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.
Short summary of my Planful experience.
Flexible FP&A tool to streamline reporting and budget preparations
Planful's no slouch
Stressed out about budgeting?
Plan your work, work your plan, and achieve your dreams!
Planful Review
Everybody has a Plan until they get Planful'd! (positive review 👍)
A great tool to scale your business and enable collaboration
Planful - Great for Budget Planning and Reporting
Planful Review 2022
Planful delivers
Planful is NOT painful
A budget and forecast tool that makes financial planning easy!
Planful is our only solution for planning, reporting and consolidation
How Planful Differs From Its Competitors
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Having the unified suite of …
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Automation
Ease of Reporting
Finance Self-Service
Real-Time Data
Data Accuracy
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
Collaboration with Planful
Suite of Capabilities
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
- Management Reporting (93)9.494%
- Management reporting (96)9.393%
- Financial budgeting (99)9.292%
- Excel-based Reporting (93)8.383%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Video Reviews
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Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 8.3Pixel Perfect reports(14) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 7.7Customizable dashboards(26) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 8.7Report Formatting Templates(24) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 8.4Drill-down analysis(51) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 7.5Formatting capabilities(52) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 8.2Report sharing and collaboration(48) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 7.1Publish to Web(11) Ratings
- 8.2Publish to PDF(40) Ratings
- 7.1Report Versioning(25) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 9.2Report Delivery Scheduling(28) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
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.
- 7.6Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(12) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 7.4Predictive Analytics(14) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 9.4Multi-User Support (named login)(46) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 8.6Role-Based Security Model(44) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8.7Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(45) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
- 8.8Report-Level Access Control(3) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
- 9.9Single Sign-On (SSO)(39) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 7.9Responsive Design for Web Access(23) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 7.4Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(15) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning
- 8.8Long-term financial planning(87) Ratings
3-5 year financial plan with cashflow.
- 9.2Financial budgeting(99) Ratings
Annual budget for revenue and operating expenses, headcount/compensation, capital expenses, projects, etc.
- 8.9Forecasting(92) Ratings
Combining actuals and budgets, rolling forecasts, driver-based models.
- 8.2Scenario modeling(79) Ratings
Financial or operational modeling of alternate future states and planning for each.
- 9.3Management reporting(96) Ratings
Budget vs. actual or forecast, P&L’s, performance over time, between products etc.
Consolidation and Close
Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.
- 9.9Financial data consolidation(67) Ratings
Consolidating data from several entities into a single statement using US GAAP, IFRS or other standards.
- 9Journal entries and reports(51) Ratings
Ability to enter journal entry adjustments and produce reports showing all journal entries for a specific period.
- 9.2Multi-currency management(44) Ratings
Ability to handle foreign currency conversions during consolidation.
- 8.6Intercompany Eliminations(43) Ratings
Matching and elimination of intercompany revenue, expenses, and balance sheet accounts.
- 6.3Minority Ownership(23) Ratings
Consolidate financials full or partial ownership of subsidiaries, equity pick-up.
- 8.3Local and consolidated reporting(55) Ratings
Ability to report against individual business entities and the consolidated umbrella entity.
- 8.3Detailed Audit Trails(53) Ratings
Tracing changes to data and processes that were run.
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Financial statements and regulatory filings
- 8.5Financial Statement Reporting(83) Ratings
Creation and production of balance sheets, income statements, cash flows, other schedules
- 9.4Management Reporting(93) Ratings
Tools facilitating creation of internal ad hoc or standard reports.
- 8.3Excel-based Reporting(93) Ratings
Ad hoc or formatted reports using MS Excel.
- 8.2Automated board and financial reporting(67) Ratings
Tools to help automate creation of regulatory reports such as SEC filings and board books.
- 7.1XBRL support for regulatory filing(3) Ratings
Support for the XBRL standard reporting format for exchanging financial data.
Analytics and Reporting
Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking
- 7.8Personalized dashboards(49) Ratings
Create custom dashboards and reports without the help of IT or administrators.
- 7.6Color-coded scorecards(29) Ratings
Track and analyze performances with interactive, color-coded balanced scorecards.
- 8.5KPIs(37) Ratings
Select from a library of more than 6,000 key performance indicators, and incorporate KPIs into your planning process.
- 9Cost and profitability analysis(39) Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis provides data for business decision making.
- 7.7Key Performance Indicator setting(29) Ratings
Ability to set key performance indicators for measuring progress towards goals.
- 3.1Benchmarking with external data(8) Ratings
CPI, daily exchange rates, industry KPIs. with scheduled data refreshes.
Integration
Ability to integrate with external applications.
- 9.5Flat file integration(65) Ratings
Integration of flat files like text documents and comma separated files
- 8.2Excel data integration(84) Ratings
Ability to integrate directly with Excel data.
- 6.5Direct links to 3rd-party data sources(59) Ratings
Integration with external applications like ERP, CRM, HCM
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Planful?
Planful provides a Continuous Planning platform that enables finance to automate and accelerate FP&A activities, drive faster and more agile planning and decision-cycles, and elevate the financial IQ of the organization so that everyone is making smarter decisions more frequently. Planful is an end-to-end platform for financial planning, consolidation, and reporting & analysis.
STRUCTURED PLANNING Structured Planning with Planful automates labor-intensive planning activities in a complete 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.
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
Planful Videos
Watch Annual Operational Planning
Watch Cash Flow Forecasting
Watch Workforce Planning
Watch Financial Reporting
Watch Monthly Close & Consolidation
Watch Plan, Budget & Forecast
Watch Rolling Forecasts
Watch Scenario Analysis
Planful Integrations
- Sage Intacct
- NetSuite ERP
- SAP ERP
- Trintech
- Oracle ERP
- Microsoft Dynamics ERP
Planful Competitors
Planful Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | We have customers in 90 countries |
Supported Languages | English |
Planful Downloadables
- Planful Platform Datasheet
- The Ultimate Guide to Continuous Planning
- Customer Case Study: CloudMargin Empowers Finance to Add More Value and Analyze More Scenarios Using Planful
- Customer Case Study: National DCP Speeds Business Decisions With Planful
- Customer Case Study: Specialized Bicycles Rides Workforce Strategy Across the Globe With Planful
Frequently Asked Questions
Planful Customer Size Distribution
Consumers | 0% |
---|---|
Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 10% |
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 25% |
Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 65% |
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(197)Attribute Ratings
- 8.6Likelihood to Renew16 ratings
- 8.2Availability6 ratings
- 7.7Performance2 ratings
- 8.1Usability15 ratings
- 8.2Support Rating21 ratings
- 7.3Online Training1 rating
- 6.4In-Person Training2 ratings
- 2.3Implementation Rating12 ratings
- 8.2Configurability2 ratings
- 8.2Product Scalability2 ratings
- 9.1Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 8.2Vendor post-sale2 ratings
- 9.1CPA Rating1 rating
Reviews
(1-25 of 109)- The Host Analytics 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 Host Analytics 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 Host as we tend to have more experience with Excel based reporting.
- Using Host 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 top side journal entries, and from there we are able to jump right into financial reporting.
- The speed of the application has sometimes been a bit slow, particularly at year end. We've found that when we use Host in Chrome as opposed to IE, our speed improves, however Host currently has limited functionality when used in Chrome.
- We would love to see a more user-friendly report wizard in the future.
Short summary of my Planful experience.
- Topside entries
- consolidation
- reporting
- Work flow control
- report formatting
- integration into excel
- Flexible Reporting
- Data Integrations
- Office Integration
- Customer Support
- Concise Documentation
- Easy to get started, difficult to become a true power user
Planful's no slouch
- 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
Stressed out about budgeting?
- Reporting / Report Collectors
- Workforce Planning
- Hierarchy Management
- Capital Spend
- Customize navigation screen
- Simplify various Security settings
- Budgeting
- Scenario Forecast
- Hierarchy Management
- Data Analytics
- Verify External Data
- Foreign Exchange Rates
Planful Review
- aesthetically pleasing for business partners to look at
- nice formatting options
- user friendly for basic tasks
- more attributes
- vendor level
- better error message diagnosis
Everybody has a Plan until they get Planful'd! (positive review 👍)
- 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.
A great tool to scale your business and enable collaboration
- 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 - Great for Budget Planning and Reporting
- 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
Planful Review 2022
- 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.
Planful delivers
- Easily pivoting between different data sets
- Report building
- Dissection of data into different sub groups
- Tech support
- Data load user interface
- Roles
Planful is NOT painful
- 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.
A budget and forecast tool that makes financial planning easy!
- 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
- 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.
A Modern, User-Friendly Planning Solution
- 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
A great FP&A tool
- 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
Strong Customization and High Use-Case Potential
- 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
Powerful and flexible EPM solution
- 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.
Start-up using Planful
- Customization of reporting
- Ease of uploading forecasts
- Formatting of reports is inconsistently applied/retained
- There are errors in some of the exception rule calculations
Planful, great budgeting and reporting tool!
- Reporting
- Budgeting
- Planning
- User functionality
- Ease of building reports
- Unlimited users/different levels of users
- Consolidating multiple entities
- Running Reports
- Ease of loading and extracting data
- Live reports extraction from web
- More user customizability in reports
- Report maker
Excellent Finance tool!
- 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
- 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.
- 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