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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
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 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 169)
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena primarily within Finance and Accounting. But the reporting out of it is seen across the entire enterprise, including materials for our executive team and board of directors.
  • Hierarchy
  • Standardizing data across systems
  • Scenarios/Forecasts
  • System Connectivity
  • More established business processes/templates
Vena provides a means of standardizing and organizing data that otherwise isn't congruent. In acquisition led businesses where there is still legacy data structure to work through, Vena helps get everything into one common structure and language, regardless of system or data format.
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.
January 05, 2024

Great FP&A tool

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 financial planning and forecasting. Also a great tool to use for anyone familiar with Excel functionalities. I think we will see great financial results with this implementation.
  • Planning
  • Forecasting
  • Connectivity with Power BI
Vena is well-suited for financial planning, analysis, budgeting, and creating custom financial reports. It’s beneficial for medium to large-sized organizations. However, it’s less appropriate for on-the-fly ad-hoc analysis. Some users prefer offline spreadsheets for such tasks. It’s also less effective for predicting multiple uncertain outcomes but overall a great investment.
January 05, 2024

Happy Vena User.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena for our annual planning process as well as for a variety of reports.
  • Data Organization.
  • Report Building.
  • Customer Service.
  • N/A
I found the planning templates very useful. The out-of-the-box ones are well suited for a lot of uses, plus the ability to create your own and/or customize the existing templates is very valuable.
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 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 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 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.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is a versatile platform that can be utilized departments within an organization or across the entire organization. Its capabilities make it valuable for finance, accounting, budgeting, and planning teams. Utilized for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting. It streamlines the budgeting process, enables collaboration between stakeholders, and provides real-time visibility into financial data and performance.
  • Workforce planning,
  • inventory management
  • Improve efficiency
  • Ensure consistency
  • Overall Cost
  • It may complex new user
Vena's strength lies in its ability to streamline budgeting and financial planning processes. It is well-suited for organizations that need to create, manage, and track budgets, perform forecasting, and consolidate financial data from multiple source
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used to automate routine reports that are use on a daily basis. Also, we intend to use Vena for financial reporting as we need data across multiple departments such as sales, finance, and etc. Vena also allows us to save time and report data in a timely manner.
  • Automate reports
  • Combine data across departments such as sales, finance, accounting, etc.
  • The report is easily to generate once it is set up
  • I think the initial set up of the report requires some time. It is not the most user friendly tool to use.
  • It might be difficult to train other users to begin using Vena.
  • There should be templates set up so it could be used from the start.
Vena is well suited for financial reporting and budgeting as we require data across many departments. The consolidation of data allow us to accurately analysis financial statements and report our statements to the public in a timely manner.
May 22, 2023

Vena Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Vena for budgeting, planning, and reporting across the whole organization.
  • Drill to transaction.
  • Auditability.
  • Workflow and task monitoring.
  • Less work on templates saves time for more analysis.
  • Data load needs to be more automated.
  • Need more template library.
Vena Solutions is a friendly budgeting solution for less change resistance since it's backed up with Excel that is in everyone's skill set.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used by our Finance and Accounting Department currently. We use it to forecast our capital spend for construction activities that also involve the feedback and input of many other departments. Using Vena has allowed us to remove all forms of manual manipulations of data and allowed us to refocus efforts into providing value add analysis without tedious repetitive work to produce. The workflow allows for many users to provide their input as well as allow for proper audit controls. Our custom reports that we built were created to poka yoke the process of reporting and make it as easy on our users as possible.
  • Automation
  • Audit control
  • Workflow management
  • Mapping is nuanced and difficult
  • Loading of sheets is slow
  • Clearly explaining the differences between product offerings and linkages
Scenarios where Vena is well suited is for dynamic reporting capabilities for Finance and Accounting as well as consolidation.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Vena for Financial Reporting, Operational Budgeting and just recently Forecasting. Vena is mainly used by the Finance team with annual input from the manufacturing plants for budgeting purposes. All levels of the organization have access to statements or reports specific for their department. This has kept information consistent and accurate.
  • Ease in presentation formatting
  • Handles complicated excel calculations
  • Allows our company to have consistent reports through out all departments
  • Additional training or insite into expressions or calculations
  • Allow all windows/lists to be sorted and be able to add other attributes
  • Do not require having to create a process flow
I believe Vena is well suited for all company sizes.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Finance department uses Vena for budgeting and planning, ad hoc reporting, expense analysis, financial statement reporting, and reconciliations. Other departments in the organization use Vena during the annual budgeting process and for monthly expense review and reporting. It provides a standard format to reference across departments and easily compare.
  • Reconciliations
  • Financial reporting
  • Ad hoc reporting
  • Problem-solving (to easily chase down details for variances/etc)
  • Creating and customizing reports can be time-consuming on the front end.
  • The sections and blocks can be difficult to grasp to many end-users (seem duplicative).
  • More standardized best practices templates would be helpful.
Vena is very well suited for reconciliations. It is easy to send out, complete, and review for all parties. The historical reconciliations are also saved in Vena for reference. One area for improvement is the level of complexity for outside users during the budget process. A more straightforward template for users who are only in the software once a year and and are not in the Finance department would be helpful.
May 12, 2023

Vena-ease

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is used across the organization for expense review and budgeting. It is also used by Finance employees for account reconciliations. We are able to pull reports that are user friendly for expense review.
  • Able to create user friendly reports
  • Able to drill on expense details easlily
  • Are able to track progress of quarterly reconciliations
  • Input template mapping or locking and unlocking rows
The reconciliation process saves a lot of time from our manual process.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena was started as a financial planning tool being used by finance but it has since began to be noticed by other departments and will soon be adapted for company-wide usage. Vena allows our business to collect multiple sources of data into one centralized location, this allows the business to be more efficient - saving us time and ultimately money. It also allows us to display KPI's and provide dashboards across the organization for instant gratification for managers and execs alike.
  • Data centralization
  • Time Saver
  • Dashboards and KPIs
  • Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Workflows
  • A little heavy in setup time BUT better to have it setup correctly the first time!
Vena is perfect for organizations both large and small! The budgeting/forecasting process is second to none. If you love Excel - you will LOVE Vena. Vena is built on basis of Excel but addresses all the limitations that Excel provides.

Don't expect to plug and play with this product. There is a need for some personalization depending on your business. All things considered the implementation process is still very quick.
May 11, 2023

Growing experience

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used by finance and accounting department.
  • generating standard monthly reports
  • creating financial comparisons over multiple periods
  • organizing data in a simple form with the option to "drill down" to get additional information
  • automate live updating of information.
  • create an "app" feature instead of accessing vena through a webpage.
  • more descriptive outline of errors when uploads failed.
Vena is well suited in areas such that require consolidation of data for comparison purposes as well as for budgeting and forecasting. It is also useful for showing or comparing data across different periods ( historical vs current data). It is less appropriate in situations which require a lot of assumptions or input of data from external sources or data reporting that requires research.
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