Overview
What is Planful?
Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.
Review of Planful
Planful's no slouch
Great platform for a growing business
Great EPM Tool for the Mid-Enterprise
A cloud based EPM solution your FP&A team can grow with!
Wonderful Customer Service and Evolving Product
Planful System is a powerful and Comprehensive Financial Planning & Reporting System
Powerful tool for short and long-term financial planning and real-time financial and operational analysis.
Planful is NOT painful
A budget and forecast tool that makes financial planning easy!
Planful, a good tool if you have the time and skillset to properly implement
Short summary of my Planful experience.
Flexible FP&A tool to streamline reporting and budget preparations
Stressed out about budgeting?
How Planful Differs From Its Competitors
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Having the unified suite of …
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Financial budgeting (106)8.282%
- Forecasting (99)8.080%
- Management Reporting (100)8.080%
- Management reporting (103)7.979%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Planful?
Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
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PlanGuru is budgeting, forecasting and financial analytics software for SMB's, Nonprofits and the Accountants/ Advisors that work with them.
What is Kepion Planning?
Kepion is a cloud planning & analytics software company that connects all organizations' teams under a single view of their business performance. We enable more intelligent decisions to be made by companies about their financial and operational future. Kepion global offices and partners deliver…
Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 6.7Pixel Perfect reports(15) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 6.7Customizable dashboards(29) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 6.4Report Formatting Templates(27) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 7.9Drill-down analysis(58) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 6.8Formatting capabilities(59) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 7.2Report sharing and collaboration(55) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 7Publish to Web(12) Ratings
- 7Publish to PDF(44) Ratings
- 5.4Report Versioning(28) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 7Report Delivery Scheduling(31) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
Data Discovery and Visualization
Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.
- 6.1Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(15) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 6.4Predictive Analytics(18) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 8.9Multi-User Support (named login)(53) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 8.1Role-Based Security Model(51) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8.3Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(52) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
- 7.9Report-Level Access Control(10) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
- 9.2Single Sign-On (SSO)(44) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 7.2Responsive Design for Web Access(23) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 7.4Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(15) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning
- 8.3Long-term financial planning(94) Ratings
3-5 year financial plan with cashflow.
- 8.2Financial budgeting(106) Ratings
Annual budget for revenue and operating expenses, headcount/compensation, capital expenses, projects, etc.
- 8Forecasting(99) Ratings
Combining actuals and budgets, rolling forecasts, driver-based models.
- 7.3Scenario modeling(86) Ratings
Financial or operational modeling of alternate future states and planning for each.
- 7.9Management reporting(103) Ratings
Budget vs. actual or forecast, P&L’s, performance over time, between products etc.
Consolidation and Close
Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.
- 8.5Financial data consolidation(72) Ratings
Consolidating data from several entities into a single statement using US GAAP, IFRS or other standards.
- 6.8Journal entries and reports(55) Ratings
Ability to enter journal entry adjustments and produce reports showing all journal entries for a specific period.
- 6.6Multi-currency management(48) Ratings
Ability to handle foreign currency conversions during consolidation.
- 6.6Intercompany Eliminations(47) Ratings
Matching and elimination of intercompany revenue, expenses, and balance sheet accounts.
- 4.6Minority Ownership(24) Ratings
Consolidate financials full or partial ownership of subsidiaries, equity pick-up.
- 6.6Local and consolidated reporting(58) Ratings
Ability to report against individual business entities and the consolidated umbrella entity.
- 6.6Detailed Audit Trails(57) Ratings
Tracing changes to data and processes that were run.
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Financial statements and regulatory filings
- 7.6Financial Statement Reporting(90) Ratings
Creation and production of balance sheets, income statements, cash flows, other schedules
- 8Management Reporting(100) Ratings
Tools facilitating creation of internal ad hoc or standard reports.
- 7.6Excel-based Reporting(99) Ratings
Ad hoc or formatted reports using MS Excel.
- 6.4Automated board and financial reporting(73) Ratings
Tools to help automate creation of regulatory reports such as SEC filings and board books.
- 7.1XBRL support for regulatory filing(3) Ratings
Support for the XBRL standard reporting format for exchanging financial data.
Analytics and Reporting
Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking
- 7Personalized dashboards(54) Ratings
Create custom dashboards and reports without the help of IT or administrators.
- 6.4Color-coded scorecards(32) Ratings
Track and analyze performances with interactive, color-coded balanced scorecards.
- 7KPIs(41) Ratings
Select from a library of more than 6,000 key performance indicators, and incorporate KPIs into your planning process.
- 6.7Cost and profitability analysis(42) Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis provides data for business decision making.
- 6.1Key Performance Indicator setting(32) Ratings
Ability to set key performance indicators for measuring progress towards goals.
- 3.1Benchmarking with external data(8) Ratings
CPI, daily exchange rates, industry KPIs. with scheduled data refreshes.
Integration
Ability to integrate with external applications.
- 8.3Flat file integration(70) Ratings
Integration of flat files like text documents and comma separated files
- 6.9Excel data integration(90) Ratings
Ability to integrate directly with Excel data.
- 5.2Direct links to 3rd-party data sources(65) Ratings
Integration with external applications like ERP, CRM, HCM
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Planful?
Planful offers end-to-end financial close, consolidation, and financial planning & analysis (FP&A) cloud software. The Planful platform is used by the Office of the CFO around the globe to streamline business-wide planning, budgeting, consolidations, reporting, and visual analytics. The vendor states Planful's more than 1,000 customers, including Boston Red Sox, Del Monte, TGI Friday’s, and 23andMe, rely on Planful to accelerate cycle times, increase productivity, and improve accuracy across the end-to-end FP&A process. Planful is a private company backed by Vector Capital, a leading global private equity firm. Learn more at www.planful.com.
STRUCTURED PLANNING Structured Planning with Planful automates labor-intensive planning activities in a cloud-based platform – to give the finance team control, consistency, and confidence in corporate financial plans, budgets, and forecasts.
DYNAMIC PLANNING Dynamic Planning with Planful enables flexible, high-frequency, data-driven planning, modeling, and decision-making so users in every corner of the organization can analyze, plan, and make confident decisions at the speed of business.
FINANCIAL CLOSE & CONSOLIDATION Financial Close & Consolidation with Planful empowers finance to accelerate month-end close and reporting cycles by automating data aggregation, journal entries, intercompany eliminations, minority interest, entity consolidation, currency conversion, and financial reporting.
FINANCIAL REPORTING Reporting with Planful provides a library of reporting formats and delivery options, enabling finance and business users to produce a wide range of interactive financial and management reports leveraging one source of truth.
WORKFORCE PLANNING Planful helps users to tackle workforce planning using accurate and current data from across the business. By simplifying and automating time-consuming tasks and building alignment across departments, users have more time to create a stronger people strategy.
PLANFUL FOR MARKETING Planful’s marketing solution, formerly known as Plannuh, is used to measure marketing at every level of the plan for full visibility and team efficiency. To protect the marketing budget, Planful for Marketing helps marketers build, measure, execute and improve with clarity.
Planful Features
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features
- Supported: Long-term financial planning
- Supported: Financial budgeting
- Supported: Forecasting
- Supported: Scenario modeling
- Supported: Management reporting
Consolidation and Close Features
- Supported: Financial data consolidation
- Supported: Journal entries and reports
- Supported: Multi-currency management
- Supported: Intercompany Eliminations
- Supported: Minority Ownership
- Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
- Supported: Detailed Audit Trails
Financial Reporting and Compliance Features
- Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
- Supported: Management Reporting
- Supported: Excel-based Reporting
- Supported: Automated board and financial reporting
Analytics and Reporting Features
- Supported: Personalized dashboards
- Supported: Color-coded scorecards
- Supported: KPIs
- Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
- Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
Integration Features
- Supported: Flat file integration
- Supported: Excel data integration
- Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
- Supported: Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Predictive modeling
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to Web
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Report Versioning
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- Supported: Predictive Analytics
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities Features
- Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
- Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Planful Screenshots
Planful Videos
Watch Annual Operational Planning
Watch Cash Flow Forecasting
Watch Workforce Planning
Watch Financial Reporting
Watch Monthly Close and Consolidation
Watch Plan, Budget & Forecast
Watch Rolling Forecasts
Watch Dynamic Planning
Watch Planful for Marketing
Watch Planful Consolidations
Watch Planful Predict
Planful Integrations
Planful Competitors
Planful Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | We have customers in 90 countries |
Supported Languages | English |
Planful Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Planful Customer Size Distribution
Consumers | 0% |
---|---|
Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 10% |
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 25% |
Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 65% |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(204)Attribute Ratings
- 8.3Likelihood to Renew18 ratings
- 8.2Availability4 ratings
- 7.7Performance2 ratings
- 8.2Usability17 ratings
- 7.8Support Rating18 ratings
- 8.2Online Training1 rating
- 6.4In-Person Training2 ratings
- 2.3Implementation Rating7 ratings
- 8.2Configurability2 ratings
- 8.2Product Scalability2 ratings
- 5.5Ease of integration1 rating
- 9.1Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 7.7Vendor post-sale3 ratings
- 9.1CPA Rating1 rating
Reviews
(1-25 of 116)Planful is a complex product for complex businesses
- Customization
- Export to Excel
- Supports multiple user input, internal and external
- Complexity and detail of functionalities (UI and UX) are not intuitive
- Platform training resources for users are poor
- In-platform collaboration not intuitive
Review of Planful
- Reporting
- Analyzing Data
- Hierarchies
- Wish there was more ease of use with creating reports. Sometimes I think to myself it would just be easier to export to Excel and make modifications there.
- There are some formatting nuances that can be really frustrating.
- I wish the dashboards had a bit more functionality.
- There are some limitations that can be really frustrating. For example, you are unable to copy more than one report or an entire folder.
Planful's no slouch
- Planful is integral in our month-end close process as we are able to use the software to consolidate our financials
- Financial reporting is easy to use and once there is an understanding of column and row sets, building custom reports is a breeze
- Forecasting via the Structured Planning module is easy to setup and once completed, the templates can be updated very easily
- User setup can be confusing, security attributes can be tricky to get correct
- Password reset does not work, we now have single sign on setup though so this is no longer an issue
I do really enjoy working in the Structured Planning module but the templates could open/close quicker, it can take a bit of time if you have a lot of templates to go through to update.
Great platform for a growing business
- Planning templates - bottoms up planning
- Integration with Excel
- offline planning in excel
- ability to add attributes after configuration
- reliance on third parties for application audits and best practices
- charging for sandbox refreshes
Great EPM Tool for the Mid-Enterprise
- Financial Reporting
- Budget Preparation
- User Management
- Dashboard Reporting Options
- Workforce Planning Reporting
- Report Formatting
A cloud based EPM solution your FP&A team can grow with!
- The Planful Cloud EPM Suite does a great job keeping all of our actual, forecast, and budget data together in one place. Loading new data into the application is fairly straight forward and allows us to quickly provide reports and analyses to our senior leadership team each month/quarter.
- The Planful Spotlight Excel-Add In Tool is helpful for users who are more familiar with building and creating reports in Excel. While the reporting module in the core application is very easy to use and navigate, often times our team will utilize the Excel add-in tool to build more complex reports using the data from Planful as many of us tend to have more experience with excel based reporting.
- Using Planful has allowed us to drastically reduce the number of days it takes to close each month. We quickly load data via the data load rule, use the consolidations module to input any adjusting journal entries, and from there we are able to jump right into financial reporting and analysis.
- The speed of the application has sometimes been a bit slow, particularly at year end.
Wonderful Customer Service and Evolving Product
- Phenomenal customer service, intending to build more than just business relationships
- Very fast updating of actual data following integration with our ERP system
- Strong focus on addressing missing features, providing a constantly evolving product
- Could better intertwine workforce planning with the financial planning environment
- Could be easier to plan or load Capex projections
- More dynamic planning training (have been working this; many other "areas of improvement" have been mitigated by product developments
Planful System is a powerful and Comprehensive Financial Planning & Reporting System
- Support: They assign a technical expert to your team, which we have used extensively. They are always very responsive.
- The spotlight XL add-in is a great tool and has made reporting extremely efficient. So easy to update with changes in your data.
- Continued enhancements in leading-edge technology - Ex. AI
- Multiple currency calculations/ consolidations support IFRS accounting
- Ability to inactivate old data dimensions
- Reporting - Need ability to expand all/collapse all lines easily
- Reporting - Formula exceptions added to a report do not update when information is revised.
- Automatic Sandbox refreshes initiated by Planful - When Planful does an automatic refresh of the sandbox environment, it copies any Boomi/integration connections.
- Limited to 8 data dimensions in core application
- Add more API connectors to make data integration easier
- ability to transfer sandbox tests to production environment
Powerful tool for short and long-term financial planning and real-time financial and operational analysis.
- Integration with other platforms - payroll, ERP, etc.
- Real-time scenario analysis
- Live data from the ERP allows for quick response to business changes
- Data quality and repeatability
- Ease of use for report writing
- Behind the scenes interface is somewhat clunky for a first-time user
- The login process is not streamlined. I have to go through the company's website vs. just going to a favorite in my browser
Planful is NOT painful
- Workforce planning is amazing. We can personalize each record, and updating is very simple.
- The ability to have a rolling forecast is very useful for us in an overhead department. It enables us to pull up information on what we are forecasting for company IT costs for the upcoming years.
- The flexibility of the program and the reporting has been extremely helpful for us.
- They customer service is 2nd to NONE!
- Their willingness to improve their tool based on feedback from business user groups, customer advisory boards and their planful engage program is absolutely amazing.
- Dashboards need improvements. It would be nice to have a VIEW ONLY ability to push a dashboard to select users at the top level of finances for the group.
- Dated Hierarchies are cumbersome and not as helpful as they could be. There is so much opportunity with dated hierarchies, especially during re-organizations and budgeting.
A budget and forecast tool that makes financial planning easy!
- Workforce Planning Enhancements have been huge for our dept.
- Support has increased significantly since we started four years ago
- They are able to be used on Cloud
- Providing customers monthly releases of enhanced/new products
- Always working with their customers on how they can better the tool
- Need to make some manual processes automatic
- Would like to allow hierarchies to be scenario specific
- Would like a PowerBI integration
- GL level forecasting/budgeting
- Push Button month end reporting
- Hierarchy control
- Structure planning is very clunky and does not give give enough flexibility to make mass changes
- Reporting struggles mixing variables together in the same report. If you want a combination between time and scenario there is no great way to make a joint scenario (We have had a support ticket out for a couple weeks to solve this with no great solution in place yet).
- Getting to certain reports requires an understanding of MDX
- Sandbox has been removed as a portion of the product and is now an upcharge meaning there is no room to test anymore without paying the absurd amount requested. Ours was removed mid contract.
- Support can be slow for issues that seem like they should already have solutions for
Short summary of my Planful experience.
- Topside entries
- consolidation
- reporting
- Work flow control
- report formatting
- integration into excel
- Flexible Reporting
- Data Integrations
- Office Integration
- Customer Support
- Concise Documentation
- Easy to get started, difficult to become a true power user
Smaller companies who do not have the capacity to spare the resource may find it difficult to spare the time to fully immerse themselves and learn how to use the full capabilities of Planful
Stressed out about budgeting?
- Reporting / Report Collectors
- Workforce Planning
- Hierarchy Management
- Capital Spend
- Customize navigation screen
- Simplify various Security settings
- Budgeting
- Scenario Forecast
- Hierarchy Management
- Data Analytics
- Verify External Data
- Foreign Exchange Rates
Planful Review
- aesthetically pleasing for business partners to look at
- nice formatting options
- user friendly for basic tasks
- more attributes
- vendor level
- better error message diagnosis
Everybody has a Plan until they get Planful'd! (positive review 👍)
- Creating forecasts for the month, quarter, and year
- Creating new variables by using variables pre-defined and that are new in the system
- Having a very simple setup in the reports section - not straying away from the old Excel model which most people are used to. I can speak for a lot of people when I say that tools that look new can easily be frightening! 😅
- I think that the load times for creating or deleting scenarios could be faster. nI addition, if they could start out by not being locked, that would be nice too.
- Sometimes, when I copy from Google Sheets and paste in Planful, I get a weird error string that doesn't tell me where I went wrong. Having something similar to MS Excel which says what might be causing the error would be super helpful as well.
- I think emails saying that a scenario has been deleted (if deleted by somebody else) would be helpful in case that communication is not sent out or received.
- Creating actual versus planned dashboards for budgetary and FP&A purposes
- Exporting or creating reports to examine vendor details, KPIs by a certain parameter, etc.
Scenarios where it is less appropriate:
- Creating very very intricate charts and graphs - I use Tableau for this if I want to easily interact with charts and tables
- Linking it to a database and making it more "alive" - for instance, in Tableau, I connect that to a database. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that I could do this with Planful.
A great tool to scale your business and enable collaboration
- Ad-hoc reporting and analysis
- Budgeting and Forecasting
- Financial Consolidations
- Multiple Sets of Books
- Simple to learn
- Data Integration for large data sets
- Year end data rollforward
- Locking of data/periods
Planful - Great for Budget Planning and Reporting
- Keeps up-to-date with real time edits and amounts when it comes to reporting
- Very detailed options in the structured planning tab
- Detailed reports that really help me see the numbers
- Makes it easy to find help/tutorials when I am confused
- Sometimes, too many options can make things confusing
- I like the detail, but sometimes mix things up, especially when using the reports tab
- Structured planning tab is the most confusing part
Planful Review 2022
- DLR - upload is fast and easy if it's done right.
- Our consultant creates lots of reports to suit our business needs such as employee summary report.
- It's easy to format the reports.
- Planful is limited to just do reporting.
- It needs to combine both actual and forecast scenarios into one screen.
- We need to use it more to do analysis on top line such as revenue, Net revenue and gross margin besides bottom on people.
Planful delivers
- Easily pivoting between different data sets
- Report building
- Dissection of data into different sub groups
- Tech support
- Data load user interface
- Roles
- Reporting in Spotlight and the PCR is best in class.
- Alternative Fx scenario analysis is very good and fast
- Consolidation is seamless and never breaks
- The spotlight Excel add-in breaks sometimes and needs to be reinstalled.
- New features are great, but users care more about the existing features being flawless.
A Modern, User-Friendly Planning Solution
- Customer support
- Product updates
- UI design/ease of use
- User feedback
- Wages--actuals vs forecast reporting
- Workforce--reporting number of employees with the same role
- Scenario management--folders/grouping
A great FP&A tool
- Reporting on financial data
- User management and accessibility on a user basis
- Customizable templates to allow for easy budgeting
- Easier navigation of the help section
- More intuitive user interface