Planful Reviews

Very user friendly & similar syntax to excel

I feel the training is basic and outdated at this point. Considering all the time and effort they have put into developing the product, they should spend more time having live sessions showing individuals how to use the product better. This would also enable customers to find out about some of the great features they created.

They listen to their customers and are always making improvements to the product. It's easy to use and they have so many resources (support chat, community, training, etc).

The support was not great when we first implemented the tool. They've come a long way and are truly supportive of all questions I have.

Very deep database and highly flexible integration with our disparate data feed.

Slow. A data pull is not immediate and can cause some frustration if data is not pulled 100% accurately the first time. Collaboration can also be difficult, as the individual models are fragile and must be updated online.

what i like about planful is that the data is transmitted in real time.the application is easy to handle.reliable and accurate details and it has very good features.

planful works very well for me and I haven't found any complication with this application yet

There are no limits to the types and volume of data that you interface within Host Analytics, as long as you maintain a common field. Implementation went well (with a consulting partner), and it enabled our budget manager to trim his reporting time from 3 days to 3 hours. The modeling module uses an Excel add-in, so the feel and use of Excel is still available, but the results are stored centralized, so when any end user retrieves data, there is one version of the truth. Customer service is second to none. In my 30+ years in planning and analysis, I have never found a team so dedicated to ensuring their customer's success. Feature updates are either monthly or quarterly, and are focused on what the customers have expressed are their needs or wishes.

It required that we use a partner consultant to implement. This may be due mostly to the fact that as a small company, we do not have the internal IT resources; the initial implementation without a partner stalled due to resource and communication issues.

Administering the system is very smooth and adaptable. Our prior system would take 110% of my time to keep it running and troubleshooting issues. With Planful, now that we're live and stable on the platform, it takes < 50% of my time, so I'm able to focus on other value-add activities: process improvement and automation, personal skill development and growth, and future product enhancements.

Reporting is extremely user friendly both within platform and Spotlight, so users have been able to create and admin their own reports .

Loading actual wage data by employee is seems more complicated than it needs to be. Prepping the file to load this data takes ~1 hour/month when all other data load rules take < 5 minutes. We also had issues in the past with Workforce data input/locking between users, but it's been much easier for our team to use with the extensive Workforce UI redesign in 2020.

We used Planful's Reporting and Consolidation functionality, and are current in the process of setting up Dynamic Reporting/Spotlight for the purposes of revamping an internal budgeting and forecasting process. In my opinion the best thing about the system is that once you perform the initial set up and get the hierarchies and data loads correct, it is super easy to use with minimal training required, whilst also being massively powerful and flexible. It is also very competitively priced, and the support staff and implementation consultants are excellent.

The biggest and most obvious drawback of the solution is the training materials that accompany it. Because it is a relatively new platform, there is not currently a huge amount of training resources and materials out there with which end users can learn the platform. This means there is a greater dependency on the materials Planful provide, and in my own personal opinion, the training courses do not do a great job in bringing a Planful user up to speed. Thankfully, it seems Planful is investing and promoting in a new Engage forum which will no doubt help new users of the system.

Dynamic reports and the ability to get the precise financial information you need, with drill down capabilities is a huge plus. Can include links to images of transaction source documents, providing great transparency in reporting. Spotlight for Excel add in to develop custom, refreshable reports is a great help. Forecasting and budgeting tools are good as well.

Learning curve of implementing a new software for financial reporting is always going to be somewhat significant, but there are several quirks in data loads and reporting cube processing that make things harder than they should be.

The ability to quickly consolidate all of our agency financials at month end and close the books in a timely manner.

I enjoy most things about this software, however I would have to say that I wish the Spotlight Excel add-in that Host offers would be directly connected to the Core Application, eliminating the need to maintain and update a separate model in excel so that they data comes through the Spotlight Excel reports accurately.

Ease of reporting and planning. The reports are fast to make and can very easily be taught to other users. Also since it is in the cloud, there are many tiers of security features for customization.

New features and cross browser supporting don't function the best. The new row sets are difficult to get to the exact detail and adjusting cold width can't be done in a cluster in chrome.

All the features we needed in one tool: Workforce planning, budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting and easy creation of management reporting.

There are several enhancements that I intend to discuss with our customer success manager BUT I have no doubt, with the release schedule Planful is on, these items will be easy to incorporate into our environment. If I had to choose one that that I least like about the software, it's simply that I would suggest that your implementation partners completely understand your structure and what any reports you need to gain/create in the software. Years ago when we implemented (which I'm sure it has improved since then) there were features and items that weren't even discussed that we discovered later.

Workforce Planning is my favorite feature. Data loads and updates are fast and there are lots of options for modeling and allocating compensation items. Training our budget preparers is easy, and they get most of it right and don't complain often which is more than can be said than my past experiences with other budget processes. Reporting is also very good with many options for creating data within Planful or externally. Also, the site rarely goes down. Maybe one short interruption in two years?

Training documentation should be expanded, richer in some areas for a more user friendly admin experience.

I like that most of this software is tight and reasonable in size. On the surface anything can be intimidating to a new user but we have a small team that has been able to manage this across many hospitals and types of users. We have put in a lot of work but without much IT support which makes this valuable.

Processes and building infrastructure around raw data can be tricky. We do not have a data warehouse which makes things difficult with connecting data. For me this software is a mid tier product in some ways so it seemed logical that they would realize companies may not have solid infrastructure to support fast and elaborate functions provided. In a perfect world the system could be more of a one stop shop or help get us there.

We use this software for our month-end close process to consolidate financials and publish our monthly financial package to management and other various internal/external partners. The software is easy to navigate and helps us quickly consolidate financial data for all of our entities each month.

There aren't any specific features that I dislike about the software at the moment, however the Planful support portal/team hasn't always been the most helpful when it comes to troubleshooting issues in a timely manner.

Planful is very user friendly and it is easy to become a self-sufficient user of this application as a lot of help resources availiable for use. Searcg engine within Planful is very good as well as it makes it easy to navigate application.

I dont like that to complete certificaiton, all users have to attend real life class. Those classes are not convinient for UK users and they dont usually add much more informaiton that cannot be found in written guides.

How easy it is to create basic reporting and customize and scheduled distribution. Interface that is scheduled nightly to automatically populate Host with data from our G/L. Consolidation of our plan is more efficient and timely so changes aren't such a nightmare to make.

Quarterly releases are great, but they don't give you enough time to test them before they are automatically put into production.

The application made reporting a piece of cake with automated distribution. The planning tool helped us standardize our budgeting process and we're very impressed with the workforce planning module that helped us easily managing our headcount and compensation estimate.

Not the most user friendly application for budgeting purpose. The access was made easy with SSO solution, but the timeout issue causing customers to complain.

We love the ease and flexibility of the tool. The monthly releases mean that the product is constantly making improvements. Administration of the core app and spotlight is straightforward and not time consuming.

We can now complete a forecast in 4 hours versus a week+ that it look using excel.

We would love to see more data visualization features added to the core app along with a Mac compatible spotlight extension.

- Similar to Oracle Hyperion, but in the cloud
- Lower overhead than on premise tools
- Robust platform with more advanced feature set then other cloud tools
- Solid excel integration
- Product team responds to feedback
- Fair pricing
- No limit on size of model

- Attractiveness of user interface
- Template speed
- Visualizations
- Speed of new development
- Implementation took longer than expected

Ease of reporting, creating and distributing and ability to schedule distribution even to non users

consolidation module could be improved, tracking reconciliations etc

Centralized data storage helps ensure we have consistent reporting on a month-to-month basis. This also eliminates many minor mistakes prevalent with externally linking excel files. Customer service is phenomenal

PCR can be finnicky. Modeling occasionally freezes. Modeling and PCR needs to be in touch to ensure accurate up-to-date reporting (supposed to be coming out in an update soon)

We plan by detail and this tool allows us to do that. Modeling cloud is nice as it is more flexible.

This tool is good but we did a lot of customization for CAPEX, BS, cash flow forecasting which requires a lot of time.

Ease of use and access! I use my mobile application and access on line from home, office, hotel and other office when traveling abroad with ease.

New account and entity set up is only somewhat intuitive. I do this so rarely, i really have to go back and read to set up new accounts and other entities.

I like that Host is on the cloud, is very customizable by letting us have numerous templates and allows for multiple users at once

The software is a bit clunky at times which can lead to it running slowly. Also there are certain nuances that you have to learn which is expected

I like that it is user friendly, drag and drop feature makes it easy to run ad hoc reports. Love the line item detail and notes feature in the templates.

I would love to be able to use the workforce reporting to run budget vs. actual HR data. I'd also love to see a dashboard available within the next year or so.