Plan Guru for financial consultants

I've been able to help my clients create future plans and look at many what if scenarios and their affect on the balance sheet without having to worry about whether my formulas are correct in excel.

Pros

The flexibility of the application for creating multiple forecasts and budgets using a variety of assumptions and KPI's. the use of excel to integrate and add additional flexibility to the program. The subschedules allow multiple ways to forecast revenue and track other expenses. the integration of the balance sheet and ability to see affect the forecast has on the balance sheet items.

Cons

Some lack of flexibility in reporting. Lack of ability to print reports from analytics.

Great value in cash flow planning

Overall a great cash flow program for the price. it has many features that programs 10 times the price do not have.

Pros

Plan Guru is a straightforward application for generating cash flow statements. I have used the product since 2003, and have watched it evolve from a simple tool to a more sophisticated application. The company has been receptive to user requests such as increasing the size of database fields to allow larger numbers, adding supplementary schedules, and direct cash flow projections. Some of the debt amortization wizards are very handy, providing current portion of LTD in addition to amortizing loan balances and interest charges. They have also included some valuation and ratio analysis work papers that are very handy. This is a small company (at least it operates as one) where you can actually talk to a real live person. All in all, it is a very good application for the price.

Cons

The application occasionally will show some instability, but this has been vastly improved over earlier versions. There are recovery routines so most of the data is not lost. The crashes seem mostly due to print driver compatabilities. The developers are pretty good at fixing these issues. Large, complicated formulas may run into size limits when calculating dollar outcomes. When this occurs, I have created interim formulas in a workbook to get to the final formula. It's nice that the application has supplementary schedules for the P&L. However there are no such supporting schedules for the balance sheet. Much of the work I do is in the balance sheet. It would nice to have a supporting schedule that would clean up the balance sheet presentation. The learning curve can be a little steep for the novice user. The application was developed by CPAs for CPAs, although this application is valuable for private companies.

Good product but far from the ideal Forecasting software

Plan Guru is an excellent product, specially considering that there are no products out there with this many features at this price level. If you want to have the best products you will have to pay tens of thousands every year, ie. Budget Maestro. However I think PG has some room for improvement, such as 1.- More flexibility in the automatization for the recording of Historical and actual values. Not even copy and paste is possible. 2.- Make it more friendly. PG can only be mastered by someone with a strong background in Finance 3.- Expand reporting capabilities and allow to export reports to excel with up the 36 months instead of only 12 mo. 4.- Develop a Mac version or a web version 5.- Develop Inventory module and allow for supporting schedule on the Balance sheet 6.- Flexibility in putting some values ( ie. interest expense) in the balance sheet for capitalization purposes

Pros

-Once you have all the numbers, projections are very fast and exact. -Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash flow integration -Links to excel files

Cons

- The link process is very long and tedious - No possibility of using formulas in the actual and historical data - Need an inventory module - Need Supporting schedule for the Balance sheet

Solid product, Feature-Rich, Intuitive Design, Great value for small- to medium-sized businesses.

I am attempting to build budgets for my clients using the PlanGuru software installed on the remote cloud desktop. Overall, the product has met my expectations. I have used several similar large/deluxe budgeting tools built for Fortune 500 companies that cost 10 times as much (or more), and this is a very good "abridged" budgeting software for small businesses that is still very feature-rich. The support I have received from the technical team has been very good; they have been very responsive to my requests. The cloud desktop experience was a little bit more laggy than I expected. I LOVE the Excel add-in. It is a very powerful tool. However, I thought the installation of the add-in was a little more complicated than it should be, especially based on the cost of the cloud subscription. There is room for PlanGuru to improve a few things, but I will be using for future clients, and I highly recommend this product for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Pros

Very intuitive design. Most features/functions are just a right-click away. If you don't understand exactly what you are looking at, the tutorial videos are GREAT, and they have links to the relevant videos built right into the program where you need them. Excel Add-in is a very powerful tool. A real selling-point for PlanGuru. If you know how to use a pivot table, you will love this tool. Consolidations. If you have multiple departments, or groups of departments, consolidations is a must-have. Excel Links. If the myriad of PlanGuru projection methods aren't good enough, just suck in whatever data you want from Excel to the budgeting tool.

Cons

It would be great if this product was built as a web/browser-based product, rather than a local client install. Then the users could also save on the cost of the remote cloud desktop, and installation/connectivity should be easier. There should really be a "mass-refresh" button/method in the Excel add-in that would refresh every tab at once. A "mass-consolidation" button in the PlanGuru application would be nice, too. I wish there was a "help forum" where users could assist one another and help troubleshoot issues. Support is responsive, and the videos are great. But support can't answer you as fast as a forum search would, and the videos don't cover everything. Chances are SOMEONE has had the same question in the past.

Great product. A must have for all forward thinking companies.

Pros

It is easy to use. It is the only product in the market that I am aware of that focuses on the balance sheet and in particular cash.

Cons

Reporting features could be enhanced. Would like to be able to hide accounts that are no longer in use. When reporting condense some categories while expanding others.