All Datarails Reviews
1-25 of 43 Reviews
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Craig
Verified reviewer
Computer Software, 501-1,000 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed February 2022
DataRails Review by Craig Morrow
My experience with DataRails has been first class. I have assisted with a seamless integration for Budgeting purposes and have now rolled out the solution for month end reporting. In both scenario's I have been able to reduce the time required for completion by around 40%. I particularly like the approach of having the Customer Success Manager driving the implementation and having the single point of contact through the customer journey.
PROSThe ease in which the product was to learn and become and expert in. The functionality within the solution is exactly what any FP&A professional should be looking for in a solution. The implementation was extremely efficient as you start to build out real life business processes from the outset which mean you get a return on investment from day 1.
CONSWhen deciding to partner with DataRails I was fully aware that they are at the beginning of solution development journey. However, DataRails are always keen to receive feedback on possible suggestions for improvement and are continuously developing and releasing improved functionality.
Reason for choosing Datarails
Implementation timescales, project milestones, cultural/company size growth alignment. Ease of use and value for money.
LeeAnn
Sporting Goods, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed January 2022
Product that exceeds expectations
In one word - "unbelievable" - I expected the software would be good, but once the software was up and running it exceeded expectations. The product drove down the manual time consuming data collection from 4 business days to a couple of hours. This was essential during the pandemic as more frequent turns of the forecast was required and without this software we would not have managed. The company used the product for other use cases we did not envision when we made the initial purchase.
PROSValue for money, ease of use and accuracy. Because the program is excel based it did not take long for the team to master. Created an efficient process and removed the manual work from the department by automating the vast amounts of data in a matter of minutes. As the work load grew the product became more valuable to the company.
CONSOne difficulty was when a Microsoft patch was released it caused some issues with a formula, but the support desk was able to help correct when we brought it to their attention.
Reason for choosing Datarails
Cost and functionality where the drivers for the decision. Ease of use and how Datarails set up and built the software for us and helped us with a desktop procedure manual. The auditing function was key to help the company know where/if changes were made Excel backend - less intimidating for users
Trevor
Education Management, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed August 2023
Good Product - Takes Time
It has been a phenomenal value add for our organization. Our team finds it incredibly helpful to use in thinking through multiple scenarios.
PROSThe flexibility of Datarails is fantastic. We’ve been able to draw in multiple data sources to present a clear picture of our financial situation with the additional context.
CONSThe onboarding process can take a few months. You are told upfront that it takes about 3 months. In our case, it took us about 6 months of working daily with their team to be ready to go. They were very supportive, but it does take time.
Elvamae
Veterinary, 201-500 employees
Used weekly for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed January 2022
VIN Product Assessment
The customer support and response is excellent
PROSEasy to navigate and set-up the dashboards
CONSIt doesn't work well with Quickbook Desktop. It requires a lot of manual processes. It does not automatically integrate with the QB desktop version. It's too cumbersome.
Reason for choosing Datarails
It was recommended by some of the accounting professionals at the AICPA conference
John
Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees
Used weekly for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed July 2023
CEO-friendly FP&A tool
The company's support and new feature rollout cadence is fantastic. They are very much innovating and doing all the right things. Very bullish on them!
PROSThe dashboard and visualizations are the best part of Datarails. Our finance team can readily create the visualizations on our data that I can benefit the most from. Deltas and variances jump out at you, trendlines are clear, and the data reporting capabilities really are in a class by themselves.
CONSLike any FP&A tool, it starts out slow. Your team has to learn how to leverage the tool and work with data that is originating outside of financial systems. It's taken us well over a year to get to the point where we're getting results and answers faster through Datarails than by manually creating a one-off report in Excel. The work has been worth it though, and it's just one of those inevitable aspects of leveling up your reporting and forecasting capabilities: it's not going to happen overnight or without a lot of training and validation work.
Reason for choosing Datarails
Datarails had month-to-month commitment options, while all the competitors wanted a 3-year contract lock-in. While the contract lock-in is understandable since it takes so much time and effort to launch any FP&A solution, what really sealed the deal was Datarails handled all their integrations in-house and the other vendors all outsourced their integration work to 3rd party vendors. This meant we had to get additional contracts and had extra costs associated with the other vendors that well exceeded our budget for FP&A.
Anonymous
1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2019
Best investment for our finance team
With this platform finance brings in data from many sources in little time. This responsivity and accessibility has been essential to the identification of key drivers that used to be produced in 5 times the amount of time. Information is available on a global scale instantly so we can standardize analyses. A great investment if you’re looking to improve processes
PROSFinance is pleased with the ease of use and accessibility of data
CONSWould be happy if there were more frequent updates
Reason for choosing Datarails
We wanted to keep working on Excel. DataRails lets us do that, whereas other platforms asked us to migrate our information to their system.
Vendor Response
Well said! Providing a reporting solution that works on excel is what separates us from our competitors. Please get in touch with your account manager to hear about our most recent updates, they are pretty exciting!
Replied December 2021
Anonymous
10,000+ employees
Used weekly for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2019
Best financial tool out there, dependable and accurate
DataRails has substantially improved the accuracy of our budgeting and forecasting. I love the ease of it, how accessible it makes our numbers, and how simple it is to follow real-time statuses. With DataRails we know our figures are accurate and up to date, which is precisely what we need from the numbers we base important decisions on.
PROS-There are many ways to manipulate and look at your data -Drill downs are amazing. Can look at the smallest of variables. -Can work on both Excel and their Insights feature depending on what I want -Easy to use -Easy to connect with our ERP system
CONSSometimes it was buggy when logging out. Other than that I can't think of any other notable cons, it really is a great system.
Reason for choosing Datarails
I didn't want to stop using Excels or migrate our information elsewhere.
Vendor Response
Companies that use DataRails don't need to migrate from excel, which is why choosing DataRails doesn't require making any changes to internal workflows. As you pointed out, noticing the smallest variables is what we believe is key to accurate, flexible and efficient reporting.
Replied December 2021
Rus
Industrial Automation, 51-200 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed June 2023
Amazing system with amazing support
DataRails has allowed us to monitor the performance of our business in ways we simply could not before. We have also been able to simplify a number of our reporting processes. These two things have allowed us to share information with a wider pool of stakeholders within our company and monitor the performance of our business much more closely.
PROSDataRails provides us with version control, data transformation, and visualization tools that we did not have before. We have streamlined many of our reporting processes, and we also use DataRails to feed a number of Excel and PowerPoint-based reports. DataRails support is very responsive.
CONSSome features don't work as expected, and it can be hard to tell if it because of a bug or user error.
Ami
Security and Investigations, 51-200 employees
Used monthly for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2023
Review on first year use.
Datarails is an exhaustive FP&A tool and great for Budgeting and variance analysis. The Report Builder is a powerful feature that helps to review results by Office, department & Cost centers. This is my first year using Datarails & it is the only FP&A software I have tried but I am very happy with it thus far. The implementation team & Customer Success Manager was very knowledgeable, smart, responsive & understood our business needs quickly to provide an ideal solutions for creating our first Budget in Datarails.
CONSThe features are awesome but some of these are too complex to use without help from Datarails team member. Once the basic reports are created by Datrails team, it is then manageable to update filters and make format changes as needed. Building a report from scratch is difficult as the data mapper is too technical & hard to comprehend.
Shelly
Farming, 11-50 employees
Used monthly for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2023
Tons of Features
The customer service has been oustanding from the beginning. The platform is completely customizable.
CONSThere is a lot to learn, because it's a rich environment. But there is plenty of support to help you figure it out.
Vendor Response
Thank you for your review Shelly!
Replied August 2023
Christine
Automotive, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed June 2022
Great forecasting/budgeting software
Great customer service, very quick to respond and very helpful walking me thru different ways to show my data that would be easiest to maintain. Easy to use product that adapts to your company, rather than having to adapt to the product.
PROSThis software was very easy to implement as we transitioned from a different software. what sold us on DataRails was the ability to continue to use our current reports. Dashboard views are also great, it gave us the ability to report on operations metrics , versus some software's that only focus on financial reporting. We also really liked the idea of having a dedicated customer rep , this has been extremely helpful thru the implementation, but also in creation of all our reports
CONSWould like to see more development in consolidation/conversion, as well as adding to dashboard reporting.
Reason for choosing Datarails
Easy of use, ability to set up based on our company needs without having to re-set our whole process, Cost
Reasons for switching to Datarails
Current software was very limited, we were looking for a solution to incorporate metrics into dashboards that would be easy to manage.
Joseph
Real Estate, 501-1,000 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed December 2021
Holding Company in the Real Estate Industry
Overall, DataRails has been great for our business. We are moving from using manual spreadsheets for financial reporting into automating this process in order to save time and look forward for trends, instead of always looking back in time at our data. It has been smooth and will be an easy transition for us. Above all else, [SENSITIVE CONTENT] has been super helpful. [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is simply the best. In addition, the Dashboard views are something that will be a great value add as we continue to introduce our portfolio companies to this software, as we are trying to sophisticate some of these businesses and force our business leaders to be continually on top of their financials, business, operations, and more.
PROSMy favorite part about this software is how easy it is to understand the logic that is going on behind the scenes. We are a holding company of 18 different operating companies using DataRails to automate our financial reporting process, as well as house all of our financial data in one system. Knowing how it works behind the scenes in critical and using the backend mapping is easy in order to make changes, fix errors, etc.... It makes it pretty easy to understand for the average user.
CONSThere is always room for improvement, like with anything. I think the biggest challenge for our company is not having all our accounting systems integrated into the system due to some industry specific accounting softwares not being able to integrate into DR. I think one thing that would be great would be more training videos or education in order to not rely on the customer success manager as much, just to improve efficiency and time.
Vendor Response
Thanks Joseph for the amazing review. We couldn't be happier to work with you and the team. We look forward to improving the global scorecard, the various performance reports and dashboarding capabilities.
Replied January 2022
Massimo
Financial Services, 201-500 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2022
DataRails used as an FP&A solution
Prior to DataRails our FP&A was run exclusively through maintaining numerous excel files which resulted in a much longer monthly close process. Through DataRails, we were able to automate the generation of our allocation based segment/product P&Ls, and monthly variance reporting to Budget/prior forecast. DataRails also reduced the probability of human error.
PROSThe overall flexibility of the platform. DataRails was able to create exactly what I wanted using our existing data structure and financial models. DataRails was able to replicate all of the benefits of other more well known Planning Solutions at a much lower investment cost - both financial and human capital.
CONSCertain aspects of our monthly forecasting process require more manual intervention than other more mature planning applications.
Reason for choosing Datarails
Having previously directed the implementation of larger/more well established planning solutions ( i.e. SAP PBC and Oracle PBCS), I felt that DataRails was able to give us all of the pros associated with these larger applications without having to incur the large investment and maintenance costs.
Jorge
Non-Profit Organization Management, 201-500 employees
Used monthly for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed September 2022
Easy to Implement and Superb Customer Service
We have had an excellent experience with the DataRails implementation Team. The person assigned to our account [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is very responsive to our questions and he has been able to trouble shoot all challenges that we have found during our configuration and implementation process. This Excellent Customer service is the primary reason why we stayed with DataRails.
PROSWe found the software very easy to implement as we were able to quickly interface our current Excel Spreadsheets with DataRails.
CONSWe are currently using DataRails primarily for Budgeting and we are using a significant number of spreadsheets/Budget Schedules to feed into the budget. The more sheets you add, the more DataRails slows down in order to update the budget when you revised one of these spreadsheets. If different people are updating various spreadsheets at the same time, it takes more time for DataRails to update all budget figures.
Reason for choosing Datarails
As a non-profit organization, we have very limited financial resources, so we were looking for a budgeting/reporting solution that meets our needs while being affordable. At the same time we did not want to get rid of all of our spreadsheets that we had already developed to draft our budget. DataRails offers the ability to integrate our current spreadsheets, which made the leaning curve very easy for our staff.
Anonymous
1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2019
Product is best in the business
It’s an easy tool to use and train on. Very adaptable, can look at our data in many different and useful ways with the Insights feature. Integrates with our ERP flawlessly. Can make changes in real time so decision makers always know exactly what’s happening and base the organizational direction on fresh data. Model building is straightforward, visualizations are enlightening, integrations are easy.
PROSUsing DataRails I can visualize data that I previously didn't have access to, this is by far the biggest pro-you can tap into data you've always had but previously couldn't work with. Other than that it's really easy to use, implementation is not lengthy, great customer service.
CONSOccasionally freezes but I figure that happens with any sort of system
Vendor Response
Helping decision makers make data driven decisions by tapping into hidden data is what DataRails was created for. Thank you for highlighting these advantages!
Replied December 2021
Jim
Verified reviewer
Retail, 5,001-10,000 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2019
CPM of choice
DataRails is used on a daily basis by my finance team as we perform analyses and drive insights. We chose to implement this cloud financial and analysis platform since we desperately needed a consolidation planning tool where we could continue using disparate spreadsheets and at the same time control our processes easier and better. DataRails gives us exactly this in addition to flexibility in reporting financial results.
PROS1-We started using their Insights feature instead of our BI. Really useful. 2-Made data collection easy and organized 3-Constant access to up-to-date numbers
CONSwould be nice if it had the option of drag and drop for inputs
Vendor Response
Glad to hear your team benefits from our platform on a daily basis. As you mentioned, Jim, data consolidation and flexible reporting are game-changing benefits that we offer our customers.
Replied December 2021
Theresa
Verified reviewer
Consumer Electronics, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2019
CPM tool of choice, excellent value
In my organization we use DataRails’ cloud financial and analysis platform for budgeting and forecasting all of our financial metrics. Each department continues to rely on Excel as usual for budgets, and then using DataRails Finance sees real-time updates and compares budgets with actuals. Useful for a variety of processes including workforce management, income statement analysis, forecasting, reporting, etc.
PROSSeamless integration with Excel User friendly interface Has streamlined our budgeting process
CONSOccasionally there are glitches in our templates
Vendor Response
We couldn't have said it better, Theresa! Providing our system's reporting benefits while enabling our customers to stay in excel makes using DataRails so much easier.
Replied December 2021
Lew
Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE