AccountEdge vs IBM Planning Analytics

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Our analysts compared AccountEdge vs IBM Planning Analytics based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Accounting Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

AccountEdge Software Tool
IBM Planning Analytics Software Tool

Product Basics

AccountEdge helps small businesses establish inventory, billing, managing contacts, creating and tracking sales and purchases. It’s compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems. An on-premise and accounting management solution, it gives users the freedom to create an eCommerce platform where they can sell items online using Shopify, download orders directly to the account and synchronize the inventory items for selling. The banking tool gives users the freedom to receive and send money, create bank deposits, print checks and account reconciliation. The purchase order feature enables users to create and track purchase orders and bills. It handles every aspect of business and gives the owners the ability to organize, process and report financial information.

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IBM Planning Analytics is a multidimensional in-memory database for analytics and planning. Part of the IBM Analytics Suite and powered by TM1, it provides forecasting, budgeting and reporting at an enterprise scale through data compression. With all data connected to a central hub, it enables collaborative planning with workflow approvals and review protocols in place. Enterprises perform OLAP analysis faster through in-memory technology.

Integrating with Microsoft Excel, it gives businesses the ease and familiarity of working with spreadsheets with the power of an enterprise database. With automated time-series modeling, it enables self-service predictive analysis. The vendor offers a 30-day free trial.
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$20 Monthly
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$825 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Quotes and invoices: Create personalized quotes and invoices. Convert quotes to invoices with a click. 
  • Cost-effective: Pay only a one-time fee charged for each plan. This means extra payments are to be made only when the users purchase available add ons.  
  • Compatibility: Use Pro on Windows or Mac or get a mobile app for iOS devices. Access data without leaving the comfort of the desktop application with Connect. Get all the desktop features with Pro Hosted.  
  • Easy Installation: Get it up, running and access a vast amount of information within minutes. Learn more about using the platform by logging in to the user forum on the community page. Enjoy the simple to use interface and flexible reporting system. 
  • Simple Reporting: Look up information in numerous ways. Drill down into accounts and transactions with the interactive balance sheet and profit and loss reports. Slice and dice data for analysis. Easily control services from quote complete to invoice delivery. 
  • Time Billing and Retainers: Review how much money a client has to deposit and what is to be billed at the end of the month. Easily log in on-site with the quick interaction on the mobile app. 
  • Reconciling Statements: Find the amount by viewing them by debits or credits. Change marked items to blue which makes scanning the remaining numbers easy. 
  • Easy Job Budgeting And Analysis: Ensure easier functionality with new buttons added under budget analysis. Edit amounts for the job, calculate and display adjusted budgets and compare the actuals, in one window. 
  • Reminders: Add promise date as a reminder for the completion of job schedule. 
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  • Maximize ROI: Save time for analysis of trends, business performance and results by creating project plans faster. Reallocate budget and resources by leveraging deep insights into business performance and market trends. Collaborate with others on a single, unified platform with total transparency and visibility into business data, available for all plans. 
  • Boost Sales: Win more business opportunities – boost annual sales quotas and deal sizes through end-to-end sales workflows. Grow revenue and reduce time to insight with robust sales analytics. Track campaigns for performance monitoring in real time and deep dive into data for buying behavior and customer churn analysis. 
  • Financial Planning and Analysis: Optimize the business’ performance through valuable financial insights. Ensure the business is on track by creating and managing plans, budgets and forecasts. Simplifies the budgeting process through real-time calculations with automatic application of business rules. 
  • Optimize Supply Chain: Create more accurate demand forecasts, get a clearer view of the resources and budget required to fulfill projected demand and update production plans accordingly. View historical data and drill down into summaries for deep-dive analysis and add visuals to spot key KPI trends. 
  • Workforce Planning: Increase the workforce’s efficiency by acquiring and retaining skilled employees at the right time. Effectively manage staff schedules, task assignment and performance tracking through workforce analytics and HR planning tools. 
  • Deploy Anywhere: Access the same data from everywhere with the flexibility to deploy on-premise, in the cloud or as a combination of both. 
  • Scalable: Build and change plans flexibly in real time to match business requirements. Scales with increasing data volumes, number of users and planning models, without impacting existing workflows and performance. 
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  • Accounts: Maintain charts of accounts. Choose from over 100 templates in Pro or create templates. Create a budget for any active account or for each job and project by tracking individual jobs. 
  • Banking: Set up and manage all bank related activities, which includes importing bank statements for reconciliations. Connect credit card and bank accounts to the application with automatic bank feed options. 
  • Contacts: Manage all customers, vendors and employees from a central location. Attach documents or contracts to vendor files, add a photo or create custom letters for the customers. 
  • Sales: Create a quote, process a sales order, create an invoice for a customer and accept customer payments for all open orders. Make shipping the product easy by integrating the invoice with UPS and providing customers with the tracking details. Place comments and choose how to deliver invoices. Create sales orders for customers that pay in advance. Accept credit card payments and record incoming payments by creating an account with Merchant Account. Manage online sales and inventory by syncing online stores using Shopify connector. Attach a document to invoices and purchases to enable tracking of warranties and package slips. 
  • Time billing: Track time and bill customers with Pro. Track billable and non-billable hours spent on the project or track employee time for billing purposes. Remotely track time using Connect. Monitor all work in progress to bill the customers as the project continues. 
  • Purchases: Create a purchase order, convert a bill to an order, enter vendor accounts payable and pay them electronically or by check. Complete vendor payment electronically and process 1099 forms at year end for contractors, using information tracked in purchases.  
  • Payroll: Set up payroll using the payroll assistant. Do the calculations inhouse or outsource through SurePayroll. Get a variety of add-on options like direct deposit, payroll forms and e-file services when processing payroll in-house. 
  • Inventory: Add details about specific items as well as selling and buying options with the Pro inventory module. Assign multiple pricing levels to the products, get an alert when the stock drops below a specified point. Keep track of best-selling products, and even build items and kits. 
  • Purge Jobs: Remove unused, older jobs from a larger list. Delete the selected job and remove it from the transaction list. 
  • Custom List and Custom Fields: Track the jobs by adding custom list and custom fields upto the count of three. Define list names, list members and field names, and use a custom list as a filter for job reports. 
  • Customized Job Status: Check which job is pending, delivered or on hold by customizing the job status. 
  • Activity Slips: Track time tied to a job under the job list Window. Drill into the activity slip or print out a report.  
  • Transactions: Get easy access to a list of all the transactions under the job information window. Get information like quotes in summary or detail. 
  • Job Number: Automatically assign job number to each line of transaction when creating a sale to a customer that has a single job associated with it. Remove or overwrite it as and when needed.  
  • Job Address: Manually enter or automatically include address and contact information for a job from a linked customer address and phone number, especially in cases where the job is associated with site or location.  
  • Job Transaction Summary Report: Get a list of transactions, including quotes and orders that are associated with the specific jobs. Filter it out on the basis of type, sales and purchase order.  
  • Emails: Use merge tags to create email templates. Include additional email addresses and choose an email address from Card. Open and view the email in the email client instead of it being automatically sent. 
  • Search Option: Search by account number or account name and use starts with/contains filters. Search account list by number or name and look by contact on the cards list. Identify unknown or forgotten company names by using search from list on transactions. 
  • Paid Stamp: Avoid confusion when re-sending a copy of a paid invoice to a client with a paid stamp which is a custom field and can appear on printed and PDF sales form. 
  • Deleting Deposits: Edit or delete the deposit payment after an order has been converted into an invoice. 
  • Calendar Event: Create a calendar event in the MacOS Calendar app, while recording the transaction or when the payment is due. Reminders can also be created from the card file. 
  • Add Note: Remember why the inventory was adjusted or created a particular job entry by adding a note to all the transactions. Check stubs and other transactions by adding a note field to the appropriate report.  
  • Forecasting with Recurring Sales: Get a more accurate estimation of financial situation at a point in time. Only get relevant fields displayed when the radio button is used. 
  • Company Data Auditor: Make sure that the financial information is accurate, protected and balanced. Backup and verify the company file with the audit tools. Lock down reconciled financial data, keep an audit trail and run reviews to make sure the numbers are in balance. 
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  • Architecture: Leverage a three-tier client-server architecture that includes a database, application server and front end, with data stored centrally in the OLAP server. 
    • TM1: Employs an efficient data compression algorithm to enable faster planning and analytics. Create business models by combining multiple data sources with manual input for effective decision-making. 
  • Workspace: Create and access all plans and forecasts through its web-based interface. Grant role-based access to team members down to cell-level granularity. Collaborate on plans through chats and cell comments in the workspace. 
    • Data Visualizations: Choose from a rich library of visualizations to apply that includes bullet charts, waterfall charts, treemaps, word clouds and more. Input data intuitively to specific slots through drag-and-drop actions, and customize fonts and styles for personalized branding. 
    • Books and Views: Access related data in the form of web sheets, scorecards, videos and embedded web pages from a single interface. Leverage defined selections of a data cube — views — for analysis and data exploration, and export as an Excel worksheet. 
  • Performance Tracking: Compare targets with actual results, and with actual performance over time. Quickly find the desired metrics and create visually compelling scorecards such as impact diagrams, strategy maps and custom diagrams. Add existing scorecards to books and analyze data over different periods, metrics and dimensions. 
  • Data Modeling: Autonomously build a financial model by converting business requirements into cubes, dimensions, hierarchies and calculations. Transform and load data easily into a financial model, without the need to code. 
  • Sandbox Environments: Work in a sandbox to manipulate data as needed in real time without impacting actual data. Compare different scenarios and test assumptions to see the impact of potential decisions. 
  • Microsoft Excel Integration: Go beyond what spreadsheets can do – perform multi-dimensional analysis and big data exploration within the Excel interface, retaining its full functionality and formatting. Find answers to business questions by creating reports from Cognos TM1 through interactive drag-and-drop actions. 
  • AI-Based Automation: Speed up planning cycles and get more reliable results. Create plans, forecasts and budgets through automated model creation, natural language processing and cognitive analytics. 
  • On-Demand Module: Generate dynamic dashboards from existing Excel spreadsheets through autonomous data exploration. Move from annual planning to rolling forecasts based on real-time information by identifying variances in plans caused by external data. 
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 176 reviews
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88%
of users recommend this product

AccountEdge has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 176 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

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4.36 (88)
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4.4 (88)
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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Strong Support: Users consistently praise AccountEdge's helpful and responsive customer support team.
Desktop Functionality: Many users appreciate that AccountEdge is a desktop-based application, which they find more reliable and secure than cloud-based alternatives.
Industry-Specific Features: AccountEdge offers specialized features for various industries, such as construction and manufacturing, making it a good fit for businesses with specific accounting needs.
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Flexible Modeling: Users praise the software's ability to handle complex planning scenarios with ease, such as building detailed driver-based models for budgeting and forecasting.
Improved Collaboration: The platform facilitates better communication and data sharing among teams, streamlining the budgeting and forecasting process.
Powerful Reporting and Analytics: Users appreciate the robust reporting features, allowing them to generate insightful reports and dashboards for data visualization and analysis.
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Usability Challenges: Some users find AccountEdge less intuitive than other accounting software options, requiring a steeper learning curve to navigate its features effectively.
Limited Features: AccountEdge may not offer the same breadth of features as some competitors, potentially lacking specific functionalities that some businesses require.
Higher Cost: AccountEdge's pricing structure can be more expensive compared to other accounting software solutions, potentially impacting budget-conscious users.
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Steep Learning Curve: Users have reported that IBM Planning Analytics can be difficult to learn, especially for those without prior experience with similar tools. Its interface and terminology can feel overwhelming initially.
Limited Reporting Capabilities: Some users have expressed frustration with the reporting functionality within Planning Analytics, finding it less intuitive and flexible compared to dedicated reporting tools. They desire more advanced formatting and customization options for presenting financial data.
Performance Issues: Users have occasionally encountered performance issues, particularly when dealing with large datasets or complex calculations. This can slow down budgeting and forecasting processes, impacting overall productivity.
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Want to know if AccountEdge will give you an edge in accounting? AccountEdge is a popular accounting software for small businesses, especially those familiar with desktop-based applications. Users praise its comprehensive features, including general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, invoicing, and inventory management, all without requiring a subscription like QuickBooks Online. Many find it easier to use than QuickBooks, citing its intuitive interface and logical workflow. However, some users point out its limitations for businesses with complex needs, such as limited integrations with other software and a lack of advanced reporting features. AccountEdge shines for small businesses seeking a robust, desktop-based accounting solution with a one-time purchase cost. Its ease of use and comprehensive features make it ideal for managing day-to-day finances, especially for those who prefer a traditional accounting software experience. However, businesses requiring advanced features or extensive integrations might find AccountEdge limiting and should consider cloud-based alternatives.

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User reviews from the past year suggest IBM Planning Analytics is a powerful tool for businesses seeking to streamline their financial planning and analysis processes. Users praise its robust features, particularly its budgeting, forecasting, and reporting capabilities. One standout feature is its ability to handle complex "what-if" scenarios, allowing businesses to model different outcomes based on various factors, which is crucial for making informed decisions in a volatile market. However, users also point out some drawbacks. The learning curve can be steep, especially for those unfamiliar with similar software. Some users find the interface less intuitive than competitors like Anaplan or Cube, and the pricing can be a significant investment for smaller businesses. Despite these weaknesses, users generally agree that IBM Planning Analytics offers a comprehensive solution for businesses needing advanced planning and analysis capabilities. Its ability to integrate with other IBM products and handle large datasets makes it particularly well-suited for larger enterprises with complex financial operations.

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