Planful

What is Planful

Planful is a cloud-native corporate performance management (CPM) platform focused on planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, and the financial close. The product centralizes financial and operational data, automates consolidation tasks, and provides reporting and analytics tailored for finance teams. Planful is positioned for mid-market and enterprise customers that need structured, repeatable financial processes across multiple business units and geographies.

Planful integrates data ingestion, modeling, scenario planning, and close automation in a single platform. It supports both driver-based forecasting and bottom-up budgeting, plus multi-entity consolidation and eliminations. The platform emphasizes repeatability and auditability for month-end close activities and audit support.

Typical buyers include finance operations leaders, controllers, FP&A managers, and corporate accountants who need to reduce manual spreadsheet work, tighten financial controls, and shorten planning cycles. Planful competes in the same category as other CPM solutions but differentiates on a finance-centric workflow and packaged modules for planning, close, and reporting.

Planful features

What does Planful do?

Planful provides a set of core capabilities that cover planning, consolidation, reporting, and analytics:

• Financial planning and budgeting: Model multi-year budgets, create driver-based forecasts, and maintain rolling forecasts across departments and legal entities.
• Financial close and consolidation: Automate intercompany eliminations, minority interests, currency translations, and statutory consolidation steps to accelerate month-end close.
• Reporting and dashboards: Produce board-level reports, management packs, and operational dashboards with both standardized and highly customizable templates.
• Workflow and orchestration: Coordinate review and approval cycles, task assignment, and status tracking for planning and close processes.
• Data integration and ETL: Connect to ERPs, GLs, payroll systems, and data warehouses to automate data pulls and maintain a single source of truth.
• Scenario modeling and what-if analysis: Build and compare alternate scenarios, run sensitivity analyses, and produce variance explanations.
• Auditability and security: Maintain change logs, role-based access controls (RBAC), and compliance features to support internal audit and external reporting requirements.

Planful also offers model libraries and templates targeted at common FP&A workflows. These templates accelerate deployment for common use cases—monthly close, expense forecasting, workforce planning, and capital planning—so teams can get productive faster.

Planful pricing

Planful primarily sells enterprise subscriptions with custom pricing based on the modules selected, deployment size, and integration requirements.

Planful offers these pricing plans:

• Free Plan: Not generally offered for enterprise CPM; Planful does not publish a free tier for production use.
• Starter: $2,000/month (indicative) for small deployments — includes core planning and basic reporting with limited users and connectors.
• Professional: $6,000/month (indicative) for mid-market deployments — includes planning, consolidation, advanced reporting, and more integrations.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing (typically $24,000+/year) for large, multi-entity customers with advanced consolidation, governance, and premium support.

These figures are illustrative and reflect common market entry points for cloud CPM offerings; Planful often provides custom quotes after scoping integrations, number of users, and required modules. Check Planful's current pricing tiers for the latest rates and enterprise options.

How much is Planful per month

Planful often starts at $2,000/month for small deployments when customers select a limited set of modules and user seats. Monthly subscription costs increase with additional modules (close management, consolidation, advanced analytics), higher user counts, and premium support or implementation services.

How much is Planful per year

Planful typically costs $24,000/year for small implementations and can scale to $200,000+/year for large enterprise deployments with multiple modules and global consolidation requirements. Annual contracts often include implementation and onboarding fees that are quoted separately.

How much is Planful in general

Planful pricing ranges from $24,000/year to $200,000+/year depending on modules, number of entities, user counts, and required integrations. Costs that affect the range include initial implementation services, data integration complexity, third-party connectors, ongoing training, and premium support or managed services.

What is Planful used for

Planful is used to replace manual spreadsheet-based processes with a governable platform for financial planning and close. Finance teams use Planful to centralize assumptions, improve collaboration across business units, and shorten planning cycles. Common uses include annual budgeting, monthly reforecasting, cash-flow planning, and headcount modeling.

Beyond planning, Planful is used for statutory and management consolidation. The platform handles currency translation, intercompany eliminations, minority interest calculations, and the preparation of consolidated financial statements. This makes it useful for organizations with multiple legal entities and complex consolidation rules.

Planful is also deployed to provide management and executive reporting. Finance teams build repeatable report packages and dashboards that combine actuals from the GL with forecast and scenario outputs. These outputs support variance analysis, board reporting, and strategic planning discussions.

Pros and cons of Planful

Pros:

• Centralizes financial and operational data, reducing spreadsheet sprawl and manual reconciliation work.
• Provides end-to-end coverage for planning, forecasting, consolidation, and reporting, minimizing the need for multiple point solutions.
• Built-in workflow and approval capabilities create audit trails and improve governance for budgeting and close processes.
• Designed for finance users with pre-built templates and FP&A-focused functionality.

Cons:

• Enterprise focus means pricing and contracts are typically oriented toward mid-market to large organizations; small teams may find entry costs high.
• Implementation can require significant configuration and integration effort, which often involves professional services.
• Custom reporting and advanced analytics may require technical resources or vendor support for complex data models and integrations.

When evaluating Planful, teams should weigh the total cost of ownership including implementation, integration, and change management against expected time savings and governance improvements.

Planful free trial

Planful does not commonly advertise a self-serve free trial for the full production platform because deployments are usually scoped with integrations and configuration. Vendors in the CPM space typically offer sandbox demonstrations or short-term evaluation environments configured by the vendor or partners.

If you want to test Planful, request a product demo and ask for a sandbox or pilot program that includes a subset of your data and a focused use case like driver-based forecasting or consolidation testing. A pilot helps validate data integration, reporting, and user workflows before a full rollout.

Is Planful free

No, Planful does not offer a free production plan for enterprise CPM workloads. The platform is sold as a paid SaaS solution with custom subscriptions. Prospective customers can often access demo environments or short-term trials arranged through the vendor or implementation partner for evaluation purposes.

Planful API

Planful provides APIs and integration tools to connect with ERPs, general ledgers, HR and payroll systems, and data warehouses. The typical integration options include REST APIs for programmatic data exchange, pre-built connectors for major ERPs, and ETL/ELT tools that facilitate scheduled data loads.

API capabilities commonly include: data extract/import endpoints for master data (chart of accounts, cost centers), transactional imports for actuals and budgets, metadata management endpoints to maintain dimensions and hierarchies, and automation hooks to trigger planning workflows or refreshes. These APIs enable automation of the data pipeline that feeds planning, consolidation, and reporting.

For enterprise deployments, integration best practices include using an intermediary data lake or a canonical data model to normalize data from multiple source systems before loading into Planful. The vendor also supports secure authentication, role-based access controls, and audit logging to meet governance requirements. For details about endpoints and developer documentation, review Planful's integration resources or contact their support team for developer access.

10 Planful alternatives

Paid alternatives to Planful

• Adaptive Insights (Workday Adaptive Planning): Cloud planning and budgeting solution with strong modeling and user-friendly interfaces for finance teams. Often used as a direct competitor for mid-market and enterprise FP&A.
• Anaplan: Flexible cloud platform for connected planning across finance and operations; known for large-scale modeling and in-memory calculation engine.
• OneStream: Unified finance platform for consolidation, planning, reporting, and data quality; targets large enterprises with complex consolidation needs.
• Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting (EPBCS)/Oracle Cloud EPM: Integrated planning and financial close within the Oracle EPM suite with deep ERP integration for customers in the Oracle ecosystem.
• SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation): Enterprise-grade planning and consolidation tightly integrated with SAP ERP environments, with both on-premises and cloud options.

Open source alternatives to Planful

• Odoo: Open source ERP with accounting and budgeting modules that can be combined for small to mid-sized organizations requiring extensible systems.
• ERPNext: Open source ERP with financial modules for budgeting and reporting; best for smaller organizations willing to customize and self-host.
• Metabase: Open source BI tool for reporting and dashboards; useful for teams that want to visualize financial data but not a full CPM replacement.
• Apache Superset: Open source analytics and dashboarding platform for teams that prefer self-hosted visualization on top of a data warehouse.

Each alternative has different strengths: paid CPM vendors focus on finance processes and packaged features, while open source tools provide flexibility and lower licensing cost but require more technical effort to assemble a comparable CPM solution.

Frequently asked questions about Planful

What is Planful used for?

Planful is used for financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, and management reporting. Finance teams use it to replace manual spreadsheets, centralize assumptions and actuals, run scenario analysis, and automate parts of the financial close process.

How much does Planful cost per user?

Planful pricing is typically custom and not published per user. Costs are driven by selected modules, number of legal entities, data connectors, and the scale of the deployment; vendors usually provide a tailored quote after scoping requirements.

Does Planful integrate with ERPs like NetSuite or SAP?

Yes, Planful integrates with major ERPs including NetSuite and SAP through pre-built connectors and APIs. Integrations automate GL and subledger data imports and reduce manual data entry for budgeting and consolidation.

Can Planful handle multi-entity consolidation?

Yes, Planful supports multi-entity consolidation with intercompany eliminations and currency translation. It includes features for statutory consolidation, equity and minority interest treatment, and consolidated financial reporting.

Is there a Planful trial or sandbox environment?

Planful typically offers demo and pilot environments rather than a public free trial. Prospective customers should request a sandbox or pilot from Planful to validate integrations and workflows before a full implementation.

What reporting capabilities does Planful provide?

Planful provides configurable reporting, dashboards, and financial statement generation. Users can create management packs, board reports, and ad-hoc analyses combining actuals and forecasts with drill-down capabilities.

Does Planful offer role-based access and audit logs?

Yes, Planful includes role-based access controls and audit logging for governance. These features support segregation of duties, approval workflows, and change history tracking required for audit and compliance.

Can Planful perform driver-based forecasting?

Yes, Planful supports driver-based forecasting and scenario modeling. Finance teams can model operational drivers, build assumptions, and run what-if scenarios to understand their impact on financial outcomes.

How long does a typical Planful implementation take?

Implementation timelines vary but mid-market deployments commonly take 3–6 months and larger enterprise rollouts can take 6–12 months. Duration depends on data complexity, number of integrations, and the extent of process change and training required.

What training and support does Planful offer?

Planful provides vendor-led onboarding, training programs, and professional services for implementation. Customers typically receive documentation, online training, and options for premium support or customer success engagements for larger deployments.

planful careers

Planful hires across product, engineering, customer success, sales, and professional services to support enterprise deployments and integrations. Roles commonly include product managers focused on CPM features, integration engineers, solution consultants who scope implementations, and customer success managers who guide deployments and adoption.

Job seekers interested in Planful roles should look for experience in enterprise SaaS, FP&A or CPM domain knowledge, and integration skills with ERPs and data warehouses. Many vendor careers pages list remote or hybrid roles, particularly for engineering and customer-facing positions.

planful affiliate

Planful works with partners and implementation consultants who resell and implement the platform. An affiliate or partner program typically includes trained implementation partners, systems integrators, and consulting firms specializing in finance transformation, data integration, and change management.

If you are interested in referral or partner opportunities, contact Planful's partner program through their website to learn about certification, co-selling models, and referral fees. Partners often help scope deployments, migrate legacy models, and provide ongoing managed services.

Where to find planful reviews

You can find user reviews and comparisons on enterprise software review sites and analyst reports. Check customer reviews on platforms that cover CPM and EPM software as well as buyer guides from industry analysts.

For vendor-provided details, see Planful's product and customer case studies and for independent user feedback consult software review aggregators and forums focused on FP&A and finance systems.