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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

(1-25 of 30)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
we use Vena for numerous functions.
1. we use for budgeting and forecast twice a year of operating and capital expenses and workforce. I generate the reports and this is distributed to all 40 department heads for completion.
2. it is used for monthly variance analysis - again distributed to all departments
3. we are in process of implementation of financial reporting where accounting will begin generating all month end financial statements.
this has helped us in numerous ways, especially timeliness of being able to generate the reports and distribute them to all end users, as well as having the data stored centrally and removing the previous issues of human error. It has also helped us in being able to automate a lot of adhoc monthly reports that are usually sent out to certain departments. Once mapping is set in the report template, it's just a matter of making it available and departments are able to access whenever they need. It has technically reduced the amount of time and effort for all finance reporting, which has allowed us to save money by reducing our overall FTE.
  • centralizing and storage of data
  • automating monthly/quarterly reports
  • easy functionality for end users
  • for financial institutions, it would be nice to see easier functionality for asset-liability management - we currently have a "cube" for this, but not yet in use
  • better coaching for mapping dimensions - certain areas that were a little difficult to understand during the initial implementation
  • more options for email notifications - there are set actions, but some of these don't allow us to notify end user's in certain situations
Vena has been a great tool for us for both budgeting and monthly analysis. There are still a lot of functions that we are consistenly learning and will eventually use. It's been great talking with another Vena user and to see how they are using the system. From an FI standpoint, it's a little hard to use Vena for asset-liability management or calculation of new originations etc. since these are complicated formula and each product is tied to different rates and time frames, this has been a difficult portion for us to implement. but overall it has definitely saved a lot of time for monthly and budgeting reports and coordinating with all end users.
December 29, 2023

Vena Review

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 crucial information interms of monthly and quarterly reporting for the revenue, P&L, and other documentation. We use it as a data center in which we can track previous information in previous years and compare them with one another
  • Store Data
  • Showcase Data
  • Learning aspect (very not user friendly)
  • Should have workshops etc
Vena is suited when displaying complicated data but the scenario in which it has to be taught is very difficult as well. As the learning aspect is quite difficult
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 use Vena as a single source of truth for all financial and booking data. We currently use Vena exclusively on the FP&A team but are in the process of leveraging the tool to other business functions.
  • Revenue Modeling
  • Financial Reporting
  • Data Warehousing
  • Learning Resources
  • Self-Teaching
Vena is very well suited for Excel power users who want to continue leveraging the application (Excel) and it's capabilities to handle the CRM system.
Heath Bieker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have created several customized reports for our organization and plan to use Vena for our monthly variance analysis and annual budget process. Vena is currently only being used by our finance department at the moment, but we plan to roll out Vena to the entire company within the next couple months. Vena will be used by all departments (baseball operations, scouting, technology, engineering, corporate partnerships) for our budget process. Vena has allowed us to have more complex, customized reporting.
  • Vena has the ability to create dynamic reports and manage our budgets/forecasts in one system while allowing end-user comments within the reports.
  • The end-user interface is intuitive and easy to use, even for those users who don't work with excel.
  • Vena has allowed us to provide the executive team more timely reporting and
  • better transparency.
  • The reports and templates can take up to 1-2 minutes to open, which can be frustrating when you want to pull a number or send a report quickly.
  • The GL data load also takes 20-25 minutes to refresh. So if we post entries to our GL and want to capture them in our Vena reports, we have to manually kick off a refresh and wait 25 minutes to run the new reports.
  • Steep learning curve for the Modeler role.
We have created several customized reports for our organization and plan to use Vena for our monthly variance analysis and annual budget process. The ability to create dynamic reports and manage our budgets/forecasts in one system while allowing end-user comments will save our team a ton of time and effort. The software is powerful, and the implementation team has been able to come up with solutions to all of our requests. The end-user interface is intuitive and easy to use, even for those users who don't typically work with excel.
Brandon McManus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used by Finance and accounting, it is used for budgeting and is beginning to be used for financial analysis and reporting in the accounting department. It solves our need to handle our workload by simplifying tedious tasks and better organizes our financial data so that it can be better utilized by stakeholders in the company
  • creating dynamic reports used on a recurring basis
  • organizing workflow of complex tasks
  • building complex reports in an easy and manageable way
  • difficult implementation process
  • errors when importing from 3rd party software
well-suited in FP&A, budgeting, forecasting, and managing financial reports and templates, good for workflow management and setting up strict processes and version control
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used in the Financial statement, financial planning and budgeting functions of my organization. It is used by both the operations and finance teams at the organization, and allows us to relay dashboards and map workflows in the department.
  • Budgeting process is made easy
  • Workflow process allows for better integration
  • Documentation and ability to develop, share and revert templates.
  • It is easy to destroy templates through incorrect use
  • If any changes are made to files where mapping is affected, it severely and negatively affects the running of the file.
It is very well suited to share dashboards with operations teams, and for budgeting. It is less appropriate for a more functional and interactive dashboard to be shared.
Henry Anthony Simmons Green | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With Vena Solutions, I have the knowledge of well-documented financial analysis. I can establish parameters for better compliance with our goals and cost savings. We use it for SOX compliance. We always viewed the daily data reports and monthly I have a good statistical analysis of the monthly reports. The only thing wrong with Vena is the long learning curve.
  • We use it for SOX compliance.
  • Daily and monthly financial analysis.
  • It allows us to create a multi-cube structure.
  • Long learning curve.
  • If you manage to overcome the long learning curve you will no longer have any problems.
Every company needs data analysis, with Vena the data reports can be daily, weekly, or monthly and this allows a detailed and useful statistical analysis. It allows us to create a multi-cube structure and we use it for SOX compliance. Simply, every company must use Vela daily and my opinion is positive in my direct experience.
October 26, 2022

VENA tool for FP&A.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
VENA is used as a financial reporting and consolidation tool. Primarily for GL data but expanding to other uses in the organization (i.e., Human Resources, Sales Team). VENA is really powerful at consolidating the different data from the different data sources and ERP systems, consolidating in one place for easy reporting and analysis of financials.
  • Consolidates data from different financial systems.
  • Allows for drill down of data, as well as consolidation of data.
  • Creation of different data models, and consolidation of those models within VENA.
  • The process for checks and balances can be improved, especially when it comes to consolidation.
  • Support community where users can ask and find answers from other users.
For companies with lots of acquisitions or entities in different financial systems, VENA provides one place to consolidate different data (GL, HR, Billings, etc.) and generate reports and analyses either individually or consolidated. The downside is that VENA might not be able to directly connect to as many ERP systems as some of its competition.
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 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 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!
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.
May 14, 2022

Quick and easy

Judy Dam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for budgeting, financial statements, and reporting. Mostly Accounting but trying to get other departments involved such as payroll. Helps create reports quickly and get them to the end-user quickly.
  • Integrating different information.
  • Variable process - when you go from one period to the next all reports auto-adjust to the new period.
  • Easy to formatting your information.
  • The training videos are great, but sometimes asking questions one-on-one would be nice.
  • Provide best practice on creating reports with graphs and such.
Vena helps to create reports for any location very quickly. It helps at budget time when multiple users can update information for the budget year at the same time. During budgeting, for people to make changes to the system without uploading and downloading information. I just started using it myself so still learning.
November 26, 2020

Vena for Excel lovers

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
- Primarily use was planning with input from all departments, reviews and approvals by heads of departments, and consolidation and analyses by finance.
- Now used for monthly reporting with monthly distribution of financial reports to users, analysis of results by finance, preparation of presentations for internal and external purposes.
- Currently implementing a rolling forecast.
  • Flexibility and easy to use, mostly thanks to Excel.
  • Easy access for users to high level financial information and detailed transactions.
  • Planning functionalities (full budget and rolling forecast).
  • Workflows.
  • Integration with other software.
  • Technical glitches.
Well suited for teams with a strong knowledge of Excel and skills to admin a data base.
It is really well suited for an organization with a limited volume of data but I could see how the system would become slower and more difficult to manage for a company with many entities, large amount of transactions, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Vena Solutions is a technology that we partner with at our organization. We resell and implement the product for our customers. Our customers range from hospitality, health care, project management, manufacturing, and others. There are several big business problems that Vena addresses. First, everyone loves Excel and people are reluctant to change. Since Vena is Excel based, users feel more comfortable with it. There is less resistance to the change and less of a learning curve upon implementation. Second, Vena does not require constant and ongoing consulting time. Our customers are self sufficient with making changes to the model and templates. Third, Vena has an organized workflow process and status tracker. It allows the FP&A team to see where all contributors are in the process. In addition, the FP&A team is not trying to collect numerous Excel sheets via email or shared locations. Fourth, Vena has excellent audit capabilities. The solution audits data saves in cells and changes to templates (with the ability for comparison to prior versions). It's built in to the solution, which means there is no need to exhaustively dig through log files. It's just a few clicks!
  • Auditing is something Vena does extremely well. There is the ability to see data changes and template changes with just a few clicks. Most technologies have audit log files, which can be cumbersome to navigate.
  • Drilling to details is a feature available to users. A user can view all the general ledger transactions for a particular account, department, time period, etc. just by clicking on the intersection in Excel and using the Vena toolbar button Drill -> Transactions.
  • Comments and Attachments allows users to add a comment and/or insert an attachment such as a PO, invoice, or receipt for example. This way the contributor and reviewer can easily see the justification and support for a number that has been planned. It's all in one place and means there is no need to email the support as a separate file.
  • In Report Books, the option to run reports as PDF would be helpful.
  • In Report Books, the option to add more than one report to the book would be extremely useful. Currently, users receive multiple emails because we can only have one report per book.
  • In Report Books, the ability to output files to a directory rather than sending them via email would be a nice enhancement.
Overall, Vena has many great features and functions, and the Vena team is constantly improving the solution. The only scenarios where Vena is lacking is spreading data from a parent member to children. This can be accomplished with Vena, but it's a little more involved compared to other technologies.
October 21, 2020

Supercharge Your Data

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently as using Vena within finance for budgetting purposes. The goal is to expand our usage of the software more into reporting operations. Vena address the challenges we face with our budgetting processes. The budget process is time consuming and our implementation of Vena was primarily to address this challenge.
  • Ease of Use
  • Intuitive
  • Time Savings
  • Reporting Capabilities
  • Learning Curve
  • Some Rigidity
  • UI for non-financial users
Vena allows for ease of complex reporting. Vena can implement with Power BI, another software crucial to our business. Vena allows finance to involve our operations staff especially in the budgetting process. It formalizes the budgetting process and adds ownership to it. We've been able to speed up our yearly budget process to deliver more effective budgets and save many man hours with manual work.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Vena Solutions to project budgets, generate, and analyze our financial statements. Every department head has access to it in order to provide their inputs into the Budget. This minimizes the creation of multiple spreadsheets per department and saves time by streamlining the whole process. Producing the financial statements used to be a largely manual process and was prone to mistakes as a result. Vena's model has centralized the mapping to produce quicker and more accurate results. It is a major time saver for our overall month-end process.
  • Easy integration into MS Excel as an Add-In.
  • Organizes data into blocks that can be quickly modified to view data from multiple angles.
  • Knowledge base with both customer input and professional advice that can help with troubleshooting.
  • Vena is data driven. Without another software, you can not issue financials statements with an MD&A.
  • Inputs into Vena are helpful, but it can be complicated to build that into a template for updating by end users.
This is a good third party software that works to integrate data from an ERP to a manageable and easily modifiable excel format to generate budgets and financials.
October 13, 2020

Vena Solutions Review

Shelley Chen, CPA, CGA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We implemented Vena Solutions last year. It is being used across the whole organization.
  • Standard across the organization
  • Central control
  • Departments own their plans
  • Learning curve
  • As a small finance team, building the model was not easy
The workflow feature in Vena Solutions that will remind the appropriate team member for the due date is amazing. It works so well and is so easy to use and powerful. However, mapping data points can be time-consuming.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena Solutions is being used for our budgeting needs, as well as financial data consolidation. Vena is working well for us as a company as we can collate all data we need in the one place, with an easy to access portal and a familiar Excel style interface. The amount of time saved by having one central system has been significant.
  • Communication with third-party data sources
  • Excel interface is familiar.
  • Template creation is tedious and has a steep learning curve.
  • User task notification system could be improved.
Any Excel-based report translates perfectly to Vena Solutions, but you have the benefit of their brilliant cloud platform. Reports can be viewed by multiple users from any location. The benefit of templating reports has had a big impact as well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Vena to manage our annual budgeting process. With Vena, we are able to let our remote locations enter their own budgets and then have our corporate office review. This saves the Accounting Department tons of time trying to consolidate individual Excel spreadsheets. At some point in the future, we hope to utilize Vena's ability to produce general reporting.
  • Workflow: The ability to move budget templates automatically is fantastic.
  • Uses Excel: Everyone already knows Excel, so acceptance is more likely.
  • Beyond budgeting: There is opportunity to utilize for reporting and other things.
  • Implementation time was a little shorter than it really needed to be.
We are currently in our first budget cycle, but have been happy with what we've seen so far. We're still learning Vena and what it can do, but it has already saved us a ton of time. Because of its utilization of Excel, adoption by our field locations was much higher than we originally anticipated.
May 13, 2020

Vena excelling

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena can be used in different ways. Its main focus is budgeting and FP&A. However, it can be used for tracking of products/services also. If your company is used to using Excel, Vena is very easy to set up and there is no limit. The beauty is to be able to quickly run reports off of anything that you enter or connect to Vena Solutions. You no longer have to piece together several Excel sheets to get the data you are looking for.
  • Mimic your existing templates in a more efficient way
  • Easy to leverage any reports off of all your data
  • Easy to use
  • Our company does not use auto integration of data--this would be helpful.
  • Attention when rolling data to a future year--save/refresh features need to be in sync
  • Ensure learning of Vena is shared by different staff to maintain and for future success
Vena Solutions is well suited for FP&A, budget, tracking, accounting reports, and consolidations (in particular when using different Accounting Softwares).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Our organization needs to use a lot of Excel spreadsheets when it comes to budgeting since we have built many formulas and macros within Excel. Of course, the problem will be a system crash when you have so many macros and formulas together running at the same time and with thousands of line items and errors.

With all those problems that we have, we have found out Vena Solutions is a great way for us to move into since we are familiar with Excel and we can retain all the formulas in our budget sheets. And the learning curve would be minimized since we have around 60 users within our company.

  • Excel-based tool and user interface and easy integration with other software like Spreadsheet server
  • Export and import data from other Excel sheets even with formulas
  • Easy to attach documents and comments to the data cell for budget detail explanations
  • SaaS would eliminate the time for in-house labor upgrade and storage
  • Easy to setup security level for each individual by admin
  • Workflow and audit trail are really helpful and easy to understand and modify
  • Flexibility due to Excel, we can add formula and links to the sheet
  • I don't have much about improvement at this point since Vena is already a great software, maybe a feature like AI... Vena can add more AI features so that we don't have to input everything and that would be much faster for us to manage, design, and navigate.
The workflow feature in Vena Solutions that will remind the appropriate team member for the due date is amazing. It works so well and is so easy to use and powerful. We have over 60 users but Vena already has all their email information and based on their security level and department. Vena will distribute the template and reminder to those users.
May 13, 2020

Training

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena Solutions to create a budget for the organization, forecast report, and P&L. We have a license for all department managers to access forecast for the year so that each month they can see P&L after closing.
  • Refresh to see updated data.
  • Easy to create template.
  • Make large files faster to upload and refresh.
  • Too much wasted space to create a template.
Vena Solutions is a great tool for forecasting and is easy to use for field managers. However, because of so many clicks and buttons, they need tons of help from the Finance Departments. However, because of the form variables option, it is easy to refresh each month.
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