Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
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
  • Financial budgeting (106)
    8.2
    82%
  • Management Reporting (100)
    8.0
    80%
  • Forecasting (99)
    8.0
    80%
  • Management reporting (103)
    8.0
    80%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
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?

110 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 PlanGuru?

PlanGuru is budgeting, forecasting and financial analytics software for SMB's, Nonprofits and the Accountants/ Advisors that work with them.

Return to navigation

Features

BI Standard Reporting

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

6.6
Avg 8.0

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

7.3
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

6.7
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.

8.5
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
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

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

6.6
Avg 8.0

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

7.3
Avg 8.2

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

6.1
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

6.8
Avg 8.3
Return to navigation

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 9.2.

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%
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(205)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 77)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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 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
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 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 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
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use [Planful (formerly Host Analytics)] for budgeting.
  • Easy to use.
  • [Planful] can run reports on several platforms so everyone in our team can use it.
  • It helped us improve workflow.
  • Formatting, excel is still a bit better.
  • Sometimes not as intuitive as we hoped it to be.
  • System has some bugs to be worked out.
[Planful (formerly Host Analytics)] works well for budgeting so we would recommend it for that. For certain reports we would not recommend it because of some formatting things.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] is used as a database for all of our planning scenarios. We upload revenue projections directly into the cube and our expense functions go into the tool itself and utilize planning templates to project their spending.
We also use the reporting and analytics module for general monthly reporting and have replaced our legacy system generated P&Ls.
  • Standardized reporting
  • Hierarchy management
  • Cube data storage
  • Rigid templates
  • Customer support
  • Support ticket processing
Planful [(formerly Host Analytics)] is well suited for giving non-Finance users a locked down location to input important financial information. It is also good for storing scenario based information.
It is less appropriate for very quick ad hoc analyses and can be difficult to maneuver on the fly, unless you are very comfortable with the inner workings.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Planful (formerly Host Analytics) to consolidate 60+ entities Trial Balances on a monthly basis. We also use the system to complete our Annual Operating Budget.
  • Consolidation
  • Planning
  • Reporting
  • Spotlight XL can be glitchy/finicky
  • Our users never seem to be able to reset their passwords using the Forgot Password link, so a system admin has to send the reset e-mails
  • Planning seems to run slowly in Microsoft Explorer vs. Google Chrome
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) is well suited for Consolidation purposes. The finance team uses the system it to quickly consolidate 60+ entity trial balances each month and report monthly financial results to our management team.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[Planful (formerly Host Analytics)] is mostly being used by Finance group to report monthly financial results. Have built our Budget in the modeling scenario, but we are not finalized tweaking the results of this. Being our first full year on Planful are still learning how to do some setup and making it work for us.
  • Able to have entire budget and actual results in one tool.
  • Fast results that can be trusted. No worry of excel links being broken.
  • Results from current system can be directly interfaced into Planful
  • Need to take more time up front to fully understanding client’s processes
  • Wish the models would automatically sum up better rather than having to enter an aggregation step
  • Previous model results don’t always clear themselves. Need to make sure you include clear steps, but it’s not always clear when and where you should do this
The workforce planning tool works very well and is quite easy to setup and maintain. Wish there was a way for each model to use the same set of data, for example customers, products, etc. you need to build each in each model.
Return to navigation