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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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading
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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

(1-25 of 99)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used as a financial reporting tool currently for reporting across all departments. Has taken us from a slow loading/refreshing/saving Excel file with over 200k lines, to a quick and accurate report.
  • Mapping of SAP source data
  • Quick Reporting
  • Allows for calculations within Vena for Standard Costs
  • Having the ability to refresh data with mapping changes without reloading it.
  • Having end user able to set up/manipulate the system without a consultant's help
Vena is perfect for a simple small business and can handle a larger business also with some complexities
March 13, 2024

Easy to use....

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used by the Finance department with a potential to extending usage further out to other teams in the organization. Vena is used for producing reports and outputs for various stakeholders; internal and external. Additionally, Vena is currently used for processes including period end, budgeting and forecasting.
  • Real time data refresh - reports are updated immediately; no lag
  • Link to the excel - useful for combining the offline and Vena functionality of excel
  • Dimension management - easy to update and maintain
  • Large and complex files are slow to open and save
Great reporting tool; straightforward to self-maintain the dimensional data.
Could be made simpler for versioning scenarios by applying a logic to data contained within a scenario for example.
March 09, 2024

Vena Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We adopted Vena for the preparation of our 2024 budget. Previously we were using Excel spreadsheets, but needed a more streamlined solution to bring all of the parts of our budget together into a final product. Vena allowed us to create detailed revenue and expense budgets, and allocate costs among departments as needed. We were also able to use Vena for our staffing budget and allocations, which was an improvement over our previous process.
  • Budget process
  • Allocations
  • Financial Reporting
  • Data model
  • Creating reports
  • Updating templates
Based on our experience Vena is well suited for our needs to create a budget for our organization that eliminated a lot of manual entry and piecing together of Excel spreadsheets. We are hoping to expand our use of Vena to include financial reporting as well, and have our finance stakeholders use Vena to access detailed information relating to their budgets and actual financial results. Vena may not be suitable for a very small organization with minimal complexity.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used as an FP&A solution, consuming accounting ledger and other ad hoc KPI data to produce various pieces of consistent management information packs / decks and other pieces of analysis. Such outputs/models input: 1. MTP / Budgeting 2. Workforce planning 3. Management Information packs 4. Board packs 5. Ad-hoc analysis
  • Data visualisation
  • Consistent Finance outputs
  • Easy read/write interface with the data cube
  • High ROI / value proposition
  • Integration to older accounting software
SMEs looking to add / build out an FP&A function should look to implement Vena. Even if systems across the board are not yet considered "best-in-class" Vena has the adaptability within the software to flex to the needs of the business. This is especially the case where there needs to be multiple data sources feeding into 1 system, such as finance, HR, sales etc.
Shelly Sennikoff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena across the entire organization for our annual budget process and monthly financials and forecasting. We also use it to track various other items that support other departments, such as maintaining our program grant awards, providing site codes for our field staff, calculating site staff mileage stipends, etc. Vena has replaced and automated some very manual processes!
  • Allows us to create just one template that will replicate based on which business segments we want to report on
  • Allows end-users to dig into transaction details (our staff love this feature!)
  • Very flexible in the way you can slice and dice data
  • Enabling the print area setting on the Page Layout to flow to all worksheets in a report book
  • Enabling bulk sharing of dimension members (we currently have to do this one at a time)
  • Ability to drill transactions on calculated members
Vena is very well suited to handle budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. The platform is very flexible, and I have been able to create some great reports that has allowed our team to deepen our analysis of our organization's performance. I also use Vena for other data storage and reporting, such as creating a site code directory for our field staff, developing an invoicing schedule for our AR department, and creating a workbook to facilitate calculating and reporting on our site staff mileage stipends.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena across our three operating divisions for Budget/Planning and Forecasting. We also use Vena to maintain corporate level Balanced Score card data with site level granularity for reporting and analytics.
  • Ease of use for end users as it is Excel based
  • Cloud based access, uses-role based security and utilizes SSO
  • Good ETL tools
  • Dependencies on Macros in Excel which is a limitation when using Web Excel.
  • Lacking ability to throttle updates to the Vena user webpage.
  • No out of the box reports for site level workflow activity updates.
  • Creating/updating report books can be cumbersome when you want to schedule or distribute reports to users.
Well suited for both small and large organizations with multiple users with different roles for access. Easy to build and maintain multiple hierarchies, ease of ETL.

December 28, 2023

Trust Vena

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena for budgeting, financial reporting and for account reconciliation's.
  • Budgeting at a detail level
  • Reporting and instant refresh and updates
  • Versioning are a huge time saving
  • Reconciliation are easy
  • Adhoc reporting can be done very quickly
  • Allocations are very effective and time saving
  • Security works well and can be managed easily
  • Advanced mapping can get tricky
  • Learning how to use Vena, the knowledge base platform can have videos more than screenshots
  • HR module takes a long time to run, save and refresh
  • Cascading a report is generally slow
  • Vena support can be even better. More training materials can be useful
Vena made budgeting very efficient. Budget changes can be viewed in reports right away. Allocations are done instantaneously. Updating baseline and versioning are done very quickly. Saving Vena report to a local drive is not very straightforward and unprotect password each time is a pain point. Also, HR template can be redesigned differently. It is currently very complicated.
Stacy Taute | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, my entire organization is using Vena for budgeting twice a year. It is also being used by our Financial Planning & Analysis team for planning, analyzing, and reporting on a daily basis. Vena was a huge improvement from the tool we were using for budgeting before. It allowed us to set up workflows which made it easier to involve our senior leadership team in the budgeting process and had a short learning curve since it was an excel based tool.
  • Easy to manage and maintain
  • Provides a better end user experience
  • Workflows and automatic emails make the budgeting process much easier to manage/complete
  • API integrations with important tools such as Power BI, Sage Intacct, and Salesforce
  • Easier for Finance to "own" the tool and troubleshoot data issues without having to rely heavily on internal/external Data teams
  • It would be great if the templates didn't have to be launched from the download folder for end users. This concept is often confusing for end users and they don't always understand why they can't open the file back up from their downloads folder later on. Might be better if the templates opened in Excel online for end users when a workflow is in play.
  • The data integration (API) is a bit confusing. All the steps and stages are hard to follow. It would be great if this area could be "dumbed" down a bit further for us non-data people.
  • Permissions are a bit tedious to set up. We decided to set up permissions using permission user groups instead of task bindings because it would be easier to manage and not accidentally mess up but it still is really tedious because pretty much each person in our organization has to have a separate user group set up for them.
  • The report books don't seem to work consistently and don't always follow our permission set up so they've not been useful. This is a feature I'd really like to take advantage of but it just isn't quite where I need it to be yet.
  • The formula (DAX) building feature in Insights is not great. It would be more helpful if it showed you the same tooltips that PBI desktop shows you when you start typing out a formula.
  • It would be very helpful to be able to drill down on a budget/forecast number and see the LID (line item detail) beneath it and not just the dimension details.
I would recommend Vena to any organizations that are larger than 100 FTE and have steady funding because this tool is not really affordable for a smaller organization and the non-profit discount is not large enough. I would also recommend it to any organization that spends a lot of their time maintaining or fixing errors in their budget. Vena makes it easy to spend less time making sure information is correct and/or consolidating data and more time analyzing trends. Vena can also help reduce the amount of manual report building an organization may have to do. In general, it is a wonderful tool that is constantly updating/improving and can help any organization increase their efficiencies.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We just recently implemented Vena and are piloting it across one country of our organization. This solution addresses our budgeting and quarterly reforecasting process which touches all departments in the country, but most specifically Operations and Finance. The use this system to do both our revenue and expense planning and have worked with the Vena team to tailor our templates to our specific needs with specific driver based assumptions. Ex. marketing costs are a % of apartment income, etc.
  • Seamless user interface as it is leveraging the well-known Microsoft Excel interface
  • User friendly mapping/template building. While it can seem complex at first, it really is a simple mapping exercise once the 'cube' has been built out.
  • Customer service and ongoing support have really stood out throughout this process as well.
  • Throughout the sales/implementation stage, there were several instances where items we thought were included, were not. More clear definitions would be helpful.
Vena has not replaced our Excel workings but simply elevated it. By being able to apply work streams to specifics files and functions throughout our budgeting and reforecasting process, Vena has really streamlined this process. Additionally, this has added another layer of data integrity, reviews, and accountability for our teams. Being able to quickly update, pivot, adjust templates has been a life saver!
December 14, 2023

It's the real deal!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used by the finance and payroll department and by budget owners within every department of the organization. It allows us to have a centralized budget management tool and system. It allows us to consolidate our financial data and reporting in one place for more accurate analysis and decision making.
  • Cleaning, transforming, and consolidating data into a usable format
  • Highly customizable and flexible reporting to answer unique business questions
  • Amazing on-demand support chat for any technical issues with the platform
  • Provide more training resources for using integration channels and leveraging SQL query
  • Improve Power Automate connectors to allow for more flat file integrations. Automating flat files into Vena is one of our biggest pain points!
  • Improve user friendliness for end users. That is one of the biggest critiques that we receive from budget owners: they are intimated by the platform or simply struggle with using it.
Vena is well suited for structured reporting and dashboards. Vena is not well suited for on the fly ad-hoc analysis. Most teammates prefer to just manipulate off-line spreadsheets or Google sheets
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Vena as the primary source of financial data, which is utilized for financial reporting, analysis, budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning. Currently, folks outside of the finance organization are only accessing Vena during the budgeting cycle, but all departments rely on monthly Vena reports and analysis, provided by Finance. Vena is an essential tool for our business, allowing us to consolidate data from several ERP systems and then use that data for the activities mentioned - financial reporting, analysis, budgeting, forecasting and strategic planning. We rely heavily on Vena to meet our business needs and it continues to deliver.
I have experience with other tools, such as Oracle products, and although there are pros and cons to each, I would certainly recommend Vena to others.
  • The management of your data model is very user friendly
  • Connects you with great partners to address your future needs
  • Report/template creation is timely and not intuitive for a new user
  • Technical support can be a challenge to work with at times. Issues can take days to be resolved.
Vena is especially useful if you have several sources of data that need consolidated-- you can easily load all your data to the cloud and then report on it.
Vena is a tremendous tool budgeting and forecasting as well. If you are looking to improve either of these processes, I am confident that this product will be of value to your business.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used across the whole organization for planning the financials for the next year. Contributors develop their own labor, CAPEX, and expense plans for the following year. Contributors also have access to reports to see how their part of the business is comparing against the plan. The accounting departments uses the reporting feature to send reports to end users.
  • Updating data/intersections from the cloud.
  • Support staff is very helpful including customer success manager and Vena support team.
  • Quarterly updates provided and are relevant to our business. There is usually a Zoom meeting to go over them ahead of the launch date.
  • The Vena forum and the Vena Academy provide helpful tips and training.
  • I like that Vena uses Excel. It's program that most accountants are already familiar with and can manipulate with ease.
  • I have trouble logging into the Zoom meetings and have missed several meetings because of not being able to log in. That is likely due to limits from our IT department and probably not a Vena issue.
  • Sometimes I need more of an explanation or can't find the article I need in the Vena knowledge base. Also, some of the explanations leave me more confused about what I need to do to achieve my objective.
  • When we implemented Vena, the implementation team created a template for our unallocated lab expenses, but I wasn't able to effectively use it.
I use Vena to create revenue reports and that is very helpful in my work. When we first started using Vena in 2017, one of the instructors set up a template to help me with various components of our unallocated lab expenses. Unfortunately, I have not been able to use that templated effectively in my work.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used across all departments at the corporate level. As a part of the finance team, I help oversee usage of Vena by a variety of contributors in nearly all departments. We use Vena to connect data contributors, analysts, and data consumers so there is only one source of truth to maintain. There are a variety of problems addressed, including annual planning and budgeting.
  • The way it connects data contributors, analysts, and data consumers so there is only one source of truth to maintain
  • So far it has been very easy to get non-technical employees comfortable enough with Vena to use it effectively as a contributor
  • Documentation and training resources for Vena have been very helpful
  • I have some frustrations with the limits of Vena as it is used in Excel. For example, if contributors filter or sort tables in input forms it often causes issues with the dimension mappings.
  • Vena appears to limit it's connections to Microsoft products. It could be useful to be able to connect to other software.
  • Some aspects of modeling in Vena are very manual, and options to make changes to multiple members at a time is limited.
Vena has worked very well as a way for our finance team to gather current data from a variety of departments. This streamlines the annual planning process and ensures single sources of truth so there is no room for confusion. There are some limits in how well Vena can be used within Excel, but we are generally able to work around that.
May 11, 2023

Good platform

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is primarily administered by the finance team manager; however, it serves as a valuable tool for contributors across the organization. Our team utilizes Vena for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting to address a variety of business challenges. Its functionality and flexibility make it an essential part of our financial management process.
  • Vena allows contributors to make live changes, and its powerful data management capabilities make it easier for the finance team to track and consolidate budgeting data.
  • Improving Forecasting Accuracy: Utilize analytics and forecasting models
  • training and resources: need more training and recourses to utilizes powerful functions in vena
Vena is an excellent solution for managing complex budgeting processes within the finance team. Its powerful data management capabilities and Excel-based interface make tracking, consolidating, and reporting of budgeting data easy. However, most new users often require additional training to fully utilize its functionality and get accustomed to its interface.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used for Consolidated company financial statements, divisional and locational financial statements, budgeting and forecasting. It is primarily in the control of the accounting departments but sales and operations all have reports designed and suited to their financial reporting needs. This keeps everyone in the same platform and viewing the same data without having to create their reports or rely on inaccurate information.
  • Excel based financial statement
  • System integration
  • Data Visualization
  • More access to additional reporting
  • Support from community and other users
  • System speed
Vena does a great job consolidating multiple data sources from multi platforms in to one connected database that can be oriented in a way that makes sense for your organization. Built on Excel, you have the ability to pull and layer the data into highly functional and customizable reports to provide good information for all departments and users.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Vena for all our reporting and forecasting needs. We replaced our Excel forecasting template with a Vena template. We are very pleased with the consolidation help the software provides and recently decided to have all of our raises and reviews done in Vena, which allowed for significantly more visibility on the data integrity.
  • Consolidation - have saved so many hours by not having to manually consolidate spreadsheets
  • Audit trail history - we were able to find out who made a change that was questionable
  • Drillable feature that allows our users to drill into the details of financials
  • Ease of use
  • Sometimes the templates are a bit complicated to use and could be a little bit more straightforward if all the dimensions are defined in the workbook.
  • I would make the security easier to use.
  • Helpdesk
We were able to build a template for information we wanted to be consolidated on our own because the Vena Solutions system is so user-friendly.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is currently only in use for the Finance Department, and it has been an immense help.
  • Update actuals automatically.
  • Forecast individual expenses.
  • Maximize detail and value of a single number with Zoom/Drill.
  • Flexibility to create anything we need internally.
  • I'd like to have notes sections
Vena is great for Budget Reports, Forecasting, Scenario Comparisons, Workforce Planning, Corporate Financials, and Automation of their own reports as well as reports you create individually.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Vena as a powerful tool to share and facilitate financial statements across the entire company. From sharing balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow, and devising templates in order to pull in budget information across the organization's departments, Vena has made it easy to organize the flow of information contribution from our entire organization.
  • Organize Budget Input.
  • Make financials accessible to users.
  • Data permissions make read restrictions scoped.
  • Vena experts are also financial experts.
  • The knowledge base is easy to use and understand.
  • It's is not easy to get an agent for immediate help.
  • adding licenses should be on the website.
  • Available lectures should be more apparent.
The most powerful feature of Vena is the ability to set Data Permissions to restrict the access of specific levels of users in a large organization. In a large organization, there are multiple departments, a large sales force, and different types of executives. It is not necessary for each group to gain full access to see all the organization's financial information. Vena does a great job in setting up users through data permissions and task binding so that users only need to see and work with what is appropriate for each user.
James Leisk | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is being used for budgeting, forecasting, management reporting and board reporting across the whole organisation
  • Agile planning
  • Version control
  • Workflow management
  • Issues with installation of desktop excel add-in
  • Web based reports/dashboards
Vena has enabled us to continually adapt our financial modelling in accordance with the evolving needs of the business, whilst retaining a familiar excel interface. The system is easy to manage and maintain for non-technical users, with a simple to use workflow interface and all the benefits of having a central database in the background.
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.
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.
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.
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