership real-time insight across the organization and empowers department managers to take ownership of their numbers.

The Challenge

With eight departments and a lean finance team, Visit Philadelphia needed more than software. They needed a solution that non-finance staff could actually use, that would allow granular access controls by department, and that could flex to support complex planning scenarios without overwhelming users.

In addition to their budgeting needs, Visit Philadelphia was about to embark on a major fiscal year change — shifting from a non-calendar fiscal year to a calendar year. This was a significant operational shift requiring careful coordination across planning periods, payroll uploads, and general ledger mapping.

The Solution

Visit Philadelphia built its budgeting and reporting workflows around Martus, integrating it directly with Sage Intacct for general ledger data and financial reporting. With Martus' spreadsheet-like interface and role-based access controls, department managers were able to get up to speed quickly and take an active role in building and reviewing their own budgets.

Key elements of their Martus implementation include:

• Collaborative budgeting with department managers actively working in the planner module
• Granular access controls limiting visibility and drill-down permissions at the account level — ensuring each manager sees only what they need
• Bi-directional Sage Intacct integration for accurate, up-to-date actuals and streamlined GL reporting
• Personnel and payroll budget uploads support headcount planning
• Short-period fiscal planning support to help navigate the fiscal year transition, with hands-on assistance from the Martus customer support team

The Result

With Martus embedded into its day-to-day operations, Visit Philadelphia gained the financial visibility and collaborative infrastructure it had been missing. Budget-to-actual reports are now a regular part of monthly department meetings, giving leadership a clear organizational view as well as the ability to drill down by department. Board reporting, CFO updates, and ad hoc requests are handled efficiently thanks to real time reporting.

• Real-time budget vs. actual reporting used across all departments and reviewed in monthly meetings
• Department managers empowered to build, review, and take ownership of their own budgets directly in Martus
• Reporting used proactively to catch budgeting and forecasting coding errors before they impact the organization
• Fiscal year transition managed successfully with direct support from the Martus customer success team, including support from team member Andrea M.
• Responsive, U.S. - based customer support ensured questions and requests were handled quickly and efficiently

For Visit Philadelphia, Martus didn't just streamline budgeting — it supported the organization through a critical financial transition.