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Planful System is a powerful and Comprehensive Financial Planning & Reporting System
Updated December 14, 2023

Planful System is a powerful and Comprehensive Financial Planning & Reporting System

Jean Dane | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Structured Planning
  • Dynamic Planning
  • Reporting
  • Consolidation

Overall Satisfaction with Planful

We utilize Planful at the corporate level to consolidate numerous companies' results from various ERPs and different charts of accounts to do consolidated reporting. We utilizing both web services/DLRs as well as manual loads. We also use Planful to consolidate plans/forecast data. Our users enter plans directly into Planful using templates others will upload their data. Corporate accounting utilizes the consolidation module; Journal entries, currency rates, eliminating entries.
  • 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
  • We have dramatically reduced the time to prepare reporting
  • Since Planful is "Owned" by finance it has given us more flexibility and changes can be made quicker than getting IT involved
  • Using translation tables to convert a local chart of accounts to a standard Planful chart of accounts has made our integration process more efficient, thus getting results quicker.
We currently only use the planning module to consolidate the plan. Detail planning is still done within the local companies' ERP as well as cost center reporting. Summary level plan data is then uploaded or entered into Planful.
Using Planful to consolidate data from multiple companies and have this data stored in one place allows us to create corporate reporting efficiently. Using spotlight XL for reporting has given us the ability to respond quickly to changes in data, so reporting is accurate and up to date.
We felt the platform was more user-friendly and had better functionality for our purposes. Since we already had Planful instance within our company, we already had in-house expertise on the Planful system, which gave us some consistency in tools.

Do you think Planful delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Planful's feature set?

Yes

Did Planful live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Planful go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Planful again?

Yes

Each system has strengths and weaknesses, so it needs to be assessed based on your own company's goals/objectives. I believe Planful has robust reporting capabilities and various reporting options to utilize depending on your needs. Using report collections and the ability to burst reports and schedule distribution makes standard reporting extremely efficient. You are using workforce planning (Used at a previous company) to calculate benefits made an enormous difference in our accuracy. The modeling application is handy and quickly extracts/pushes back to the core application once the model is built. Creates a lot more flexibility in the system.

Planful Feature Ratings

8.2
Long-term financial planning
8
Financial budgeting
8
Forecasting
8
Scenario modeling
8
Management reporting
9
5.6
Financial data consolidation
6
Journal entries and reports
6
Multi-currency management
5
Intercompany Eliminations
5
Minority Ownership
4
Local and consolidated reporting
7
Detailed Audit Trails
6
7.5
Financial Statement Reporting
7
Management Reporting
8
Excel-based Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
7
Not Rated
Personalized dashboards
Not Rated
Color-coded scorecards
Not Rated
KPIs
Not Rated
Cost and profitability analysis
Not Rated
Key Performance Indicator setting
Not Rated
6.3
Flat file integration
7
Excel data integration
7
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
5
Not Rated
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
7.3
Drill-down analysis
7
Formatting capabilities
7
Report sharing and collaboration
8
7.7
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
8
Report Versioning
7
Report Delivery Scheduling
8
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Not Rated
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
7.3
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
7
Report-Level Access Control
Not Rated
Single Sign-On (SSO)
8
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated

Planful Features and Attributes

Most of the time support is timely. With complicated questions / issues it can take awhile to move up the support chain. Planful does have an option for pro-support which guarantees faster response time which has been helpful.
The modeling and reporting (Spotlight) are extremely useful. would like to see the consolidation module beefed up to support eliminating markup reve/COGS when selling between companies.
We can generate our Monthly package in an extremely efficient manner using spotlight for excel. Gives us full confidence on any metrics / data that we have within the planful system.
We have more confidence in the data we are presenting. And that each company presenting their own results is using the same database so we are consistent in what is being presented in various decks.
We had an issue with changing the way we were loading our data in the middle of year as a company had transitioned to a different ERP. This caused issues with the load. They brought in a solution architect to assist us in resolving the issue. He went above and beyond to assist as (As he was actually not in office at the time) and actually created and tested the fix (Upload) we needed to get accurate data.

Using Planful

50 - Finance and Accounting
2 - finance and system acumen. Understanding of your companies plannning, forecasting and close process'
  • consolidating multiple companies results - all with different ERP's and COA
  • Generating reports/decks for presentations to management and the Board
  • Consistency in data - everyone using the same source of data
  • Utilize the workforce planning module
  • Use modeling application for more detailed revenue planning
  • start using the planning module within each of our companies
We have been on this system for 5 years and have just installed a new instance of planful. It would make no sense to change systems at this point in time.

Evaluating Planful and Competitors

  • Other
I was not part of the team that chose planful.
Would concentrate more on the ease of integrations with ERP systems, and the processing speed of the system.

Planful Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Escalation required
Need to explain problems multiple times
we purchase one year of premium support as we were implementing an additional instance of planful and wanted the additional support hours as well as faster response time with more highly skilled support personnel
Yes - I wished they would have resolved quicker as we had to wait until the next rollout. Planful now does monthly updates versus qtr. which is what they were doing when I had reported the bug.

Using Planful

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
Inconsistent
  • Dynamic reporting
  • spotlight reporting
  • setting up/maintaining dimensions
  • Workforce planning reporting is more complex
  • Capital planning - integrating actuals

Integrating Planful

We needed a lot of help to integrate and currently use web services as well as manual. I would like it to be an easier process
  • Netsuite
  • Oracle
  • SAP
  • MAX
We had some limitations in using API due to our system configuration. We used boomi for our interface to feed into planful. We currently have no direct integration from an ERP to planful.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • ETL tools
Ask integration questions before buying any system to ensure you can easily integrate your data. This is also important in the configuration of your system implementation.

Relationship with Planful

I was not involved during the process to choose the vendor.
I found planful helpful to work with and appreciate the support we have been and are being given.
Users, Price, terms