Planful
What is Planful?
Integrated, cloud-based platform with functions for planning, budgeting and forecasting, group consolidation and closing, reporting, analysis, dashboarding and marketing performance management
About Planful
Self-description of the vendor
Planful User Reviews & Experiences
The information contained in this section is based on user feedback and actual experience with Planful.
The information and figures are largely drawn from BARC’s The BI & Analytics Survey, The Planning Survey, The Financial Consolidation Survey and The Data Management Survey. You can find out more about these surveys by clicking on the relevant links.
Why users buy Planful and what problems they have using it
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Full user reviews and KPI results for Planful
All key figures for Planful at a glance.
- Get independent information on software solutions, market developments and trends in data, analytics, business intelligence, data science and corporate performance management.
- Make data & analytics decisions based on numbers, data, facts and expert knowledge
- Access to all premium articles and all our research, including all software comparison studies, scores and surveys.
- Unlimited access to the BARC media library
- Consume unlimited content anywhere
Individual user reviews for Planful
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Keeps financials in balance, even when changes occur that are not implemented in the dimensions of the tool - useful when changes are not well-planned but occur anyway.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The reporting complexity for LTM statistics when used in conjunction with ratios.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Start with a small team but train in depth to be super users throughout the organization.
How would you sum up your experience?
Excellent tool for our organization - lack of usage of the more advanced functions is our resource issue, not lack of functionality options.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
As someone who uses Excel extensively, I enjoy the interface. I also enjoy the setup that makes it convenient to access and save reports.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
As we have grown, there are some reports that contain too much data that Planful has not been able to handle. I have had to separate the reports in order to retrieve the information that I need.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
They are willing to work with you and I had a great personalized experience with them.
How would you sum up your experience?
So far, we have enjoyed having Planful as our business partner. The two of us have benefited and grown together. As we continue to grow, I hope that Planful can continue to increase their functionality to support us.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ability to customize and export the reports.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The time it takes to run large reports.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
–
How would you sum up your experience?
I think it is a useful tool.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Excellent support team. Always fast and reliable for resolving issues with the system, and our CSM frequently checks in to see what our future FP&A goals are to see how Planful can support that.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
There's some specific use cases that are cumbersome in our current implementation.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Before moving ahead with a new system (not just Planful), I'd take time to think of future state capabilities/ requirements and have those ready before starting the implementation project.
How would you sum up your experience?
Overall, Planful has been an amazing system for our FP&A team that's been a huge benefit to seeing up-to-date data during our monthly close.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Its ease of use without IT intervention, consolidation and elimination is completed with a few clicks, spotlight Excel-Add-In makes modeling and reporting easy.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Processing must be done in order for dependencies to recalculate for true final summaries.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Spend the time to evaluate what dimensions are necessary as it will affect your metadata and processing times.
How would you sum up your experience?
The right choice if progressing forward from planning in Excel, easy for end users to adapt to, easy for rolling forecasts.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
That it is cloud-based with report-building options.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
It looks a little clunky for building reports.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
It's a great tool. Utilize training guides.
How would you sum up your experience?
I'm glad we use it, but I need to self-train.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease of use of the software, and flexibility to achieve our required planning and reporting requirements. We have been able to achieve everything we've put in front of it.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
There is a decent amount of work to continuously onboard and educate the user base on its functionality. We have also struggled with transaction-based data sets being integrated.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Be sure to spend plenty of time designing before you start working. Have a strong owner in place for the application that is interested in Technology. Fully onboard your user base with self-developed training. Use your imagination as you determine what you need, as there is probably a way for Planful to do it, even if it's not an out-of-the-box use case.
How would you sum up your experience?
Planful has successfully transformed our ability to consolidate actuals and forecasts, and report on them at many different levels. Without it being in place, we, as a business, would not have been able to scale as we have.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
I think the reporting dashboards are great. There are great functionalities to show consolidated reports.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
A new computer functionality to handle SVP-specific queries is needed. The lack of timeliness in response to suggestions for improvements.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
It is a great planning reporting tool to show multiple reports based on company-specific needs.
How would you sum up your experience?
I think Planful has been great for our planning process.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease of use for both administrators and end users. The out-of-the-box Workforce Planning solution is purpose-built and makes getting up and running very fast.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Some of the reporting capabilities could be more intuitive for end users.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
They are worth considering as one of the best options when it comes to both speed to impact and cost/ benefit.
How would you sum up your experience?
Great vendor that prioritizes customers and their feedback. One of the best solutions for finance-owned SaaS Planning.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Easy to use for budget owners to enter budget information with assumptions and efficient for FP&A to roll up and run scenario analyses. It has a strong reporting capability that allows slice and dice multi-dimensional data analysis. There is good integration with our ERP system for budget versus actual analysis.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
I don't have many comments on areas for improvement. We have not used much on its modeling function, and we plan to explore this function in the future in order to integrate our operational budgeting (in use under Planful) with our strategic planning mode.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Planful is an easy to use and flexible EPM solution for small and medium size companies.
How would you sum up your experience?
I have had great experience using Planful and consider it a powerful tool for our financial planning, reporting and analysis needs.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Minimal IT input is required for ongoing maintenance. The application is now wholly managed by Finance and Controlling.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Some of the speed could be improved. Planning data is written back to the data base using a predefined template - a dynamic writeback would be good based on user data entry. The webinars and user events are US-centric.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Make sure that you have a Business Analyst who understands IT and Finance. At implementation, have that person shadow the consultants. This will result in less reliance on IT or consultants to maintain or develop new structures in the long run.
How would you sum up your experience?
I like using it for planning and not having to rely on consultants or IT for assistance every time I want to change something.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Easy to use, consistently upgrades products.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Larger reports can time out.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Don’t rush in to build out, spend time brainstorming on what you want out of the system to prevent rework on templates and reports.
How would you sum up your experience?
Overall, a great product and I enjoy working with their customer support team and IT group.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease of revisions/ versions/ updates of forecasts and reporting. We have streamlined our Board Book such that we can make a new forecast and get a new book out in a matter of hours.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
During budgeting season, it lags. This is tough on the users with a cloud application.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Listen to the Planful implementation team!
How would you sum up your experience?
Easy to use compared to others. Plan for a full-time admin.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It is a great consolidation tool for companies with multiple currencies.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
I would like to have more than one hierarchy and a simplified Excel-Add-In.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
It is a solid tool and easy to run without IT help.
How would you sum up your experience?
Very decent Planning and reporting system.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Great visibility for non-creators.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The dashboard feature needs to be updated.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
It is very useful.
How would you sum up your experience?
I find it easy to operate.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
As an admin of the Planful software, I like most the ease of use for admin tasks such as consolidations, data loads, user creation, report building, and model building.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The dashboards in Planful are limited and do not work well.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
This tool is great for budgeting across multliple business functions.
How would you sum up your experience?
It is a big improvement from our previous software Infor CPM.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Copying scenarios/ data functionality.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Seems like the system (spotlight) glitches or throws an error at the most inopportune moments.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Take a lot of time during implementation because you will live with those mistakes for a long time.
How would you sum up your experience?
Positive.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It has a smooth and comprehensive HR planning system, its tech support is very responsive and the data load fast. Also, there are many ways to build reports, internally and through Excel connector.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Quirky and buggy for admins.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Try to see how others in your industry use it. Get a partner to implement. Set up as much automation as you can.
How would you sum up your experience?
Very useful, not only for budgeting and consolidation, but it's a great tool for ad hoc reporting and researching accounting problems.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Easy to use and data are exportable. Graphical look makes it so much easier to report out in meetings.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
At times, delays of analytics being uploaded.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Best product I have used as director of clinical services for review of analytical data of budgets.
How would you sum up your experience?
Easy to use.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
What I like most about Planful is the ease of use. It is very simple to build reports and access information for different departments. I also love the planning and budget modules that are easy to use. The dashboards are great visuals. The training modules were amazing too. The data are updated very quickly!
What do you like least/what could be improved?
I'm not sure.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
It is a great system that allows for streamlining of planning, budgeting, and producing financial reports. Very user-friendly and the data populates frequently and in a timely manner.
How would you sum up your experience?
I love it! It is easy to use and always has new features to learn.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It is able to pull various reports from different locations and combine them, have them delivered to my inbox, etc. It is well organized, easy to use, and has great data capabilities.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
I think it's great - maybe a phone app would be beneficial.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Go for it! It is a great tool that can be accessed simultaneously by numerous teammates, easy to make changes to, effortless to pull data/ reports, and has a lot of automation that is very helpful. It saves time, money, and resources.
How would you sum up your experience?
I really love it - convenient, fast, simple to use, very helpful, data at my fingertips at all times.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ability to consolidate financial reporting and Rolling forecast.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Data upload from Excel or Google sheet.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Easy use.
How would you sum up your experience?
Overall, it is good - it needs the upload feature.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
I like the ease of use to create financial reports, build budgets and create ad hoc reports. The design of the product and the continuous enhancements to the product.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Our customer service rep rarely reaches out to our organization.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Have your general ledger in good order, know your requirements before seeking out a vendor.
How would you sum up your experience?
I really like Planful and highly recommend it. It is easy to use and has good training documentation.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Ease of budgeting for 350+ business units.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Issues keeping up with a very fast-growing business.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Have the sales team test any and all scenarios specific to your company.
How would you sum up your experience?
Helpful planning and reporting tool.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The flexibility of planning and reporting. Also, its stability.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Non-finance user adoption.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Be thoughtful of how you structure your hierarchy and what statistical accounts are meaningful.
How would you sum up your experience?
It’s a great product.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Our department managers all budget directly in Planful, which makes my job of presenting a consolidated budget so much easier than when we used Excel! Reports are all built so once budgets are entered, we can immediately see where we're at and ask questions. I also use Planful for my monthly consolidations, which also streamlined my month-end! The Planful team is so responsive and seeks our input to continually improve the product and add additional options.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
I haven't found anything that I dislike. It's been three years since we started implementation, and I am the primary user, as I consolidate and report in Planful. It's also the third year that we've budgeted in Planful. The budget managers are all very happy and like their dashboards.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
We talked to Planful users and that really helped us make our decision. We asked a lot of questions.
How would you sum up your experience?
I have a very high opinion of Planful and their team.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Ease of use for budget across hundreds of locations (with multiple budget scenarios).
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The ability to add more attributes, a more efficient querying process and better formatting for reports.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
See a demo.
How would you sum up your experience?
Good for budgeting hundreds of locations (applying templates to each).
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Its ability to integrate with power BI and other systems. Dynamic planning capabilities.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
How quickly specific system changes are implemented for improvement.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Spend a lot of time determining how you want to set up your hierarchy before getting started.
How would you sum up your experience?
I like it.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Its ease of use and the support is great.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Better reporting on the Reporting UI.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Do a proof of concept.
How would you sum up your experience?
A good EPM tool.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It is flexible once set up.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Ease of use and rolling up results. Reporting is difficult to implement and change.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Have two dedicated team members to implement and be experts going forward.
How would you sum up your experience?
A useful tool for a large organization to have individual owners do budgeting and forecasting.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It has been very flexible for our unique use case.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The UI can be less straightforward for budget owners to find their templates.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Really dive into their Planful Engage community.
How would you sum up your experience?
I really like it, and they have been highly responsive to support requests.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
We love the agility of the software. Planful is constantly improving its software to meet the needs of its customers. The involvement with their customers is like nothing I've experienced before. In the past couple of years, they have had user groups and customer advisory boards, and their customers are always happy to speak at their annual conference to share their knowledge and their experience with other users.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
It would be helpful to be able to grant scenario access at a user group level rather than a user level. Additionally, if you grant access to reports at a folder level, any reports that are added to that folder should automatically push to the user with access to the folder. At this time, you have to add user access to the new reports.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
When implementing, be sure to ask tons of questions. Have a list of must-haves and walk them completely through your process. You cannot trust that a third party implementer will take the time to ensure ALL of your needs are met. There were many things we didn't know at the time of implementation (we used a third party that I would not recommend working with), and had the implementers been thorough in the discovery phase of our implementation, things would have been a lot easier. Planful employees have helped us over the years to optimize the software to better meet our needs, all things that should have been done during implementation.
How would you sum up your experience?
Planful has been a wonderful company to work with. The price is reasonable, and we haven't experienced large price increases year over year. They truly care about their customers, and are constantly finding ways to improve the software to meet the specific needs of their customers.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
I manage the headcount planning each month and that small piece works pretty well for me. I also do the headcount planning in WFM for budget each year.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
This past year went pretty good, but, in past years, we would have issues with certain employees falling out of the uploads and the only real answer was to keep loading and re-processing to get them to show up.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Hopefully, they get a good implementation partner like we had.
How would you sum up your experience?
I have a good general opinion of Planful for the tools that I use. There is much more to Planful than what I use and I know that our Finance team has some frustrations that I cannot directly speak to.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
The ease of implementation, intuitive development, online self-training modules are easy to understand and relevant to the roll-up. Their sales team, marketing team, and development team have been outstanding. On-time project management and they move as fast/as slow as we need them to. Any issues are corrected immediately. We are on track/ ahead of schedule.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Nothing at this time.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Don't delay. Once you complete the sales paperwork, get started and be ready to move fast.
How would you sum up your experience?
I wish we had not invested in NetSuite NSPB (after implementing NetSuite) initially and gone straight to Planful. We (erroneously) assumed staying within the NetSuite family would have its advantages. We have made more progress in two months of Planful development than we did in two years with NSPB.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Its post go-live support has been excellent and continuous. From the quarterly check-ins with our CSM to the very quick responses from their support team, we're always getting the most benefit from our implementation, with goals pushing Planful's solution architect knowledge and system limitations as well.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Pulling certain types of reports are cumbersome, e.g., being able to group HR/ Workforce reporting by position when we may have 10+ employees with the same title.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
My advice would be to spend some time prior to starting an implementation to identify the key focus areas/requirements that need to be addressed with Planful. Additionally, if moving from another planning solution, doing some pre-work (e.g., cleaning up account/ cost center/ profit center hierarchies) will save time during the implementation project.
How would you sum up your experience?
Overall, we've seen a huge benefit in implementing Planful, which allows our FP&A team faster access to our ERP data during our monthly close. Our prior system used to take 3-3.5 hours to refresh data. Planful is pulling new data every 30 minutes.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
Its User Interface is very intuitive and Planful is great for consolidating our monthly financials.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
We've run into several issues with data randomly disappearing and the help desk employees have always been really slow to figure out why and less than helpful in resolving these issues.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Have a dedicated individual who can run point and work closely with Planful or outside consultants to get the system implemented quickly and efficiently.
How would you sum up your experience?
It's a decent consolidation and planning tool for small- to mid-sized companies.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
I love the Excel-based view and functionality. Removed the need to consistently export and manipulate data, as you can do most small/ quick analytics within the system.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
Still working through some of the Breakback functionality. At this point, not sure that it doesn't meet our need as we are still learning the capabilities.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
If you spend a lot of time leveraging Excel as a team and generating reports for people throughout the organization, this is a great tool. Different types of licenses come at an affordable rate to allow self-service and removed risk of external data manipulation, as you can do a majority of the analytics within the system.
How would you sum up your experience?
I love it. The bar was low with our previous software, but so far (12 months since contract signed), I love the software.
Number of employees
Industry
Source
What do you like best?
It is good for simple tasks, usually easy to use for beginners.
What do you like least/what could be improved?
The detail at vendor level, easier use of basic fundamentals and better instructions if an error message pops up.
What key advice would you give to other companies looking to introduce/use the product?
Better for high-level usage rather than in-depth detail.
How would you sum up your experience?
It's fine for basic functionality, but we are unable to plan budgets by vendor which is a requirement for my department.
