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Planful

Planful

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.

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Recent Reviews

Planful is NOT painful

10 out of 10
December 13, 2023
Planful is currently used by our Technology Group, an overhead department in the company. Additionally, Kiewit Business Services, another …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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

View all 45 features
  • Management Reporting (99)
    9.1
    91%
  • Management reporting (102)
    9.1
    91%
  • Financial budgeting (105)
    9.0
    90%
  • Forecasting (98)
    8.7
    87%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

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

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

109 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

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…

What is OnPlan?

Spreadsheets are widely used for planning because of their flexibility and familiarity. With OnPlan, users get access to visualization capabilities, integrations, and collaboration features, in a solution designed to give the run-of-the-mill spreadsheet model more power. OnPlan integrates with…

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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.8
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7.9
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

7.5
Avg 8.2

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.

6.3
Avg 7.7

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.1
Avg 8.7

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.4
Avg 8.0

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting

These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning

8.7
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.

7.6
Avg 8.1

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.1
Avg 8.3

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

7.2
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

7.8
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

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

Screenshot of Planful Planform DashboardScreenshot of Planful for FinanceScreenshot of Planful for MarketingScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of Capacity Planning TemplateScreenshot of Integrations

Planful Videos

Planful Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesWe have customers in 90 countries
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Workday Adaptive Planning, Anaplan, and Oracle Hyperion are common alternatives for Planful.

Reviewers rate Single Sign-On (SSO) highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Planful are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).

Planful Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)10%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)25%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)65%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(208)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 115)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 29, 2024

Review of Planful

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a Veterinary hospital consolidator. We have many use cases for Planful due to the ways we break down our business. Planful allows us to analyze data from a Top of the House perspective while still providing functionality to drill-down to the lowest level. Due to this, it is a great tool for us to analyze data and identify issues at a particular hospital. We also enjoy the reporting functionalities that are offered. We have many reports that we generate on a monthly basis that are distributed to regions and hospitals. We can associate directors with a particular region and then automate monthly reports to distribute their respective region's report.
  • 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.
I think it is great for if you are managing multiple locations and need a hierarchy to break it down. Can also be really useful if there are many dimensions that you would like to segregate data by. We are able to build really specific reports to analyze data and identify outliers or issues.
February 19, 2024

Planful's no slouch

Cory Abrahamson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
HomeServices uses Planful primarily as a consolidation tool, we are a decentralized organization where our subsidiaries use several different general ledger vendors and each of them has a unique chart of accounts. We have translation tables setup for each subsidiary, so as each sub loads their financials we can easily translate the information to get a company-by-company or consolidated view of the organization. We are also are able to use assign attributes within the hierarchy to view results in a non-traditional format, which involves allocating results between business segments. We also use Planful as a forecasting tool, the Structured Planning module has made this process very simple as the templates are very easy to setup and complete. We also use the Structured Planning module to assist with our 10-year plan, which the templates are very easy to complete. Before Planful, we were using Oracle Hyperion, which was at the end of life, the Oracle replacement was not cost-effective for us so we chose Planful from a handful of vendors that were brought in.
  • 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
At the beginning of Covid, there were many unknowns as most businesses didn't know what they would be able to do in specific states. The Structured Planning module worked well for me as I was able to run through all kinds of scenario options to help us determine our path forward.

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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful for our month end financial reporting, operating planning process, and ad hoc requests. The platform has grown with us from 100 business units to over 600 business units and through an IPO. The platform is dynamic and flexible and with constant updates, it will absolutely grow with us into the future.
  • 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
Well suited for a medium to large business, beginner friendly, completely customizable. Probably too much for a small business/low count of business units.
Talyon Perry | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful is our internal finance tool used for reporting financial results and inputting/updating internal budgets. Planful allows all users to access relevant data (permissions based) in a clean and automated way. No more having to pass excel spreadsheets back and forth. Planful has also made the FP&A team's time to respond to data requests much faster.
  • Financial Reporting
  • Budget Preparation
  • User Management
  • Dashboard Reporting Options
  • Workforce Planning Reporting
  • Report Formatting
Planful is a great tool for the small to medium enterprise, especially ones that deal with multiple departments, legal entities, or other complexities. Planful has strong integration capabilities with accounting systems and other data sources. The web base platform is very helpful for non-excel native users. Planful may not be the right choice for small businesses as many of the detailed functions may not be needed.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Planful is being used by our organization to improve the month end/quarterly consolidation/close process. It is mainly being used by our accounting and finance departments and has helped us reduce the number of days it takes to close each month. The application allows us to store all of our data in one cloud-based database as opposed to a huge Excel workbook with many, many spreadsheets. Additionally, anyone in our organization can access the real-time data in Host from any location since all of the data is stored in the cloud.
  • 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.
The Planful EPM Suite would be well suited for an organization that is currently closing and consolidating in Excel each month. Additionally, it would be great for an organization that is growing quickly and acquiring new entities on a regular basis.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful enables quick scenario analysis and financial projections to drive business and allow us to focus on developing the business. Reporting of actuals are quick and reliable, and we do not have to be concerned with data integrity. Planful also integrates seamlessly with our other data sources, allowing us to use Planful as a one-stop-shop.
  • 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 makes it very easy to roll forward forecasts and conduct scenario analyses. I'm also a big fan of their reporting and how easy it is to distribute a report burst to satisfy all the needs and questions of our SLT. Lastly, their latest developments in the AI space make it easy to quickly identify outlier projections.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We leverage Planful to support our financial planning and analysis function, as well as to provide operators in the business with real-time insights throughout the year. Planful enables our annual budget preparation as well as our five-year long-range plan. The integration of the software with our payroll platform as well as our ERP is critical and a key part of the value proposition for the software.
  • 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 extremely useful in financial planning and makes detailed analysis easy as it is extremely customizable in terms of the reports that it can facilitate. There are innumerable different cuts of data that can be run to look at the business in different ways over different timeframes. The ability to look at forecasts together with historical data in a lot of different views (by department, by business unit or group, by account, etc.) is a game changer.
December 13, 2023

Planful is NOT painful

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Planful is currently used by our Technology Group, an overhead department in the company. Additionally, Kiewit Business Services, another overhead department utilizes the tool. We have other departments that have observed how easy Planful is to use and how successful we have been with meeting our budget, and they have asked for information on how to utilize it as well. We use Planful for workforce planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. Kiewit's use of this program is unique in the sense that we do not use Planful for income statements and balance sheets or for any manufacturing or international currency needs. As an overhead department, we do not utilize all of its features.
  • 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.
I am constantly talking about Planful and the benefits of using the system. I have been on numerous calls for Planful with possible clients, and I am always honest about how well the program works and how happy we are. Planful is flexible, and when changes are needed to our environment, Planful developers are always happy to help and walk us through all necessary scenarios.
Jennie Rush | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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
We have already recommended it to other departments and they are using it now. I work a lot in the workforce planning section and they have made huge strides to the manual way it was when I started using it. Currently we are working on automating workforce data and once that is complete, we will roll that out to other departments. Also, doing some research with another dept that is interested in Planful & how we can make sure the tool gives them everything they want.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our business uses Planful for easily repeatable (push button) month end and quarter end reporting. We also use it to create bottoms up forecasts and budgets. Planful has given us the ability to make changes in a forecast and see the results very quickly in reports and to keep versions in check.
  • 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
Planful is useful for quick to learn users (Dynamic planning should be a better option for most users but has a steeper learning curve) and who want to get month end reporting out of excel and into something more repeatable. It does a good job of bringing systems together to create a forecast (HRIS, database) as long as the data coming from these systems can sit in one place and can be easily tied into other dimensions from your GL. Its less versatile for (at least in structured planning) planning by vendor (or any dimension where you have a lot of individual lines). There is no sandbox environment without paying for it, so testing can be difficult on new asks. If you have very complicated revenue streams that require many pieces it can be difficult to build and maintain those within Planful (structured planning). There is no great tool to get your pieces currently in excel or other into Planful so setup time is mostly spent replicating instead of learning to features or improving your reports along the way.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Planful is the consolidation software we used on top of the GL ERP systems that we have. Planful is an excellent tool to manage year end audit and making top side entries. The overall experience is very positive and Planful support is top notch. Planful isn't perfect. It has certain quarks here and there, but overall, it's a valuable product for my company.
  • Topside entries
  • consolidation
  • reporting
  • Work flow control
  • report formatting
  • integration into excel
Planful is well suited for a small to medium sized company. It's well suited for my company which is in the manufacturing industry. I wouldn't recommend this for Oil and Gas companies due to its lack of certain ASC 932 specific functions. Overall speaking, it's a reliable software and i have enjoyed using it.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful is used in both reporting and planning functions. Integrations have helped addressed long standing issues of pulling int data from multiple sources. With a live integration we are able to see actuals and plan in a single place. The flexibility of reporting allows quick comparisons between version and manage these scenarios. In addition, dynamic planning allows you to easily bring in inputs and load outputs from complex financial directly in excel
  • Flexible Reporting
  • Data Integrations
  • Office Integration
  • Customer Support
  • Concise Documentation
  • Easy to get started, difficult to become a true power user
Plan is great for organizations who are looking to bring in their modelling into a unified platform without sacrificing the ease of use of traditional spreadsheets. Depending on how many of the features your organization wants to use, you'll need team members who can really dedicate their time to understanding how the platform works so you can continuously build and improve on functionality built.

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
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] for Budgeting, Forecasts, Reporting, Demand Planning, and Dashboards. We utilize common Expense and Workforce planning templates. Built customized revenue templates for each line of business. Some Revenue templates are built with structured environment, others are combination of data that resides outside of planful and the structured environment, and some feed directly from Dynamic Planning.
  • Reporting / Report Collectors
  • Workforce Planning
  • Hierarchy Management
  • Capital Spend
  • Customize navigation screen
  • Simplify various Security settings
Planful (Formerly Host Analytics) is to be used by companies looking to move away from excel spreadsheets / emails to single database platform that can be maintained by multiple users. Offers many options for reporting and analysis. It is best used by linking data from ERP system and other software solution that capture actual data such as payroll systems, operations, etc..
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We help different organizations to drive business-wide planning, budgeting, consolidations, reporting, and visual analytics by helping them to to implement planful structure and dynamic planning.
  • Budgeting
  • Scenario Forecast
  • Hierarchy Management
  • Data Analytics
  • Verify External Data
  • Foreign Exchange Rates
Most FPNA still relies heavily on excel for their budgeting, and reporting. Planful takes that stress and convert it to easy steps
February 09, 2023

Planful Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used it for budgeting in the past. Currently use it for reporting. Would prefer to use it for budgeting, but Planful does not allow loading at vendor level which is required for us.
  • aesthetically pleasing for business partners to look at
  • nice formatting options
  • user friendly for basic tasks
  • more attributes
  • vendor level
  • better error message diagnosis
Simple to pull adhoc reports for myself or others; easy to export and format as needed. Not as customizable for our business needs so cant use it for forecasting periods.
Robert Picard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful every week to update our FP&A schedule throughout the year by using various modules on the platform. For instance, when looking at actual versus planned reports in the reports section, I use the report sets that are in there to extract information with regards to our financial KPIs.
  • 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.
Scenarios where it would be well-suited:
- 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.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful is used to consolidate financial results, budget, forecast, do intercompany eliminations, and financial and management reporting. Planful allowed us to have one source of truth for all financial and budget data. It also allows us to work location independent. It has also allowed us to improve the accuracy and speed of financial reporting and analysis.
  • 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 is well suited to anyone looking to consolidate multiple entities, multiple different ways if necessary. It provides strong journal entry capability for consolidating entries. It also allows for rapid stand-up of budgets and forecasts across many entities. It also provides great reporting functionality for management and compliance/financial reporting.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I work for the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures here at the university and I use this tool as the budget administrator of the department. I am currently using the tool for structured planning of transfers and amounts for our department's various restricted accounts. I also use the tool to report on my department's fund usage (using the reports tab quite often) to keep the Dean's Office up to date on our numbers. I use the tool at least 5-6 times a year for big due dates. Planful makes this planning much simpler by having planning and reporting all in one place, connected.
  • 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
It is well-suited for budget and transfer reporting to my higher-ups and the university. It is also well-suited for planning transfers and structuring these accounts in general. It is not well-suited for new employees who have no experience with the tool and really just requires extensive training for someone to really understand the tool and how it works. There are so many different options in the tool, it can be confusing for someone who is unfamiliar.
December 07, 2022

Planful Review 2022

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful on a monthly basis for forecast and P&L reporting. People are the huge assets of our company and we require lots of details to forecast each employee at a detail level such as billable hours and other hours. Planful can provide that level of details required. However, it's a little time consuming or duplicate efforts to manage two scenarios both actual and forecast. We used to have another system for forecast reporting that everything can be managed in one main page for employee details but it has issued of balancing. Now we have to open each employee to update the details. Of course Planful provides us better balancing tools on the reporting.
  • 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.
Currently we use Planful for forecasting and budgeting purpose. It's suitable for company wants to forecast the employees in details but it requires manpower to maintain. The WFP reports are good for balancing but again we have to separate actual and forecast scenarios. You need to know what reports you refer to each month since some of them linked to the P&L directly and some with the employee details since you might get different numbers.
December 01, 2022

Planful delivers

Matt Teinert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It allows me flexible reports for internal and external use that my ERP system does not. I have connected data and writing new or modifying existing reports is so easy. We can easily compare actual results to multiple dynamic forecasted scenarios and/or past actual periods. I love that I can reuse the structure of reports I like for other use cases. Slicing and dicing my data is easier than ever before.
  • Easily pivoting between different data sets
  • Report building
  • Dissection of data into different sub groups
  • Tech support
  • Data load user interface
  • Roles
In general the tool does everything I need it to do and everything I was promised at the right price point. The planning side of the tool is a little clunky but gets the job done. It’s powerful, but maybe could be more user friendly. The reporting side is very very good.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful for financial reporting, consolidation, planning, modeling, and revenue analytics. We collect forecasts from all of our leaders around the world and Planful makes it easier to load and roll those templates up. As an international company, we do significant Fx variance impact and analysis, Planful makes this easy and accurate in a way that other systems I've used do not. Consolidation of multiple ledgers around the world is seamless once properly set up. Reporting experience is fluid and simple for unsophisticated users but versatile enough that experienced users can design some pretty cool outcomes for users.
  • 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.
Consolidating and reporting financials collecting and aggregating multiregional forecasts revenue analytics Fx scenario analysis.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful (formerly Host Analytics) within our FP&A and financial reporting teams. Planful (formerly Host Analytics) is used to input our budget scenarios, monthly forecasts (including workforce planning), and long-term models. We replaced SAP BPC system, which would take 3+ hours to pull new GL data. Now, using Planful (formerly Host Analytics), we have GL data refreshing every 30 minutes during close.
  • 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
Pros: The Planful (formerly Host Analytics) application is well suited for workforce planning. It's easy to manipulate the employee roster to make changes. Planful support is extremely responsive and typically able to resolve most basic issues within a few hours. Cons: We've been able to configure the system to load actual wages by employee, but it's a very clunky monthly load process. Reporting by employee position is difficult, as we aren't able to select a single role. If 20+ employees have the same role, we'll see that selection duplicated 20+ times.
November 04, 2022

A great FP&A tool

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my organization Planful is used for budgeting, reporting, and to present financial data in a dashboard view. Planful reporting makes it easy to create new reports, or new versions of existing reports with the use of custom row and column sets. Additionally, the integration of dynamic to Microsoft Excel with the Spotlight tool is a great asset. It allows the user to have dynamic reporting capabilities with the formatting and function of Excel. Planful also makes yearly budgeting easier for all users with the structured planning module, and customizable templates.
  • 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
A specific scenario where Planful is well suited when creating financial reports. Due to the customizable column and row sets that you can create you can look at P&L to at any level of detail you so chose. You can also manipulate what data you want to look at when creating reports by using the page parameters. With the page parameters you can select specific locations of your business, or specific sections of your business.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We like to use Planful for as many use cases for it as we can find and are continuing to leverage it for automation of our existing manual reports. Primarily, we use it to setup and manage our annual budget process, budget to variance analysis, executive reporting, dashboards, and are continuing to develop and migrate our routine reporting from Excel to Planful.
  • Automation and self-service of reporting for non-finance/non-administrator teams
  • Complex financial model building whether it is an annual budget, Pro Forma, forecast, run-rates, etc.
  • Customization through calculated/custom members, templates, and loading data via the Simulation Engine and Data Load Rules
  • The self-help database could stand to be updated/improved for clarity and potentially with additional screenshots
  • Additional support on MDX if possible as it is frequently used in reporting and calculated members
  • Additional customization and manipulation within dashboards
Planful has been very helpful to us specifically with report automation. A report can be built and any user can access them based on their pre-determined access level and permissions. No manipulation, duplication, etc. is required of the finance team - from a front-end user perspective, Planful is easy to build a self-service platform and cuts down on the amount of reports we previously built in Excel and distributed via email.
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