Planful vs ScaleFactor

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Our analysts compared Planful vs ScaleFactor 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
ScaleFactor 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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ScaleFactor provides an intuitive module that runs accounting, tax and finance tasks to provide accurate data to businesses and make strategic decisions. Accounting and finance solve how modern companies operate by automating complex accounting tasks and converting financial information into valuable data. It allows capturing expense details and categorizing them. It tracks regular cash flow and keeps a tab on the patterns to identify any abnormalities and notifies the accountants of the same. It seamlessly integrates and syncs information across applications in real time and keeps a tab on the entry to avoid any duplication.
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$1,250 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$399 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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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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  • Tax Season Ready: Avoid mismatched transactions and forgotten expenses with books updated in real time. Keep the businesses ready for the tax season. 
  • Better Accuracy: Ensure all data is accurate and the bookkeeping process gets done in a secure and reliable manner with the help of certified accounting experts. 
  • Comprehensive Management: Manage back-office operations like reviewing the team’s expenses, paying bills and double-checking payrolls to ensure everything runs smoothly. 
  • Live Dashboard: Access information that the business needs regarding bookkeeping, be it classifying transactions, updating a general ledger or seeing mobile alerts and notifications via a live dashboard. 
  • Reports: Recognize revenue and account transactions accurately. Use data to help make the right decisions for profit and loss statements, journal entries and balance sheets. 
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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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  • Seamless Integration: Integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero to significantly reduce the time spent on accounting. Give the business time to spend on tasks that matter by eliminating financial bottlenecks. 
  • Virtual Bookkeeping Software: Categorize transactions across the account that are awaiting review or approval. Send them to the designated recipient so the business is up to date with the accounting tasks. 
  • Dashboard: Help the company understand where the money is coming from and where it’s going with an easy-to-navigate dashboard. Give a quick overview of the business’s financial health to devise effective strategies to steer ahead. 
  • Payroll: Leverage Gusto, a full-service payroll processor that runs operations on the same page where the books get managed. Set multiple pay schedules and add all types of employees. Adjust payroll where needed. 
  • Bill Payment: Simplify paying the bills. Forgo entering all details in the payment system. Powered by bill.com, it efficiently manages all payments from the same place where the book gets processed. 
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Product Ranking

#116

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Accounting Software

#147

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Accounting Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 82 reviews
Great User Sentiment 17 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

ScaleFactor has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 17 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

4.29 (41)
4.18 (17)
4.3 (41)
n/a

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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Automated Bookkeeping: ScaleFactor can automatically categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and generate financial reports, saving businesses time and reducing the risk of errors.
Real-Time Insights: The platform provides real-time financial data, allowing businesses to track their performance and make informed decisions.
Bill Pay: ScaleFactor offers a bill pay feature that allows businesses to easily pay bills electronically, streamlining the accounts payable process.
Tax Compliance: The platform helps businesses stay compliant with tax regulations by automatically calculating and filing sales tax returns.
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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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Inaccurate Data: Some users have reported that ScaleFactor sometimes pulls in inaccurate data, leading to incorrect financial reports.
Limited Functionality: ScaleFactor may not have all the features that some businesses need, such as advanced inventory management or project accounting.
Customer Support Issues: Some users have expressed frustration with ScaleFactor's customer support, citing slow response times and difficulty getting issues resolved.
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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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Is ScaleFactor a major player or small fry in the accounting software game? Based on user reviews from the past year, ScaleFactor seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface, making it a breeze for those without an accounting background to navigate. The software's flexibility is another plus, as it can be tailored to fit the needs of businesses of all shapes and sizes. However, ScaleFactor's price tag is a major drawback, with many users finding it pricier than its competitors. Additionally, the software's limited integration with other business tools can be a dealbreaker for those who rely on a connected ecosystem of applications. ScaleFactor appears to be best suited for small to medium-sized businesses that prioritize ease of use and flexibility in their accounting software and are willing to pay a premium for these features. However, for businesses on a tight budget or those that require seamless integration with other software, ScaleFactor may not be the best fit. Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to use ScaleFactor comes down to weighing its strengths and weaknesses against your specific business needs and budget.

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