TrustRadius Insights for Planful are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Enhancements in Workforce Planning: Users have greatly benefitted from the significant enhancements in Workforce Planning, which allow for personalized records and simple updating processes, contributing to improved efficiency and accuracy within their departments. These enhancements have streamlined workforce management tasks, resulting in time savings and more informed decision-making.
Improved Support Services: Over four years, users have consistently noted a notable improvement in the platform's support services, indicating a strong commitment to customer satisfaction and continuous enhancement of user experience. The responsive and knowledgeable support team has been instrumental in addressing user queries promptly, leading to smoother operations and increased user confidence.
Cloud Compatibility: The ability to use the software on the Cloud is highly valued by users for providing flexibility and accessibility, enabling seamless access to data and tools from various locations. This feature has allowed teams to collaborate effectively regardless of physical distance, promoting teamwork and productivity across different departments or remote work setups.
I use playful for FP&A and budgeting purposes. It helps me save time by streamlining and automating recurring work streams and reports I need to pull each month for board meetings. This extra time saved helps me focus on analysis and strategizing instead.
Pros
Automates report-pulling
Ad-hoc analysis
Predictive analytics
Cons
Training videos could be more accessible by changing format and allowing for click-and-view rather than course registration
Customer success team members can connect to new customers sooner to help with on-boarding
Could provide more as-box assistance services on the web to help with generic user questions
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for analysis and planning, not so great if it is trying to be leveraged for other analysis outside of accounting and finance
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting (11-50 employees)
We use Planful mainly for our consolidation tool. As of right now, we're using multiple ERP systems and this allows us to consolidate and properly analyze the business. Another thing we do is utilize dashboards, I'm sure we could do more with it but for now, it's exactly what we need.
Pros
Consolidating
Multiple Layers for different sites
Dashboards
Cons
Gross Margin Reporting
Refreshing data from our ERP systems more frequently
More admin users
Likelihood to Recommend
I would say a good scenario would be when companies are merging together and have multiple ERP systems and chart of accounts. This will help streamline into one set of financials
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
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
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful is great for orgs with folks willing to transition out of excel and push their processes forward. If there is are detractors to a new tool Planful and any other EPM tool will be less successful than they could be. The system is great for teams who have "normal" set ups meaning data lives in a single ERP and gets supplemented from HRIS and some operation data. The more complicated the data sets become the more complicated the set up of an EPM tool becomes.
We use Planful to streamline Budget, Forecast and planning in our company for all of the departments. It helps us to migrate from Manual spread sheet to Platform where we can track real time data of the financials. Our use case includes FP&A, Workforce planning across the globe, management reporting and overall financial scope of the activity.
Pros
Automates Financial close
Rolling Forecast
Reporting and Dashboard
AI scenario Planning
Cons
Learning the product - Training of the Product
Limited custmization
Mobile Experience
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful is well suited where company needs structured budgeting, forecasting and automated financial close. It helps the company fastening the process in automating and reduces the time of resource. Planful is not appropriate for the small company where there is small team and simple budgeting process followed in the company.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
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
Likelihood to Recommend
For companies that are small to mid-sized I think Planful can handle the planning and reporting easily.
However, for large sized companies that may have hundreds of SBUs, I would suggest having a detailed planning phase, if Planful is chosen. With many variables, there is a lot that can go wrong, and it will be a headache to fix. When it comes to edge testing for large companies, I think Planful could do a better job.
Planful Analytics serves as a critical tool for our budgeting and forecasting processes. It plays a pivotal role in our annual budgeting cycle and enables effective modeling of our five-year financial plan.
Planful has significantly enhanced the efficiency of our FP&A reporting by optimizing reporting and forecasting processes through its dynamic modeling capabilities.
Pros
Their support team is very responsive and helpful
Dynamic Modeling tool allows us to build complex financial models
Frequent updates and new features that come out each quarter
Easy to use reporting that can be automated
Cons
Calculation times on our model take a long time
Dashboard function within Planful needs some work, we prefer to export data and use other dashboard tools
I'd like to see the process for Data loading and integration become simpler and more user friendly
Likelihood to Recommend
If asked about Planful by a colleague, I would respond by highlighting how Planful has helped our company streamline and automate our budget and FP&A reporting. Also, I would note how implementing Planful and building out our financial forecast has increased our forecast accuracy and ability to run several scenario analysis.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Finance and Accounting (1001-5000 employees)
I use Planful in a daily capacity to provide financial analysis to our field team in order for them to operate more efficiently. It allows me to aggregate both financial data along with key performance metrics so that I can answer questions for operators to drive efficiency and answer questions about the health of the business. It also lets me create dedicated reports so that I can quickly report on our financials to our key stakeholders both on a monthly basis and when they have questions about the business. Recently I have been using the planning templates in an effort to create in depth models to attempt to forecast and budget future expense based on historicals and key data inputs.
Pros
It aggregates data from different sources well, allowing me to report on a wide variety of metrics that interrelate.
I can build detailed reports so that my monthly and weekly reporting is done more efficiently
I like the tools that I am using to create dedicated models for forecasting and budgeting purposes
Cons
I think there is an opportunity to allow for more customization of reports so that they can be finalized in Planful
Data aggregation of very large data sets can be slow at times
Dashboards need more features in order to have a better use case
Likelihood to Recommend
I think it is a useful tool from a reporting standpoint. It does a good job of data aggregation from different sources, even if slow at times. I think the tools for building forecasting and budgeting templates are straight forward but allow for a level of complexity that make it both easy to use but also allow for complex builds so that our models can take into account many different variables that drive our daily performance.
We use Planful for budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and workforce planning. Since we follow statutory planning and not GAAP, the ease to create and modify financials statements is critical to our organization. Before Planful our budgeting and forecasting was done in Excel which was cumbersome as well as time consuming. We find the product fits our business needs.
Pros
Ease of use
The solution hub is a great resource to research capabilities and best practices for the software.
Planful take security seriously.
NetSuite connector
Cons
Creating reports at time is quite complex
Limitations in the dashboard tool
Lack of a mobile application
Likelihood to Recommend
Increased speed and accuracy of financial statement generation, ad-hoc analysis, and reporting, especially with the Spotlight add-on annotation capability in templates. Workforce planning provides us with Realtime data on our employees without needing access to the payroll system. Working with an implementation team was helpful in getting the software up and running.
VU
Verified User
Executive in Finance and Accounting (51-200 employees)
We do a lot of forecasting and budgeting on Planful using structured planning. We have departments across all functions, and we do our budget/ forecast for the next 3 years. We also do a lot of reporting functions, like the spotlight report. I love it because it makes the reporting very automated and easy to read.
Pros
Structure planning.
Workforce planning.
Spotlight report.
Cons
I wanna see more bridges on workforce planning- the open headcount to our forecast (TBHs).
I wanna group the scenarios and departments.
I think it’s a bit too clunky on the Excel spotlight report.
Likelihood to Recommend
I’m not impressed that I can’t see headcounts reporting in Planful. I want to see my actual employees and all the TBHs at a later time. But the other reporting that we use is pretty good. I like using the substitution variables; they will pick up the current month, and I don’t have to keep changing the actual month.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
