In my organization Planful is used for budgeting, reporting, and to present financial data in a dashboard view. Planful reporting makes it easy to create new reports, or new versions of existing reports with the use of custom row and column sets. Additionally, the integration of dynamic to Microsoft Excel with the Spotlight tool is a great asset. It allows the user to have dynamic reporting capabilities with the formatting and function of Excel. Planful also makes yearly budgeting easier for all users with the structured planning module, and customizable templates.
Pros
Reporting on financial data
User management and accessibility on a user basis
Customizable templates to allow for easy budgeting
Cons
Easier navigation of the help section
More intuitive user interface
Likelihood to Recommend
A specific scenario where Planful is well suited when creating financial reports. Due to the customizable column and row sets that you can create you can look at P&L to at any level of detail you so chose. You can also manipulate what data you want to look at when creating reports by using the page parameters. With the page parameters you can select specific locations of your business, or specific sections of your business.
We like to use Planful for as many use cases for it as we can find and are continuing to leverage it for automation of our existing manual reports. Primarily, we use it to setup and manage our annual budget process, budget to variance analysis, executive reporting, dashboards, and are continuing to develop and migrate our routine reporting from Excel to Planful.
Pros
Automation and self-service of reporting for non-finance/non-administrator teams
Complex financial model building whether it is an annual budget, Pro Forma, forecast, run-rates, etc.
Customization through calculated/custom members, templates, and loading data via the Simulation Engine and Data Load Rules
Cons
The self-help database could stand to be updated/improved for clarity and potentially with additional screenshots
Additional support on MDX if possible as it is frequently used in reporting and calculated members
Additional customization and manipulation within dashboards
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful has been very helpful to us specifically with report automation. A report can be built and any user can access them based on their pre-determined access level and permissions. No manipulation, duplication, etc. is required of the finance team - from a front-end user perspective, Planful is easy to build a self-service platform and cuts down on the amount of reports we previously built in Excel and distributed via email.
