Planful

Score8.4 out of 10

273 Reviews and Ratings

Products

Planful

Products

What is Planful?

Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of the Planful Planform Dashboard

Screenshot of a Capacity Planning Template

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Screenshot of the Planful Planform Dashboard

Single Sign-On (SSO)
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Category average: 8.6
Flat file integration
Integration of flat files like text documents and comma separated files
Category average: 8.6
Financial data consolidation
Consolidating data from several entities into a single statement using US GAAP, IFRS or other standards.
Category average: 8.2

Color-coded scorecards
Track and analyze performances with interactive, color-coded balanced scorecards.
Category average: 8.2
Responsive Design for Web Access
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
Category average: 7.2
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Category average: 6.7

Ben Watts View profile

Accounting Manager in Finance and Accounting at Luna Innovations (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Planful as our budgeting and consolidation software for our whole company which is comprised of many legal entities and multiple ERP systems. By having a single source to consolidate all of our financial information, it has vastly improved our reporting and budgeting process to where we can spend more time analyzing the results.

Pros

Reporting Capabilities
Budgeting and Forecasting
Foreign Currency Translation

Cons

Limited visualizations. There is a dashboard with basic visualizations but they are limited. Additionally, its very difficult to include visuals in a report collection distribution.

Return on Investment

Reduced Accounting Close by 2 days.
It has improved our reporting capabilities by allowing us to report in Business Units and produce cash flow statements.
More visibility into what is driving our variances from budget and has allowed us to identify cost savings

Other Software Used

NetSuite ERP, Workiva

Willy Zhang

Corporate Financial Reporting Manager in Finance and Accounting at American Rheinmetall (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have 3 separate companies with 3 separate ERP systems. Planful is our consolidation tool so that we can consolidate all the financial data seamlessly. Also, we utilize Planful for budget and forecasting.

Pros

Consolidation of financial data
Budget and forecasting
Custom reporting

Cons

Ease of use
Auto refreshing more frequently

Return on Investment

Timeliness of financial information
Accuracy of financial information

Other Software Used

Deltek Costpoint

Jennie Rush View profile

Sr. Financial Business Specialist in Finance and Accounting at Kiewit (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Planful ) at a department level here for budgeting and forecasting our department costs. It is helping us manage our workforce as well as stay on budget for the year. We have been able to complete a rolling forecast and allows our money managers to budget better than they ever have in the past. Because we are doing so well managing our finances, we’ve recognized ways that we can help other home office depts be more successful in their workforce planning and financials. In 2021, had Kiewit Technology Group not used Planful, we may not have been under budget. So, our dept being under budget resulted in All Overhead Depts coming in under budget.

Pros

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

Cons

Need to make some manual processes automatic
Would like to allow hierarchies to be scenario specific
Would like a PowerBI integration

Return on Investment

Increased awareness of financials by our money managers
Coming under budget last year was a huge accomplishment for us and made us look like rockstars to all overhead depts.
Reporting is quick and easy to use
REPORTING! At the click of a button, we have Actuals for our entire dept. Our managers can update their forecast and in seconds, all their reports are up to date.
We’ve created a solid Month End Process & Financial Calendar for our money managers that lays out all important dates (month end close, variance meetings, projections due, etc).
We also created additional GL’s (PTO Taken/Attrition) in our Opex Template. We specifically broke those out so that our money managers could see them, and they weren't all bundled up in one compensation item.

Other Software Used

SAP Concur, SAP SuccessFactors, Microsoft Power BI, Tableau Desktop

Usability

Adam Hoffer

SR FPA Manager in Finance and Accounting at Integrate (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Planful for month end reporting automation and for all forecasting and budgeting needs. It also automates our month over month reporting for the accounting teams as well as any ad hoc reporting the finance team may need to provide to the rest of our org. Planful serves as a single source of truth for finance and drastically simplifies all of our processes.

Pros

Hierarchy management is as easy as dragging and dropping vastly simplifying model updates
Creating ad hoc reports are a much better process being able to rely on a consistent single source of truth
Dynamic planning/spotlight give you the option to automate even month end powerpoints and make month end reporting as easy a couple button clicks

Cons

Dynamic planning should be better integrated in the structured planning environment and should just be a different type of template I can build
The dynamic environment should not rely on the excel add in as much as it does
Integrations to outside sources like salesforce should be easier to set up instead of relying on boomi

Return on Investment

It has significantly shrunk the amount of time for Finances close review
It has increased trust in the finance org because reporting requires less revisions
Team does not spend as much time checking data and can spend more time analyzing it

Alternatives Considered

Vena, Oracle Hyperion (legacy), Prophix and Workday Adaptive Planning

Other Software Used

NetSuite ERP, Microsoft Excel, Looker Studio

Uzair Khan

BI Analyst (FPnA Manager) in Finance and Accounting at Nisum (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use most of the Planful modules i would say.

From reporting to consolidations and planning, we pretty much are involved in the entire stack.

Planful does a very good job with the planning and reporting. Their planning breaks down by any dimension you want it to, and then it also assigns the permissions accordingly. This allows for a natural budget/forecast rollup.

From the reporting end also, we were able to spin up hundreds of reports in no time. The reporting is modular and so you actually need less reports.

Moving away from excel is a big plus for the company since it gives the users a homogenous experience regardless of the OS they are using

Pros

Fx conversions. This is a module I particularly like. The fx conversions are automatic and apply throughout all the reports without much configuration. It is tied well to how the entities are setup in the system
Workforce reporting: This is a tricky one sometimes because there are huge security concerns.
Admin control: The admin controls page is quite easy to use. Configuring is very intuitive and maybe takes an hour to learn the ins and outs of the main functions

Cons

The consolidations module we've had some hiccups with the CTA calculation. So far no one has been able to sort out the issue. This throws our consolidated reporting totally off
Dynamic planning I understand is very powerful. Despite me being a very technical resource with depth understanding of CIS, dynamic planning is not very intuitive. I've taken their classes and have even created my own analytic models, but the truth is other systems have much simpler ways of accomplishing the same thing. Using excel as the base for creating models in my opinion is a terrible idea. This needs major upgrades

Return on Investment

Planful has reduced time to generate dynamic reports immensely. Cannot give hard figures
The planning setup is easy and saves time since it is just rolled over period after period

Alternatives Considered

Vena and Workday Adaptive Planning

Other Software Used

Sage Intacct, Paycom

Planful

What is Planful?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Flat file integration

Financial data consolidation

Areas for Improvement

Color-coded scorecards

Responsive Design for Web Access

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Usability

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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