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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 …
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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

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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 7.6

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 8.2

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 Enterprises (1,001+ 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

(209)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 115)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful for our budgeting, and tracking of actuals against the budgets, to supper business operations and decision making.
  • It is easy for budget owners to enter the budget information and assumptions, and efficient for FP&A to roll up the numbers and run scenario analysis.
  • It has strong reporting capability. The dynamic report, report collection, and Excel interface spotlight reporting enable us to slice and dice our data and perform analysis at different dimensions.
  • The integration with our accounting system NetSuite is seamless and it enables us to perform budget vs actual analysis at both the general ledger and transaction level details.
  • Workforce planning could potentially be further improved to allow more intuitive forecasting, modeling and budget vs actual analysis.
Planful is a powerful and flexible EPM solution that is well suited for the budgeting process that requires collaboration across different business functions and needs to be adaptive to dynamic business operations.
August 28, 2022

Start-up using Planful

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful to provide reports vs. various benchmarks to upper management and the Board of Directors. Planful provides a tool for streamlining the reporting process and providing a drill down for more detailed analysis. By custom designing reports, Planful has provided more efficient and time-saving reports. We are a small start-up thus there is a limited system and people capacity. This tool has been beneficial in providing a more robust and accurate process.
  • Customization of reporting
  • Ease of uploading forecasts
  • Formatting of reports is inconsistently applied/retained
  • There are errors in some of the exception rule calculations
We are using Quickbooks, thus we have to do a manual upload into Planful. Although this process is manual and a bit tedious, I was able to develop an Excel template to streamline the process as well as create check templates to be able to quickly verify the data loads. The manual functionality is a great option for smaller companies with less detail/activity. We are in the process of implementing NetSuite which can have an automated feed of the actual financial information. I look forward to having that process in place to help make the process more streamlined.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful as our budgeting and P&L reporting tool. Prior to Planful, everything we did was in Excel. Now we are able to pull real-time reporting and build dynamic reports that are adaptable for any area of the business. We also use it for our annual budgeting tool.
  • Reporting
  • Budgeting
  • Planning
  • User functionality
  • Ease of building reports
  • Unlimited users/different levels of users
We evaluated multiple software before deciding to go with Planful for our budgeting software. We needed a tool that was adaptive and could grow with our company. We are acquiring hospitals weekly and needed something that could sync with our Accounting ERP and our Payroll/HR software. Planful gives us the ability to sync and have real-time data and can pull live reports. It also allows for just to calculate our P&L within the system.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful for consolidation of our company's financials during month-end close. It is very helpful and efficient in organizing a central place to load and extract data from. We also use it to budget for the up coming years and to track metrics such as headcount, safety and fixed assets.
  • Consolidating multiple entities
  • Running Reports
  • Ease of loading and extracting data
  • Live reports extraction from web
  • More user customizability in reports
  • Report maker
Planful is well suited for companies with multiple entities as it is easy to quickly change from one to another. It also excels in terms of metrics and creating Excel reports from scratch...although some time could be saved by having the ability to extract live reports online to Excel.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We switched from excel based reporting to Planful four years ago. It is a huge difference. Freed up so much time our team can spend on more useful tasks. It is very easy to use, has excellent multi-layered security options, great customer service. I only can recommend it to companies all sizes.
  • user security
  • multiple dimension
  • connection with different sources (both directions) eg. Power Bi
  • user friendly
  • able to copy multiple reports at the same time is one of the features I'm asking for since the beginning.
  • more user-friendly Structure Planning (able to use with lots of dimension combinations without having the templates too long)
  • quick and easy user audit option
  • better training videos (short)
  • reverse button when creating Report Sets
Planful can show the data from different angles, dynamic reports allow companies to see their data much quicker than excel and more complicated way. Reporting is user-friendly and can be done by all levels of users easily (after training). When the system is busy more complex reports are not generated only after multiple attempts.
Wendy Annes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Great marketing performance management software that allows us to validate business value with our marketing plans and spending by tracking performance to cost per outcome and enabling us to quickly make changes to our plans and budgets. It brings all our marketing strategies into one place for collaboration and allows for better decision-making and saves time by automating expense management.
  • Provides us with agility to make changes to our plans and budget.
  • Strategic marketing all in one place for better collaboration on goals and plans.
  • Automation of expense management.
  • Easy to use UI.
  • Consolidates plan and budget into one platform.
  • Helps to automate budget import.
  • Meets our requirements. Nothing missing.
Powerful Cloud-based marketing performance software will help you to build and manage your marketing plans, budgets, and ROI to achieve the required operational marketing excellence in your organization and never again manage marketing expenses.
Jeff Schad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our ERP system is multi-plant but not multi-company. We needed a consolidation method with multiple companies and currencies, with multiple levels of consolidation. Playful fills this role with an automated interface to our ledger system.
  • Elimination logic
  • Multiple level consolidation
  • Currency conversion
  • Adjusting entries not suitable for base ledger
  • Easy reporting interface with quick parametric point of view (POV) changes
  • Quick creation of forecast versions once budget is created
  • Cash flow reporting
  • Easier multiple hierarchy setup
Any multi-currency, multi-company environment, especially where multiple ledger systems are involved in the base (source) operating systems.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful to fulfill our financial reporting and consolidation needs, as well as to create budgets / forecasts. Prior to Planful, all of these tasks were being done in Excel; as the business has grown over time though, setting up a platform that would serve as our single source of truth became increasingly more important. Planful is now that source of truth for us that we can rely on.
  • Reporting makes it easy to "slice and dice" data as needed, as well as build out report sets that you can use to ensure the consistent look of reports like balance sheets.
  • Data load rules and translation tables provide the flexibility to load data from multiple source systems with relative ease.
  • Structured planning templates, combined with rolling forecasts, can dramatically cut down the time needed to get a baseline and make tweaks as desired.
  • User security control could be more centralized on the platform, where you may need to navigate to multiple screens to ensure the access granted is what it should be, depending on your system setup.
  • Dynamic planning (while certainly powerful and can help fulfill special use cases) does have more of a learning curve vs. other areas of Planful, especially if you are not using it frequently. That being said, Planful does have training and resources to help acquire that knowledge.
  • Out-of-the-box intercompany reporting in the consolidation module can be tricky depending on how balances are booked in local source systems. Building reports using the intercompany dimension can be challenging depending on your specific company (entity) structure, but it can be done with some testing and validation.
Planful is definitely appropriate where you need to consolidate and report on multiple companies (and currencies if global). I'd also say if you need to create monthly forecasts and be able to do actual vs. budget vs. forecast analysis, Planful is the right choice to accomplish those goals, especially if you want to look at your data by company, department, location, or any other dimension that you would define in your implementation.
February 21, 2022

Planful is great!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Planful is extremely easy to use and customizable to whatever your needs are. We were using Adaptive Insights (rebranded since then) at the time and the difference was night and day. I had to call Adaptive support every time I wanted to change something, even just an account formula. With Planful, we are able to build out models that match our business needs and it does everything very well! We have just started dipping into Dynamic Modeling and it's opening up even more use cases for us to use Planful, even outside of the budgeting process.
  • Template creation
  • Hierarchy Management
  • Excel reporting/functionality through Dynamic Planning
  • UI can be inconsistent between modules (reporting vs structured planning for example)
  • Dynamic Planning can only be used on Windows Excel. Mac support would be amazing
  • Moving things around on a template is cumbersome
It's suited for almost all tasks in a FP&A and even accounting world
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful in the Planning and Analysis Department where we aggregate data from multiple applications (accounting and operational) in Modeling in order to provide analysis to the Operations, Asset Management, Marketing, Legal, and Accounting departments. We utilize Planful to compare results to budget, analyze marketing trends, manage contract terms, validate formula pricing calculations, build operating budgets, and maintain forecasts.
  • Aggregates financial and non-financial data in a single platform
  • Allows for complicated formulas in the building of financial models
  • Creates a single source of the truth throughout the organization
  • It can be slow when there is a large volume of data behind the calculations
  • I can't keep up with the release improvements, so I feel I'm missing out on some good features
  • I understand the need, but I hate updating my password every 90 days
Planful is well suited for any time you have complicated formulas that you use to produce reports, budgets, forecasts, and dashboards. We have used modeling to capture all of the relevant fields that drive our business, and with a number of behind-the-scenes calculations, build budgets in a protected environment and consolidate them in a fraction of the time it took manually (minute rather than days).
February 09, 2022

Planful User

Martin Bergman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful is the platform we use for reporting financial results. I also use it for research expenses on GL lines
  • opening up the expense line to see the individual invoices
  • exporting to excel
  • I also use the different views to track budgets
  • budgeting
  • could scanned copies of invoices be attached?
difficult to go deeper into expenses than the list of expenses. I'd also like to get copies of the invoices as submitted
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful to budget, forecast, and analyze our business through reporting and structured planning. We create templates for different parts of our business that forecast forward and give us a fairly accurate view of the business. The reporting side of Planful allows us to create a plethora of reports while still having a lean FP&A team.
  • Reporting
  • Budgeting Process
  • Scenario analysis
  • Load times on large data sets
The best scenario to use Planful in my opinion is when needing to forecast a business with a single business model. It also works very well when there are high reporting needs at a company. I don't believe there are many instances where Planful cannot achieve the desired goals of the finance side of a company, maybe only when there are extreme amounts of data being used.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Planful (formerly Host Analytics) for the consolidation of several hundred entities for reporting and analysis. Full P&L budgeting, including workforce planning is a seasonal use.
  • Workforce planning--managing a large number of employees across thousands of entities
  • Excel report capabilities
  • Dynamic reports within the platform
  • Font and formatting options in dynamic reports
  • Dashboards--more options for chart types and more flexibility in format; more useful format interface
  • Administration is clunky and segmented; lots of ambiguous check boxes
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) is great for consolidation of a large number of financial entities. Planful (formerly Host Analytics) is also great for workforce planning for budgeting and forecast scenarios. Support picks up the phone and is very good at solving problems, whether it's a Planful issue or something you break.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful for all of our reporting, including Actuals, Forecast & Budget. We have integrated it with our ERP systems and other data via stat accounts so it results in being the single source of truth. It prevents the need for tapping into data in multiple sources and data integrity within Microsoft Excel and allows for very quick querying and checking of data.
  • Direct integration to ERP systems with no manual intervention.
  • Very quick processing of information & transition to Excel add-in.
  • Friendly staff and a customer support team that has a desire to help adopt the product more efficiently.
  • The Dashboards module is still a little clunky and restricted.
  • Spotlight in Powerpoint and Word need to have more seamless data intervention (e.g., variance calculation capabilities) rather than direct queries. It could be very powerful if they developed the presentation aspect of their product.
  • While constant development efforts ensue, training could improve to ensure power users are equipped with the skills to use the new products/developments efficiently.
Planful is very well suited for people wanting to get out of excel and have one central source for reporting information. Additionally, I have noticed across several companies the need (and subsequent pleasure) of completely automating financial statements and reporting that is consistently delivered to stakeholders. It is possible to adjust through Dynamic Planning, but it is more difficult to make efficient use of the product when a company has a constantly changing hierarchy, whether that means by adding new projects or new companies on a very frequent basis.
November 10, 2021

Planful Use

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful for reporting and planning purposes. Our reporting is shared throughout the entire company along with user access at each of our facilities. It has helped lead to more efficient and real time reporting. Also, we have utilized dynamic reporting to get fast and easy ad hoc reporting needs.
  • Budgeting.
  • User friendly.
  • Support.
  • Fewer clicks.
We have recently moved our 3 month rolling forecast inside planful which lead to real time forecasting after inputs. Leaders have been very happy with this implementation. One thing that could improve is designing planning templates. There are many clicks involved to get an account mapped to a specific destination.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Planful each month for cash forecasting our labor costs for the company [in] our Accounting/Finance department. This includes base wages, OT, shift differential, bonus/commissions and benefits. I also use it to capture our headcount changes. Planful is used by all departments annually to budget for all company expenses by department including things like travel, seminars, etc.
  • I work mainly with Workforce Planning which does a great job of capturing labor
  • The flexibility of capturing information by G/L account number and/or compensation items (such as Wages, OT and Shift differential that all go to the same G/L account) number is great!
  • I wish there was a way to "combine" data/reporting between the financial cube and the Workforce Planning cube. There are times I need to dig down on the financial reports by employee and I don't have that capability.
Planful is great for taking the data that I download from my payroll software each month and giving me good reports for cash flow purposes. The data that I take from my payroll system (UKG) includes name, position, department/sub-department, FTE, salary, bonus, all benefits (medical, dental, life, etc.). Then, Planful allows me to build reports that analyze my labor costs in various ways.
October 29, 2021

Great software

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We implement Planful to our clients. Our clients usually use reporting, planning and consolidation functionality within Planful to help and eliminate as much manual processes from their finance cycle and replace them with automatic processes.

Planful helps our clients to produce reports in a quicker, more efficient manner. It also helps our clients to prepare more meaningful reports and be able to trust their financial data more.
  • Consolidation.
  • Add-hoc reporting.
  • Management reporting.
  • Planning/Budgeting.
  • Provide more training to their users.
Planful works very well for simple consolidations and for reporting. Ad-hoc reporting is extremely easy in Planful. Planful interface is very user-friendly.

Spotlight functionality within Planful is great and offers a familiar look and feel to our clients meaning that transition from using Excel to consolidate and and prepare reports to using Planful is very quick and smooth.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful is used across the enterprise. It drives accounting reporting through close, financial, and performance analysis. It is used to support and guide operations. Planful is used for budgeting, forecasting, and cash management. Planful is deployed at our practice and support center, facilitation business unit planning - production, and expense and workforce planning. Planful drives allocations of costs and people across departments and business units. Finally, Planful is used for intercompany eliminations.
  • Monthly reporting.
  • External source linkages.
  • Non-financial data.
  • Organization-wide user base.
  • Data visualization.
  • HRIS integration.
  • Non-user interface.
Planful does well with entity consolidation and reporting. It is highly reliable and structured for multiple entities, currencies, and standard financial reporting. Additionally, it supports accounting functions with robust reporting and drill-through functionality. It does not require dedicated internal or external support. It is easily managed by in-house FP&A. However, it is not an ERP and may not work well in a manufacturing environment. Planful may not scale well to companies over $5B. It is not intended as a data warehouse.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is was implemented in 2015 as a solution to accelerate the consolidation all over the world. Before Planful, everything was done through Excel sheets. In 2016, we started to include the budget figures into the tool. During 2017 and 2018, templates were created to fill with stock, income taxes, and headcount details. In 2020 we started using the "planning," so it wasn't necessary to build templates into Excel to project the budget and forecasts scenarios. Today, Planful is used just by the financial department. The best improvement by Planful is the speed in the consolidation. We have all information needed by spotlight add-in, instead [of] 20 excel [sheets] before planful. The translation by different rates is easiest comparing the oldest way, and there is no problem with data because everything can be locked and doesn't change and is auditable.
  • Excel add-in (Spotlight) - integration in Excel is very good.
  • Structured Planning - great tool to project budget and forecasts.
  • Reports - It is the same idea as pivot tables, user-friendly.
  • More details during the consolidation process, like estimated time to finish.
  • Windows/Android/iOS Apps, sometimes is better than using directly from browsers.
  • Upload directly from Excel, without using DLR, like one add-in as Spotlight.
It is a great solution to use for financial purposes, to improve the speed in financial consolidation and budget projections, and to maintain a big data of financial figures. I think it is the best option. I don't see sales management or production KPI's; I think it is not the best tool for those kinds of requirements.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Planful for all of our budget planning and reporting needs. Planful is used across our whole organization with the heaviest users in Finance and Accounting. In many cases, we give budget owners the option to access Planful and take accountability for their budget planning. Planful is much easier than maintaining multiple Excel spreadsheets for multiple users.
  • Always releasing system updates that improve the user experience.
  • HR planning in Planful is great.
  • Offering an annual user conference.
  • Dashboarding module did not offer great visualization.
  • Drilling through on actuals reports would be better if you could select multiple months at a time.
  • I wish you could customize the columns in HR planning and the changes would save from month to month.
Planful is great for any company whether it has 50 or 5,000 employees. Planful integrates really well with our HR system, Workday, to load employee data. We prefer to limit Planful users to Director-level or above and keep most of the updates completed by our FP&A team. This saves time and energy. We consider Planful to be the source of truth for actual expense.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a consulting practise, we advise on Planful and implement it for other companies who wish to use it as an FP&A solution. Alongside Planful, as a department we consult in many other business applications, namely ERP such as Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Planful is great as a specialist FP&A solution, our clients use it for it's reporting, consolidation and budgeting capabilities which are marketing leading.
  • Reporting. Once data is correctly imported into the system, a user can slice and dice to create reports outlining anything they can dream. It really is super powerful, even with just the UI, though becomes more powerful when you utilise MDX formulas etc.
  • Consolidations. Often consolidation functionality in ERP systems is quite limited and depends on things such as the subsidiary structure, with Planful this restriction is not here and you are able to consolidate in many more ways, depending on needs.
  • Training. The Planful training courses are quite basic. It provides factual information, and if you have a photographic memory you might remember it all; though with a lack of real life examples a user can relate to, it's difficult to remember the material in a useful way.
We like to use Planful to supplement and improve on the Reporting and Consolidation functionalities provided by legacy ERP systems which are lacking. In this regard, it is quick and easy to use and provides results straight away. We also use it to overhaul a budgeting process, utilising Spotlight functionality which is super powerful though significantly more complicated to use as it requires the setup and maintenance of models, etc.
July 27, 2021

Manager FP&A

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as a budgeting, planning and forecasting tool as well as a reporting tool. It is used across the organization. Department managers budget in it and can see their results on a monthly basis. The accounting and FP&A team use it for reporting financial results monthly as well as investigating variances to budget and/or forecast. We also use it for Headcount planning.
  • Flexible- it always [has] various ways to summarize data/results
  • Seeding - allows you to pre-populate budget data with historical data if you want
  • Excel like - the templates for budget planning mimic Excel, so training and ease of use are much faster and easier for managers
  • Workforce planning - reporting is not as smooth, it feels like an add-on and doesn't integrate with the rest of Planful as well as it could. While it has a lot of detail it is hard to review that detail in some instances.
  • Import/upload function - while this is available in templates for budgeting to allow you to add Excel files, it is not necessarily available in just budgeting. Data load rules can help but we feel like they are not really as flexible as just an import/upload feature.
  • Process of the cube after every change and modification during budgeting as well as processing the employees in Workforce planning is also not a smooth or easy as it could be.
Report building with row and column sets is a nice feature. Allows for easy replication of report formats and layouts. Scenarios provide good flexibility for forecast planning.
July 27, 2021

We like Planful

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are an implementation partner and reseller with Planful. We have completed 60+ successful Planful implementations and focus our sales efforts on the solution.
  • Inherent accounting logic: credit vs debit.
  • Ease of use: Particularly reporting.
  • Ease of adoption for end users: Excel syntax.
  • Stability of environment.
  • Support: It is a difficult service to consistently do well.
  • Partner support.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by across the whole organization. There's no problem to be addressed.
  • It's very friendly using.
  • Nice, beautiful reporting formats.
  • Always has new release features
  • Searching entities in hierarchy
I like Planful. It's a good tool for budgeting, reporting.
It's easy to use for end-users
Excellent customer services
July 24, 2021

Planful

Nicholas Rupp, CPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we are utilizing Planful to help with the annual budget. Each department manager goes into the system and submits their proposed annual budget. This allows the company to quickly and easily combine all the different department budgets and see how the overall picture is looking at various points in the project.
  • Very intuitive
  • CAPEX projects are easy to enter and calculate the annual spend
  • The data doesn't always output in the most clean format
Planful works great for the budget process and rolling up each department into one overall budget.
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