Planful vs Workday Financial Management

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Our analysts compared Planful vs Workday Financial Management based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Accounting Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Planful Software Tool

Product Basics

Formerly Host Analytics, Planful is a financial planning and analysis cloud platform. It accelerates end-to-end FP&A. Suitable for midsize to large-scale businesses, it helps by centralizing data and managing financial and operational processes.

It helps users plan and manage reviews, approvals and submissions and generates workflow status reports to check the performance of every department. It helps analyze asset performance by using financial budgeting and forecasting techniques with its capital planning feature. It is a scalable solution that allows companies to check the effect of projects on the overall bottom line.
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Workday Financial Management is a cloud-based accounting software designed for mid-sized and large enterprises. It automates core financial processes like record-to-report, procurement, and expense management, aiming to streamline operations and improve data visibility. Its strengths lie in its user-friendly interface, real-time reporting capabilities, and global compliance support. However, its subscription-based pricing model can be costlier than traditional on-premise solutions. Users praise its intuitive design and powerful analytics, but some note occasional integration issues and a steeper learning curve compared to simpler systems. Overall, Workday Financial Management is a robust option for companies seeking a modern, scalable accounting platform with a focus on automation and global reach, but its premium pricing might not suit smaller businesses or those with less complex financial needs.

Pros
  • User-friendly interface
  • Real-time reporting
  • Global compliance support
  • Scalable for growth
  • Integrates with other Workday apps
Cons
  • Higher subscription costs
  • Steeper learning curve
  • Occasional integration issues
  • Limited customization options
  • Reporting can be complex
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Conduct Ad hoc Analysis: Simplify complex ad hoc analysis by quickly creating financial and operational models while simultaneously checking the impact of these models on the bottom line. 
  • Close Books Faster: Decrease the time it takes to close books by automating data collection, aggregation and validation. Make data secure and compliant with standards and protocols.  
  • Improve Collaboration: Collaborate in a more efficient manner with current data and real-time insights. Get the power to make quick and accurate decisions with more confidence.  
  • Get Insights: Make well-informed decisions by gaining insights from across an organization to drive long-term value and growth. Automate manual processes to gain more time for strategic planning processes, analyzing and collaborating rather than worrying about spreadsheets.  
  • Automate Manual Processes: Save time and reduce errors by automating manual financial processes. Ensure that all financial processes are done with minimum manual effort and run more efficiently.  
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  • Enhanced Efficiency and Streamlined Operations: Automates manual tasks, eliminates data silos, and provides real-time visibility across financial processes, leading to faster close cycles, reduced errors, and improved operational agility.
  • Data-Driven Decision Making: Offers robust analytics and reporting tools that deliver actionable insights into financial performance, enabling informed strategic planning, cost optimization, and resource allocation.
  • Global Compliance and Scalability: Supports complex global operations with built-in compliance features and multi-currency capabilities, ensuring seamless expansion into new markets and adherence to local regulations.
  • Improved User Experience and Productivity: Provides a modern, intuitive interface that empowers finance teams with self-service capabilities, reduces training requirements, and boosts overall user satisfaction.
  • Enhanced Collaboration and Visibility: Fosters collaboration between finance and other business departments through integrated workflows and shared data, promoting transparency and alignment across the organization.
  • Reduced Risk and Improved Controls: Strengthens internal controls with advanced security features, audit trails, and automated compliance checks, mitigating financial risks and safeguarding sensitive data.
  • Increased Agility and Adaptability: Enables rapid configuration changes and customizations to adapt to evolving business needs and industry regulations, ensuring continuous optimization and competitive advantage.
  • Talent Optimization and Retention: Supports talent management initiatives by streamlining payroll and expense processes, providing employee self-service capabilities, and enhancing financial transparency, leading to increased employee satisfaction and retention.
  • Sustainable Growth and ROI: Delivers tangible cost savings through automation, improved efficiency, and reduced compliance risks, contributing to significant long-term return on investment.
  • Future-Proofed Platform: Continuously updated with new features and functionality, ensuring your accounting system stays ahead of the curve and adapts to evolving industry trends and technologies.
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  • Modern Tools: Combine the need for structured and dynamic planning to empower organizations to make well-informed decisions in a quick and strategic manner.  
  • Financial Consolidation: Accelerate month-end closing cycles with financial consolidation. Enhance financial planning and reporting by leveraging data from a single source of truth. Get pre-built consolidation functionality for currency conversion and reporting, currency translation adjustment calculations and posting. Implement functional, administrative and setup changes without the need for IT experts. Boost teams’ agility when reacting to changes in organization, strategy, regulation and accounting protocol. Ensure trusted and consistent global reporting by automatically mapping financial data. Keep tabs from start to end on balances, and analyze financial data across consolidation activities.  
  • Structured Planning: Save time and reduce errors by automating labor-intensive financial planning activities. Avoid costly and disruptive customization fees, save time and reduce risk of error with predefined planning and reporting templates. Automate integration from any ERP, CRM or HCM. Create a single source of financial truth by automatically collecting, aggregating and validating financial data. Ensure consistency and accuracy by creating and modifying structured financial reports and elevating financial conversations. 
  • Dynamic Planning: Analyze, plan and make confident decisions with dynamic planning. Build custom-tailored financial models. Leverage customization across processes, functions and use cases. Configure planning experiences and give users the flexibility to plan for anything. Connect data sources from separate systems in one unified, cloud-based platform. Boost financial decision making with a single source of truth. Get insights and make course corrections with real-time data refreshing. Inculcate companywide collaboration culture by providing the right data at the right level to the right person.  
  • Integration: Automate data integration to reduce manual intervention and easily transform data with over 200 pre-built connectors. Adjust to automatic data processing with a growing integration platform. Check status and activity of deployed integrations from a centralized place. Ensure data integration process flows are repeatable, automated and secure, and provide audit trails required by internal and external auditors. Understand changes in data with multiple validation points across integration workflows. 
  • Reporting: Leverage reporting formats and delivery options to meet financial, management and ad hoc needs. Ensure data accuracy and transparency with self-service reporting and automated report distribution. Automate collection and aggregation of financial and business data into a single cloud-based platform. Ensure everyone is working with current and accurate information derived from a single source of truth. Boost financial IQ with self-service reporting capabilities. Create a more agile environment with impactful financial decision making. 
  • Annual Operating Plan: Build collaborative financial plans that align with business objectives. Turn annual plans into quarterly or monthly rolling forecasts, and check models for different scenarios to determine how to realign and adjust strategies.  
  • Workforce Planning: Plan accordingly for workforces by connecting HR, finance and operational data together. Create a headcount plan that can be adjusted to changing marketing requirements. Gain insight to build winning strategies and utilize employees as strategic assets. Boost financial IQ to understand and influence impacts on the financial health of workforce costs.  
  • Cash Flow Forecasting: Assess the impact of decisions by gaining complete control and visibility over finances. Reallocate cash by identifying trends and understanding levers. Mitigate cash flow risk by adjusting investment opportunities.  
  • Scenario Analysis: Analyze every option by planning across multiple case scenarios and assessing key drivers. Bring agility by optimizing current period results. Gain the flexibility to discover deeper insights across a broad range of models. Align executives and business partners with data-driven decisions. Check the impact of plan changes from every level with immediate results. 
  • Rolling Forecasts: Adjust to sudden changes, keep forecasts current and business agile with continually rolling planning periods. Automatically keep tabs on the impact of actuals on forecasted trends. Improve risk analysis by quickly identifying opportunities and risks as business landscapes evolve. Align rolling forecasts by collaborating across different departments. Gain real-time insights to redirect resources and priorities and align them with business objectives.  
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  • Grant Management: Meet grantor and business requirements for budgeting, billing, reporting and compliance. Minimize the possibility of reporting errors, any loss due to absent funds or risk associated with non-compliance. Make sure that all grantor’s requirements get met in terms of timeframe, balance, terms and conditions. Control unnecessary spending by keeping a tab on the monetary status in real-time. Ensure that workers are paid for individual projects. 
  • Analytics and Reporting: Create internal reports and external regulatory statements ensuring no patchwork database. Use reconciliations and analytical tools. Ensure robust security while deriving insights for strategic decision-making. Let executives and leaders view monetary, operational and management visualizations. Gain a complete view of the business by combining transactional and operational parameters. Know and understand what is happening, where and why by analyzing details across dimensions. 
  • Financial Planning: Make informed, faster decisions with flexible tools and data-driven insights. Respond quickly to change by creating strategic plans for budgeting expenses to forecasting revenue. Gain a complete picture by populating models with data. Connect to cloud, on-premise and data warehouse. Ensure reliable data access with an automated data flow. Involve everyone in the planning process with role-based access to models. Create reports by automatically connecting to Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. View numbers, charts and variance alongside each other, reflected instantly. 
  • Audits and Internal Control: Keep the business secure, identify risk and document every translation with audit and internal controls. Adjust controls and processes, set thresholds, evaluate workflows and prevent unauthorized transactions with a flexible framework. Limit permissions to people with single access and authorization control. 
  • Global Foundation: Operate and expand in different countries or around the world. Get built-in flexibility and support for global time zones, currencies and address formats. Leverage support for multiple charts of accounts, tax, banking and payment format. Deploy faster with built-in country-specific configurations. 
  • Expenses: Minimize expense processing time and reimburse faster. Record the transaction by scanning the receipt. Get better travel rates and discounts by uncovering the latest trends in real-time with a delivered expense dashboard. Control cost and keep all the travel policies in one place. Prevent the possibility of fraud by tracking out of policy spends.  
  • Accounting Centre: Gain detailed insights and reduce the time to close with comprehensive accounting information and data lineage back to source transactions. Minimize errors, boost efficiency and gain better control and visibility. Manage and modify rules with one accounting engine written in business language. Get detailed budgetary and operational reporting with a virtual subledger. Recognize revenue by modifying operational data. 
  • Revenue Management: Gain complete visibility with flexible features and view and analyze all the system’s aspects. Minimize risk by establishing, approving and tracking customers at every step of the contract cycle. Reduce revenue leakage and gain rich insights into write-offs and billing rules. Boost accessibility, accuracy, profitability with intercompany invoices. Get end-to-end revenue management and comprehensive revenue recognition while staying compliant with GAAP and IFRS standards and protocols. 
  • Budgetary Consolidation and Close: Keep track of the output by any factor such as spend by supplier, campaign, profitability and project activity. Reconcile accounts and embed them in the transaction system. Automate tasks, route approvals and reports with a close period checklist. Get real-time currency and earning calculations to analyze the financial results within a specific timeframe.  
  • Accounting and Finance: Keep a tab on the monetary impact of transactions by identifying and addressing issues promptly without running a batch process. Close faster with real-time consolidation. Automate finance and accounting operations, make modifications or corrections any time and get recommendations on payment matching. Manage accounts payable, contracts, billings and payments from one place. Gain complete transparency into records from procurement to disposal. Control and optimize the cash flow. 
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Product Ranking

#116

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Accounting Software

#357

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Accounting Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Accounts Payable Accounts Receivable Banking And Cash Management Budget And Expense Management Financial Statements And Revenue Management General Ledger And Chart Of Accounts Integration And Extensibility Inventory Management Journal Entries Mobile Support Multi-company Accounting And Asset Management Platform Capabilities Project Accounting Reporting And Analytics Tax Management 0 70 100 100 66 63 0 57 81 0 87 0 80 0 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 82 reviews
Great User Sentiment 324 reviews
86%
of users recommend this product

Planful has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 82 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

84%
of users recommend this product

Workday Financial Management has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 324 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

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3.8 (77)
4.29 (41)
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Awards

No awards.

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Workday Financial Management and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Budget and Expense Management.

Budget and Expense Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Streamlined Financial Close: Planful helps automate routine tasks like data consolidation and report generation, which can significantly reduce the time it takes to close the books each month. This efficiency is often praised by users in fast-paced environments.
Improved Forecasting Accuracy: The platform's forecasting tools leverage historical data and predictive analytics to generate more accurate forecasts. Users appreciate this feature as it allows for better-informed decision-making and resource allocation.
Enhanced Collaboration: Planful provides a centralized platform for finance teams to collaborate on budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. This feature improves communication and transparency within the department, leading to more cohesive financial strategies.
Customizable Reporting: Users frequently highlight the ability to create custom reports tailored to their specific needs. This flexibility allows finance teams to analyze data from multiple angles and gain deeper insights into their financial performance.
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Streamlined Processes and Efficiency: Automates manual tasks like journal entries, reconciliations, and financial reporting, saving time and reducing errors.
Real-Time Visibility and Insights: Provides instant access to financial data and customizable dashboards, enabling proactive decision-making and improved cash flow management.
Global Compliance and Scalability: Supports multi-GAAP compliance, multi-currency transactions, and international tax reporting, simplifying operations for global organizations.
User-Friendly Interface and Adoption: Offers an intuitive interface with guided workflows and role-based dashboards, making it easy to learn and use for finance professionals of varying skill levels.
Seamless Integration and Collaboration: Integrates smoothly with other Workday applications and external systems, fostering collaboration across departments and streamlining financial processes.
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Steep Learning Curve: Many users find Planful's interface to be complex and unintuitive, requiring significant time investment to learn the system's intricacies. The abundance of features can be overwhelming for new users, leading to frustration and a slow adoption rate within organizations.
Customization Challenges: While Planful offers customization options, implementing them often requires advanced technical skills or reliance on the vendor's professional services, which can be costly. This limitation can hinder organizations with unique workflows or reporting needs from fully tailoring the software to their specific requirements.
Reporting Limitations: Some users report that generating specific or ad-hoc reports can be cumbersome in Planful. The system's pre-built reports may not always cater to every organization's needs, and creating custom reports may require technical expertise or additional support.
Performance Issues: A segment of users has mentioned experiencing slow loading times and occasional system lags, particularly when working with large datasets or complex reports. This can impact productivity and user satisfaction, especially for organizations with high data volumes or demanding reporting requirements.
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Steep Learning Curve: Workday's interface and functionality can be complex for users unfamiliar with its specific terminology and workflows, requiring significant training and onboarding.
Limited Customization Options: While Workday offers some customization, it may not fully accommodate specific accounting needs or reporting requirements, potentially leading to workarounds or integration with additional tools.
High Implementation and Maintenance Costs: Workday's initial implementation and ongoing maintenance can be expensive, especially for smaller organizations, requiring careful budgeting and resource allocation.
Integration Challenges: Integrating Workday with existing legacy systems or third-party applications can be complex and time-consuming, potentially disrupting workflows and requiring specialized technical expertise.
Limited Offline Functionality: Workday's cloud-based nature can pose challenges in situations with limited internet connectivity, potentially impacting critical accounting tasks and data access.
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Planful has garnered a reputation for its robust financial reporting and analysis capabilities, particularly excelling in budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation. Users appreciate the software's ability to handle complex financial models and its flexibility in generating custom reports. The platform's intuitive interface and user-friendly design have also been praised, making it accessible to both finance professionals and non-financial users. However, some users have noted that the initial setup and implementation process can be time-consuming and may require significant support from Planful's team. Additionally, while Planful offers a wide range of features, some users have expressed a desire for more advanced functionality in areas such as workforce planning and project accounting. Compared to competitors like Adaptive Insights and Vena Solutions, Planful stands out for its comprehensive financial consolidation capabilities and its ability to handle large volumes of data. Its reporting and analytics tools are also considered to be more user-friendly and customizable. However, Adaptive Insights may be a better choice for organizations seeking a more cloud-based solution with stronger integrations with other business applications. Vena Solutions, on the other hand, may be more suitable for companies with complex financial modeling needs due to its Excel-based interface. Overall, Planful is best suited for mid-sized to large enterprises with complex financial reporting and analysis requirements. Its strengths lie in its budgeting, forecasting, consolidation, and reporting capabilities, making it an ideal choice for organizations looking to streamline their financial processes and gain deeper insights into their financial performance. However, companies with limited IT resources or those seeking a more cloud-based solution may want to consider alternative options.

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Workday Financial Management (WFM) user reviews paint a mixed picture. While users praise its streamlining capabilities, real-time insights, and global compliance features, they also face challenges with its initial complexity, limited customization, and high costs. Compared to competitors like Oracle NetSuite and SAP Business One, WFM shines in automating manual tasks and offering intuitive dashboards for data-driven decision-making. However, its steeper learning curve and potential integration hurdles can be daunting for smaller firms or those accustomed to simpler systems. Users particularly appreciate WFM's ability to automate journal entries, reconciliations, and financial reporting, freeing up valuable time for analysis and strategic planning. The real-time visibility into financial data with customizable dashboards also empowers users to make proactive decisions and manage cash flow effectively. For global organizations, WFM's support for multi-GAAP compliance, multi-currency transactions, and international tax reporting simplifies operations and streamlines reporting across diverse regions. However, users also highlight WFM's learning curve as a major hurdle, especially for those unfamiliar with its unique interface and terminology. The limited customization options can also be frustrating when specific accounting needs or reporting requirements don't perfectly align with the system's functionalities. Additionally, the high implementation and maintenance costs can be a barrier for smaller organizations, making WFM a better fit for larger enterprises with the resources to invest. Compared to competitors, WFM's strengths lie in its automation capabilities and data-driven insights. Users often find Oracle NetSuite more user-friendly and customizable, while SAP Business One offers better integration with existing systems for some businesses. Ultimately, the choice between WFM and its competitors boils down to individual priorities and needs. If automation, real-time data, and global compliance are top concerns, WFM stands out. However, if ease of use, customization, and cost-effectiveness are paramount, other options might be more suitable.

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