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Vena

Vena

Overview

What is Vena?

Vena Solutions provides a financial process automation solution to automate Corporate Performance Management, accounting and budgeting, Regulatory & Compliance, and other finance-related processes. It is scaled for medium to large-sized organizations.

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Recent Reviews

Easy to use....

10 out of 10
March 13, 2024
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used by the Finance department with a potential to extending usage further out to other teams in the organization. …
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Vena Review

9 out of 10
March 09, 2024
Incentivized
We adopted Vena for the preparation of our 2024 budget. Previously we were using Excel spreadsheets, but needed a more streamlined …
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Great FP&A tool

10 out of 10
January 05, 2024
Incentivized
Vena is a fantastic tool for any organization and the Vena implementation team is really helpful. I think its a money well invested for …
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Vena Review

6 out of 10
December 29, 2023
Incentivized
Vena is being used on a day to day business to support any ad-hoc requests from the finance/accounting side and constantly updating …
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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 48 features
  • Excel-based Reporting (194)
    9.3
    93%
  • Financial budgeting (202)
    9.2
    92%
  • Management reporting (199)
    8.8
    88%
  • Forecasting (193)
    8.6
    86%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

Video Reviews

1 video

Vena Review: Proves To Be Financial Management Solution For Handling Multiple, Complex Accounts
03:21
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Pricing

View all pricing

Professional

N/A

Cloud

Complete

N/A

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.venasolutions.com/resources…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

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

8.7
Avg 8.0

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

8.1
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9
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.

8.1
Avg 7.6

Access Control and Security

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

9.2
Avg 8.7

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

9.1
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.

8.4
Avg 8.0

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.5
Avg 8.2

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

8.7
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

9
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is Vena?

Vena is a Native Excel Complete Planning Platform used for budgeting and forecasting, for business leaders and finance and operations professionals.


Vena boasts users among more than 1,350 companies such as Nike, Coca-Cola Consolidated and the Kansas City Chiefs. In addition, Vena works with over 100 Partners.

Vena 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
  • Supported: XBRL support for regulatory filing

Analytics and Reporting Features

  • Supported: Personalized dashboards
  • Supported: Color-coded scorecards
  • Supported: KPIs
  • Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
  • Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
  • Supported: Benchmarking with external data

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: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • 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: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

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: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Vena Screenshots

Screenshot of Operation Expenses - Predictive AnalysisScreenshot of Allocations DashboardScreenshot of Vena Add InScreenshot of Power BI DashboardScreenshot of Revenue and Sales PlanningScreenshot of Corporate Dashboard - Workforce PlanningScreenshot of Operational Expenses - Drill through analysisScreenshot of Operational Expenses Planning - Input Excel templateScreenshot of Operational Expenses - Drill through analysisScreenshot of Operational Expenses Planning - Input Excel template

Vena Videos

Introduction to Vena Complete Planning
Introduction to Budgeting in Vena Complete Planning
Vena for SaaS - Financial Reporting and Reporting Made Simple
Vena for Banks and Credit Unions - Budget, Forecast and Plan With Confidence

Vena Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationYou don't need to download an app or change a setting to use Vena on your mobile device: just open your browser, go to Vena (vena.io), and log in as you normally do. The Contributor interface is fully responsive, so it can adjust to any size screen, regardless of the type of device you have.
Supported CountriesUnited States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Europe
Supported LanguagesVena supports any localization capabilities already native within Excel. Vena Cloud supports English, Spanish, and French. If a specific language is required please don’t hesitate to ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

Vena Solutions provides a financial process automation solution to automate Corporate Performance Management, accounting and budgeting, Regulatory & Compliance, and other finance-related processes. It is scaled for medium to large-sized organizations.

Workday Adaptive Planning, Prophix, and Planful are common alternatives for Vena.

Reviewers rate Flat file integration highest, with a score of 9.4.

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

Vena Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)19%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)55%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)26%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(307)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 214)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena for everything on our organization, all the way from FP&A on the corporate side to time tracking for every individual. Every single one of us has to use Vena at least for the time tracking template and the rest use it on a daily basis, be it implementation or whatever is needed from it.
  • Great representation of data
  • ETL can be done from many different ERPs which is great
  • Facilitates data analysis
  • Can create many different types of templates (Financial, Labor, Time tracking)
  • LIDs I find really confusing because they don't often work on the same way
  • Validation rules have issues when you add more than one
  • Form block expansion
I would recommend Vena to every one of my friends that owns or works on a medium to a big company, I find most of its capabilities are better seen when you have many departments, accounts, regions, etc. so for folks that are just starting their company without oustide funding it could be quite expensive and not use the full potential of the extension.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used with our accounting system (Intacct) to both track project budgets and create automated financial reports. Right now it is just being used by the accounting and finance departments, but these reports are circulated to both internal and external users. It addresses the problem of us having to manually create financial statements each month by hard keying items into excel and dual entry by also entering all of our data into a separate budget tracking system.
  • Seamless integration with Intacct
  • Reports are easy to use in Excel
  • Automation of reports saves time
  • Reports can be difficult to create without extensive training
  • Protecting a sheet to eliminate end user errors is important, but it would be nice to still be able to make cosmetic changes easily
  • There is sometimes a delay in opening reports and loading new reports
If you are using Excel extensively and manually updating numbers each month Vena can be a huge help in automating these tasks. Vena seamlessly communicates with an accounting system to sync everything over. I would not recommend Vena to someone that may not be as comfortable with the more advanced features of Excel and does not have the resources to hire an outside consultant to assist behind the scenes in report creation.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena within our corporate department. This tool is used mainly for our FP&A and has been very helpful in streamlining our process for quarterly and budget reporting. Previously, we have been using Excel to perform our forecast and budget, but we always encountered problems with broken links and were also frustrated with having to update every single workbook in order for us to consolidate our results.
  • Flows changes and updates to our forecasts seamlessly where we know the numbers are reflected in all of our reports.
  • Ability to create ad hoc custom reports.
  • Having the ability to pull different scenarios, periods, and years easily to have comparatives for better analysis.
  • Integrated well into excel where you don't feel like you're using a completely different tool.
  • Inability to collaborate with a teammate in the input templates.
  • Not integrated with word documents which would be helpful for our MD&A report.
Vena has been a great platform for us to input all of our forecastings into one hub so that we can perform our consolidations. We also import our actual data into the Vena database, so we are now able to compare our financial results against our forecast and budgets to provide better analysis for our stakeholders. Vena has offered us the flexibility to build reports on demand which has been a great tool to have as our reporting needs evolve.
Jeremy Vance | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena has replaced a manual Excel forecast template we used to have in place. It is widely used by the accounting department for budgeting/forecasting and financial analysis and reporting. It is also used by each department to update its quarterly forecast. It has significantly reduced time and errors from the manual process we had in place. We can easily track changes and see who inputted certain data. Vena is very simple to learn and requires little training for the end users since it is basically just like working in Excel.
  • Simplified the budgeting and forecasting process.
  • Allows end users to run certain reports as needed.
  • Significantly reduced time and errors from manual processes.
  • Wish there was an option for multiple people to use a check-in and checkout file like a shared file.
  • Speed of report writing is not bad but could always use improvement.
  • Wonderful product that really does not need many things to improve on in the way that we currently use it.
Our company has many departments that used to take a whole day to create templates and email each department head. Vena has allowed just the push of a button to automatically send out each department template to each individual department manager. This has significantly reduced time in budget and forecast creation. It has allowed us to track changes easily and determine different scenarios. I cannot imagine a situation in which Vena's capabilities are not needed.
October 13, 2022

It is fine

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used for Financial reporting, linked to to ERP
  • Easy reporting
  • Drill Down capabilities
  • Separating Departments
  • The setup - the product needs to be set up properly to gain full functionality
  • Hierarchy isn't always conducive to company hierarchies
  • It would be nice to be able to drill down into the ERP detail
I used to have to create financial statements in Excel, now it is as easy as running a report
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is an ad hox solution that helps my customers to improve the performance of the processes of reporting, forecasting, and budgeting. The specialized tools of cloud computing, in combination with the flexibility of Excel, make it the most successful tool for my clients.
  • Excel functionality for performance management tools.
  • Cloud computing.
  • Data integration from many sources.
  • Some functionalities are limited - minor bugs to improve.
It's most suitable for companies that want to migrate to a more advanced tool but are struggling to do it because multiple sources of information cannot be integrated into a single financial model. Also, for companies that want to improve the collaboration across all users in the company and at the same time want to keep things simple, like the use of excel for end users.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is primarily used by the Financial Planning and Analysis team within the Finance department. Vena was specifically chosen for FP&A due to its capabilities to streamline forecasting needs for the FP&A team and eliminate the need for a multitude of messy Excel workbooks. I primarily use Vena for financial planning and forecasting purposes.
  • Eliminate the need for messy Excel workbooks
  • Connecting data with ERP system like Oracle for financial data
  • Ability to share with multiple different users
  • "Contributor" only access limits information transparency and may not help the contributor understand the entire picture
Vena puts together a multitude of webinars and learnings to help individuals find use cases for the software. Though Vena is only currently used for financial planning and analysis purposes right now, the use case of Vena for account reconciliation and financial consolidation would help immensely with automating mundane manual tasks that are subject to a higher degree of error due to the degree of manual intervention required.

From a Contributor perspective, my experience so far with Vena has been smooth and easy to understand and pick up without having to go through hours of training.
October 11, 2022

Pretty cool

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used by the acct. department to quickly access files and tasks. The task list is very helpful. I mostly use it for keeping track of deadlines and knowing what comes next after a task. Vena also comes with a tab for instructions which provides a little more direction to completing tasks along with SOPs in the excel file. Syncing and downloading to and from Vena can take some time. Vena helps address the problem of managers having to find all the files in the folders and allows everything to be easily accessible by due date.
  • Task list
  • listing out tasks and who is doing it
  • check in files
  • UI is clunky
  • Downloading files takes long
  • ability to communicate
You are assigned a task, you go to task list, you see who you can ask about it, the files you need are there already, and higher-ups can add instructions to the file. Good stuff. Good in month end close where everyone is pumping out tasks on their own and the manager needs to keep track of who is doing what.
October 08, 2022

Quick and short.

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used for financial reporting and budgeting. The budgeting process involved more than ten departments with at least 30 users.
  • Vena is able coordinate budget users through workflow and setting deadlines.
  • Financial reporting is done through excel.
  • Vena is able to integrate with our custom software.
  • There is a steep learning curve for new users.
  • Interface can be more user friendly.
  • Need more help to address mapping issues on reports.
Well-suited: When you have a lot of users who contribute to the budgeting process, the workflow helps to set deadlines and send out budget templates. It gathers information from all departments and summarizes them in a custom budget report that you can create. Less appropriate: If you are looking for financial reporting uses only, there are other software that is much easier to use (ex: drag and drop). Vena requires a lot of mapping work.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is the corporate planning software used across the organization. It is used widely across the entire company and provides a great way to roll things up to a corporate level. The audit trail and control make it very easy to track and make sure that the different versions are explainable and can be communicated clearly to the executive team.
  • Roll ups.
  • Capture inputs.
  • Easy to see the end product.
  • Takes time to extract information.
  • More insurance specific metrics.
  • Simpler user guide.
Well suited for a corporate-wide roll-up. Not well suited to do some ad-hoc analysis.
Mikhil Soni | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena for forecasting and developing strategies. Our IT and Business Analyst team along with Sales/Marketing team use this platform the most.
  • Helps in managing demand and connects with Power BI
  • Let's us review Forecast and multiple users are able to upload it in the same time.
  • Pull reports and prepare strategy for both short term and long term.
  • Get automatic notifications for pending task.
  • I get frequent errors while check in of the file.
  • Vena Tab in MS Excel doesn't provide any information.
It is more suited for data visualization and consolidating all the data. It helps in planning and creating strategies for the next quarters and even for long term. However, it is less helpful in project planning or management and better softwares are available which are more advanced and good at it.
September 22, 2022

Vena Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is mainly used for our finance and accounting team for budgeting and internal reporting.
  • Versatile
  • Maps various data sources
  • Drag & drop functionaility
Vena works well for financial reporting and cost budgeting. It does not work so well with headcount forecasting and planning
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is been used in our day-to-day management of the business. It has allowed us to have full transparency of our business with one source of truth. We also use it for consolidating and reporting our financials internally and externally. Vena has made it much easier for forecasting, budgeting, and modeling the business.
  • Control of Month-end close
  • Drill down of accounts
  • Consolidating
  • Controls of users and users group
  • Allow to flip the sign on balances
  • Easier copying and pasting of a whole sheet and the mapping
Vena is suited for any service or manufacturing company that is mid to large size.
September 22, 2022

Vena - Cannot be compared!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used currently by our Finance and Accounting team.
  • Consolidation
  • Integration
  • Planning/Budgeting
  • Support
  • Export features
  • Business Intelligence
Vena is great for consolidation and budgeting and planning. Can be difficult to use for analysis however, a business intelligence tool more suited for that.
September 22, 2022

Good product overall!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FP&A team manages; Budgets & reporting / analysis across company
  • Flexibility
  • Adaptability
  • Excel Add-In support
  • Lacking modeler flexibility
  • Mappings time consuming
  • Speed of intersections
Vena is good for budgeting & excel analysis; ad hoc reporting and modeler can be difficult to structure quickly
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Vena for all of our operational budgeting across camping. It is the most helpful in forecasting throughout the year to accurately track expenses and make adjustments to the budget.
  • Forecasting
  • Month to month tracking
  • Review and approval
  • Comments being saved from one fiscal year to the next
Vena is extremely helpful with forecasting expenses and adjusting budgets throughout the year. I have not experienced a scenario where it isn't appropriate.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena to budget our operational and grant expenses, as well as process our annual compensation planning as part of our summer performance review cycle. We've also used Vena to plan our capital expense budgets and our detailed medical item and equipment procurement budget in the past. We have 200 users across 10 countries contributing to specific portions of the organizational budget. Vena's Excel interface allowed our users to adopt the platform quickly as we were able to build templates that mirrored our existing Excel templates, while also giving them the flexibility to use other Excel functionality that they're familiar with (i.e. using formulas to populate cells). From the administrative side of the platform, we were able to learn how to build and manage data models, templates and user permissions in multiple ways to suit the needs of our specific use cases. The ability to export and upload transactional data, hierarchies, users and user permissions makes things easy to manage as well. Vena also has robust system audit features that allow you to see what information was saved, by who, and when, making it easier to troubleshoot any issues that come up, particularly when multiple users are collaborating on the same data. The platform also allows you to see snapshots of what the data looked like down to 5 minute increments, which we've used a few times to restore data that was mistakenly overwritten in bulk - navigate to a date in the past, add some query language to narrow your search, export the data to confirm it's what you want and then re-upload it to get back to a good starting point. Vena's real time consolidation has also been a major win for us as we previously only updated our budgets once per month because the consolidation process was manual and very tedious. Since we started with Vena, our budgets are consolidated immediately, and we're able to automatically push that data to our data warehouse to be used for broader reporting. What used to be a once every 30 day process to update the organizational budget is now an automated process that happens each day - a user can enter a new budget line today and see it in our reports a day later. While we haven't yet pushed our accounting system's actual data into Vena yet, we see that as an opportunity in the future to allow users to use that information to immediately update their annual forecasts throughout the year. We also lean heavily on our data warehouse to build our broader reports, but are excited to explore Vena's Power BI embedded feature as it matures and once we are pushing accounting data into the platform. Beyond the technical aspects of Vena's platform providing a lot of flexibility and functionality, they've been a great partner to work with. They've built a customer community that allows customers across different industries to discuss best practices and new ideas, and have built a steady stream of webinars with industry experts. Their support staff have been responsive and knowledgeable and their knowledge base articles and Vena Academy (training) were helpful in getting us up to speed and as a way to keep up with new features.
  • Flexibility - design the data model, templates, and permissions your organization needs
  • Usability - the Vena web portal is clean and easy to navigate, checking files in and out is straight forward, and users have adopted templates quickly
  • Community - from training, knowledge base, discussion boards, webinars, and repeating Customer Success calls, Vena stays in touch with customers regularly and uses feedback to improve the platform and partnership
  • Macros to Product features - some customers may need to build VBA macros within their templates to supplement specific actions within a template, though Vena actively reaches out to understand those use cases and considers adding those most common as product features
  • Integrations - Vena has been building native integrations to major systems over the past several years, but my team would have preferred an option to more simply connect to a SQL database and define all of the mapping ourselves (Vena API's were just announced so we might not be far away, but as yet have not been able to implement this type of integration)
  • Workflows - it might just be that my organization doesn't like to adhere to formal workflows processes, but we have yet to adopt them within Vena because the user's changes are committed to the database before approval and we don't want unapproved changes flowing into our data warehouse. If we could easily have unapproved data tagged in a way to keep it filtered out, that would make workflows more enticing
Vena is great for organizations that are comfortable using Excel and require lots of flexibility as it allows you to design and build your templates in exactly the way that you need. It's also a good match for organizations that have disparate users contributing simultaneously because it's permissions allow for everyone to work in a standard template while only being given access to edit the data for which they're responsible. If you have a team that has internal capacity to manage your systems, Vena as a platform allows you to expand beyond your initial implementation independently without needing to go back to a consultant to make an adjustment or start a new project.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used across the entire company for planning and reporting. Gives managers access to transaction detail and timely data. Quarterly forecasts have made planning agile and up to date based on operational changes.
  • Flexibility in planning models.
  • Report distribution.
  • Accurate data.
  • Automated processes.
  • User permissions.
  • Task bindings.
  • Changing and moving hierarchy members.
Fast-growing business, where needs are always changing. Templates can change with the business easily as it all excel based, so if you can think of it in Excel, you can turn it into an automated template Template automation is by far my favorite feature of Vena and has allowed me to remain a one-person team even though the company has grown many times over in a few short years.
September 15, 2022

Vena..

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used by our Finance and HR team; it helps us in Planning and budgeting. It helps us in comparing our financials and enhances cost-effective future budgeting. All the personnel and non-personnel expenses are very well managed; it also helps us in data integration and visualization, which in turn helps in decision-making.
  • Budgeting
  • Planning
  • Forecasting
  • Managing HRIS.
  • User Interaction.
  • Latency issues.
  • More interactive spreadsheet in Excel.
Vena would be very helpful in building Financial reports and all required audit reports. It would help in Financial planning and analysis and decision making. It would also help in human resources, managing all the employees moving and out their costs and also automatically impact the financial. It might also be helpful in building dashboards if understood well.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Vena for budgeting across 18 countries and for consolidated reporting of our financials. Additionally, with the Power BI connector, we are able to bring our financial data, operations data from Salesforce, and HR data from our HRIS system into one environment. This allows us to create dashboards for each department, but also allows for a consolidated CPM use case.
  • Easy to build templates or integrate existing templates
  • Workflow creator with approvals
  • Security controls - One template with many views based on a user's permissions
  • Excel based so easy to make the transition
  • Workflow management - The workflow status tracker is only available when logged into Vena and cannot be distributed through automated or scheduled email notification
  • Not mobile friendly - Since reports/templates are in Excel and require the add-in to view, you cannot access your data on a mobile device
  • Admin support for add-in - The add-in can be cumbersome for end users not familiar or used to working with more advanced features in Excel. Additional support and training are necessary to help users troubleshoot when data does not automatically appear when opening an Excel file.
  • License cost structure - Vena recently changed their licenses to include a view only license. This license is extremely limited and will not allow for simple approve/reject reviews. Additionally, the cost of 1 admin license (necessary to build workflows, templates, and reports) is excessively overpriced compared to the other offerings.
Vena is a great product that provides a centralized location for all of your budget and financial data. The ability to create workflows and not have to worry about data consolidation during the budget process has allowed more time to complete detailed reviews of each individual budget. It has also provided us with the ability to quickly create budget adjustments as necessary that roll up into the existing budget. While reports are easy to create, distribution has been hit or miss dependent on the end user. At the end of the day, it is another system they must login to in order to view. It also works well if you have a centralized business model with only 1-3 admins (FP&A team) creating and controlling the files and workflow processes. If you hope to empower other key individuals outside your FP&A team to build their own reports though, it becomes cost prohibitive very quickly.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We implemented Vena for the planning and budgeting process, reporting, and consolidation as well in combination with Fluence. On the other hand, we also use it for more non-financially driven functionalities like resource planning or project risk management.
  • Facilitate collaboration across the company
  • Workflow management
  • Industry Solutions (Best Practices)
  • Reproducing templates
It is well suited to collaborate with departments overarching within your company. For example, setting up a budget where several departments need to deliver their input and you will facilitate the process, and keep an eye on the process. I think it is less appropriate for organizations with a low maturity level in finance, as the tool is really flexible, and if you don't have a clear vision of your needs, maybe Vena is not the way to go as it will not guide you in the process. It's really open/flexible to set up, so you need to know what you want.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Vena for all budgeting, forecasting and 95% of Financial Reporting with the remaining 5% to be introduced in Q3 of 2021. Prior to Vena, our budget process was very manual and financial reporting cumbersome and and in some instances, non-existent. Vena has been transformational for Saint Mary's. We have reduced our budget cycle from Months to Weeks and our Executive review time from weeks to days. In addition, we use Vena to improve financial processes for month end close, reducing cumbersome activities from days to hours or minutes, and perform deep analysis. We have dramatically reduced or eliminated time to compile information and have instead repurposed that time to perform more value-added analysis. Vena has been used to identify ineffective pockets of budget allocation and allowed us to reallocate those pockets to more strategic needs. We are currently expanding the use case beyond the FInance office to include Enrolment Projection and Faculty accreditation. Since first becoming a Vena customer in 2014, the software has received continuous enhancements and it continues to get better each quarter. In short, we love it!
  • They are continually investing in the software.
  • They listen to their customers and incorporate their feedback.
  • They are fully engaged in their customers obtaining the maximum benefit from the software.
  • Their customer support team is very responsive and technically sound.
  • The introduction of Vena365Connect will solve a major weakness in the software as it will create a platform-agnostic environment allowing Mac users to finally use Vena to its full potential.
  • I would like to see more integration and more support with BI tools. They currently integrate with Power BI but beyond the bridge to link it, its really up to the customer after that. Easy linking to Tableau would be phenomenal.
  • More partner arrangements with clients to develop APIs for larger ERP systems to allow for the real time transfer for data into Vena.
  • Improved mobile experience for tablets.
Any organization that has the same P&L for multiple business units would benefit greatly! Franchises, etc are a perfect fit. Any organization that has multiple shadow systems in Excel can all be brought together in Vena. Hotel management would be a great fit! Reits and other infrastructure companies would be a great fit!
August 26, 2022

Vena for Financials

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used by the finance department for financial forecasting and reporting. This includes forecast hours, actual hours, and reporting (both by resource and by projects). Vena is used on a twice-monthly basis and goes through an approval/reviewer process.
  • Budgeting
  • Forecasting
  • Resource load
  • Costing
  • Reduce number of steps to be followed.
  • File expires too fast.
  • No way to retrieve the checked-out file once it expires or close by saying do not save to vena.
Though there is room for reducing the number of steps to reach the desired out, like loading Vena plugins, expiring too fast, and being unable to retrieve once closed without saving, overall, Vena is very flexible and straightforward to use it.
Aaron Andersen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Vena across the entire organization for internal management reporting, monthly variance analysis, budgeting, reforecasting, project Pro-forma planning, and we are building three-year-plan capabilities now. We have separate models for attendance projection, personnel planning, Capex planning, and finally a financial model where it all rolls up, and where non-wage expenses are planned. The small FP&A team manages the platform, and we make everything as self-service as possible for end-users. It is our FP&A system for all but GAAP financial reports.
  • Vena provides all the customizable flexibility and advanced calculation that you can squeeze out of Excel because Excel is used as the front-end. You can tailor the reporting and budget templates to your exact needs and leverage your existing Excel skills.
  • Even though you work in Excel, the data is all controlled by a multi-dimensional cloud database. So your work is safe. Changes are auditable, and nobody has to rely on sharing Excel files between each other and tracking the latest version.
  • Vena's workflow system can be extremely simple if that's what you need. Or you can build some fairly complex process flows for any task.
  • While they are working hard to bring the Mac Excel experience up to parity with the Windows Excel experience, it's not there yet. Mac Excel templates can't leverage all the functions that Windows Excel templates can... Unless you're on the Microsoft 365 platform. The newest version of Vena works in Excel 365 and provides identical experience for PC and Mac end users. Administrators and template designers still have to use the legacy add-in for some features, but they are slowly being migrated to Vena 365.
  • Integrations can be challenging to configure and update. Some rely on their own database language that is similar to SQL, but I don't know SQL. I work in Finance. Integrations are the area where I'm most likely to require support.
  • Some of our complex reports run and refresh quite slowly. Especially those that are very multi-dimensional and configured dynamically.
Vena is perfect when you can't work within a cookie-cutter budgeting system; when you have developed complex Excel budgeting/planning models that can't be duplicated in other affordable systems. Vena is right when you need enterprise-level customization, but don't have enterprise-level resources. Vena is right when you're an Excel wizard and have already figured out solutions to your modeling challenges in Excel, but you need the consistency and control of a database in the cloud. Vena is the wrong choice if you hate troubleshooting models and logic. Vena is unnecessary if your organization aligns neatly with competing products' case studies. Vena is not ideal if you need a turnkey implementation.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Vena is used by our Finance and Accounting team for budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis. The goal is to eventually provide Vena access to other departments so they can submit their own budgets. I am very new to the company and to Vena. I started in March of 2022 and have only been through training.
  • Easy to use.
  • Ensures latest version of a spreadsheet is the current version.
  • Great for variance analysis.
  • Some trainers are hard to understand.
  • Closed captioning should be included in all training modules.
  • I have only done Vena training, so I can't speak to live usage.
Vena appears to be well suited for budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis. Since I am still in training, I have not used Vena in live production for the company I work for.
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