Based on 21 verified reviews published in the last 18 months
TrustRadius Community Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when relevant, HG Insights data.
Overview
Synthesised from 21 reviews | Last Published May 27, 2026
Planful is primarily used by organizations for comprehensive financial planning and analysis, with a strong focus on budgeting and forecasting processes, a use case cited by 90% of reviewers. In TrustRadius reviews, it serves as a critical tool for financial reporting and analysis, enabling detailed insights from management to executive levels. The platform is noted for its ability to automate and streamline processes, reducing manual effort and accelerating report generation, and acts as a single source of truth for financial data.
Reviewers also highlight improved collaboration within finance departments and across business units due to Planful's centralized data aggregation and reporting capabilities. However, some areas for improvement include enhancing the user interface and dashboard flexibility, addressing limitations in reporting sizes and dynamic report generation, and improving the usability of the Excel Spotlight add-in, which 24% of reviewers described as "clunky." Overall, reviewers report a strong positive impact on business objectives, primarily through significant efficiency gains and enhanced financial insights.
Pros
Robust financial reporting capabilities with dynamic and customizable reports
Structured budgeting and forecasting features for annual and rolling plans
Significant efficiency gains through automation and reduced manual effort
Improved collaboration across finance and business units via centralized data
Unified platform for various financial needs, enhancing data quality and accuracy
Cons
User interface and overall user experience can be unintuitive, especially for budgeting and input pages
Limited flexibility in dashboarding and handling of percentage values in table graphs
Reporting limitations, including report sizes, tab maximums, and dynamic reporting workarounds
Spotlight module (Excel integration) described as "clunky" and difficult to set up
Opportunities for more video content and comprehensive documentation for training
We use Planful to plan our budgets and rolling forecast and to lead our monthly variance reporting. By integrating our GL data and managing planning scenarios we greatly reduced manual work in spreadsheets. We use workforce planning for headcount planning and reporting and bring in actual employees level payroll data to aid in variance analysis. We have created statical cash flow account they allows us to plan and report on detailed cash flow planning.
Pros
Intuitive reporting
Excel spotlight
Data integration
Cons
Simplify dynamic planning user experience
Online help searches
Spotlight formulas
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful make it very easy to manage different scenarios and comparison between. However, it isn’t as easy to do quick what if modeling.
We use Planful for FP&A and annual budgeting, across several entities as well as functions. In my role as Head of HR, I use the Workforce Planning module for budgeting of sensitive figures (employee compensation), the top line of which rolls up to the budget but the detailed particulars remain confidential.
Pros
Customization
Export to Excel
Supports multiple user input, internal and external
Cons
Complexity and detail of functionalities (UI and UX) are not intuitive
Platform training resources for users are poor
In-platform collaboration not intuitive
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful may work well for a complex organization spanning multiple entities, with users who are highly active and fluent in the platform. For more straightforward FP&A and budgeting, and/or for users with a range of platform fluency and need, it is less helpful.
Planful is the consolidation software we used on top of the GL ERP systems that we have. Planful is an excellent tool to manage year end audit and making top side entries. The overall experience is very positive and Planful support is top notch. Planful isn't perfect. It has certain quarks here and there, but overall, it's a valuable product for my company.
Pros
Topside entries
consolidation
reporting
Cons
Work flow control
report formatting
integration into excel
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful is well suited for a small to medium sized company. It's well suited for my company which is in the manufacturing industry. I wouldn't recommend this for Oil and Gas companies due to its lack of certain ASC 932 specific functions. Overall speaking, it's a reliable software and i have enjoyed using it.
Host Analytics is being used across our entire company to forecast financials. We have about 50 users at the company using the product. We used to use Excel, but quickly outgrew the product because we need to have many people contributing to the forecast at the same time.
Pros
It is functional and allows multiple users to enter budgets while allowing the finance department to capture financial projections
We have never had a security issue with the product. It seems very secure.
Customer support is very responsive. Senior leadership is also very willing to talk to customers.
Cons
The platform currently only works in Internet Explorer and involves multiple plugins and user settings just to use. The system uses a microsoft excel webtools framework which is being phased out by microsoft. As a result, Host is working on getting onto a more user friendly and browser agnostic platform, but they are behind schedule
Terrible user experience. While the system is functional at the end of the day, there seems to be very little focus at Host Analytics on UX. Tasks are often not intuitive or take much longer than they should because of either 1) bad design, 2) constraints of the system, 3) outright bugs in the software. The support team will tell you "here is a work-around" which often will get the job done, but requires an email to support to figure out the approach and then takes much longer than desired.
No real-time decision making. Often companies want to make changes to a budget or forecast and see real-time how that impacts the forecast. Because of all the processing and refreshing that is needed after changes are made, it is virtually impossible to play around with assumptions and see results right away. It takes the system about 30 minutes to completely refresh and recalculate once we have made a change to some components of our projections.
Likelihood to Recommend
Host Analytics will work for people who are willing to devote a lot of time and energy to setting up the system and who will not want to make many changes to the environment once it is set up.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Finance and Accounting (501-1000 employees)
