Planful for Overhead Cost Planning
December 09, 2020
Planful for Overhead Cost Planning
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Planning
- Reporting and Analytics
- SpotlightXL
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
We are using Planful to manage our overhead forecasts + headcount (+$50M annually) and monthly reporting of the overhead costs to the department heads. It resolved a problem of multiple spreadsheets being emailed to the end users and back to finance team. It provided accountability at the end user side and the finance side with a single source for the truth.
- Headcount tracking and cost
- Reduced cycle time on forecasting from spreadsheets
- Tracking of where the end user is in the forecast process
- SpotlightXL (the Excel Add-in) makes reporting easier in Excel
- The Reporting module is not intuitive for end user and finance admin team plus very limited in formatting
- Admin tools for setting up end users is challenge - many different areas to go to set someone up on the system
- It reduced our overhead forecast cycle time from about 5 weeks to about 2 weeks
- It reduced forecast burnout on the end user and the finance user by end the chase for spreadsheets and the manual roll up process
- Reporting cycle time was reduced from 20 days to about 8 days
We have been able to benefit from the automated seeding of actuals and the previous forecast which makes the forecasting process easier for the finance team and the end users.
That is the feature that is the biggest disappointment. The Reporting module is not easy to use for the finance admin and the end user. Planful needs to offer more detailed and advance training for the user on it. It is not like Excel. The Dashboard module is very limited on customization and not easy to set-up and use.
It is easy once it is set up.