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Board vs Planful comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Board
Ranking in Business Performance Management
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Reporting (17th)
Planful
Ranking in Business Performance Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Business Performance Management category, the mindshare of Board is 4.6%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planful is 3.3%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Board4.6%
Planful3.3%
Other92.1%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2645016 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Software Delivery at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Offers flexibility in design and saves time in budgeting and forecasting processes
I find Board to be simple and easy to use. It offers significant flexibility in designing solutions. The system overall is very useful, with many capabilities that provide flexibility. Our budgeting and forecasting processes support around three hundred twenty users who would otherwise rely on Excel, making Board invaluable for saving time.
reviewer1110591 - PeerSpot reviewer
Financial Planning & Analysis - Finance Manager at a engineering company with 501-1,000 employees
It has helped us speed up the turnaround time on our consolidation, and we haven't had anything come up that the program has not been able to solve
The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results. So, if we wanted to look at our financial trends and put it into some type of graphical interface for people to look at, we still have to leverage Excel for that. The dashboards aren't as usable as maybe some of the other solutions, such as Tableau or other BI tools. The application that we use today for our BI tools is Tableau. That's how people absorb information. We don't really use the functionality or dashboards within Planful because of the robustness of Tableau. That's our single source of data. If Planful was better or more comparable in terms of features and functionality, we could probably leverage that in Planful.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We are currently implementing Board Financial Consolidation package with Board consultants with optimum results in terms of time and comprehension of the product."
"It has a good set of visual elements that you can use and can explain quite well."
"We can build reports super fast.​"
"The reporting part has been very valuable as the capabilities of the tool do not have to change graphs, change how grids are displayed, and can create reports on the fly."
"One of the reasons we chose Board is because the performance to cost ratio is high."
"I think it's flexible. I chose this solution because, even though it wasn't out-of-the-box, you can customize it, and the long-term growth potential of the software is where I see the value."
"The ability to create a data model and have it in testing within a week is fantastic."
"BOARD provides in-depth insight to enable users in their decision-making process."
"It has helped us speed up the turnaround time on our consolidation. We don't have to do reporting in Excel anymore, which has cut down on the errors and the efficiency of our close time."
"Planful has probably cut our time in half, given that we can now leverage the cloud-based services to interact with our subs for getting their forecast inputs."
"I believe the ROI is very high."
 

Cons

"We, and finance and accounting, use the client more, where everyone else is on the Web version. Going between the two makes it difficult sometimes."
"The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance. The consolidated finance area also needs improvement."
"It would be nice to have more connectors for other data sources."
"In terms of scalability, I would say that there are some limitations in the solution. It cannot handle data that is too big."
"Initial setup was complex because my company has its own fiscal calendar that was difficult to set up."
"We can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model."
"Implementation is rather complex. BOARD has a lot of flexibility, but it is sort of a development tool."
"I would like an eLearning platform for BOARD."
"Some of the behind the scenes processing for the simulation engines has a learning curve to use in that there are certain changes that need to happen for the reporting to be "Live"."
"The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results. So, if we wanted to look at our financial trends and put it into some type of graphical interface for people to look at, we still have to leverage Excel for that. The dashboards aren't as usable as maybe some of the other solutions, such as Tableau or other BI tools."
"The part that we liked about Excel is that it had a better interface in terms of just graphical illustration of our results."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"​In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."
"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."
"Right now, everything is on a three-year term contract, and that is our main cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
What needs improvement with Board?
Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance.
What is your primary use case for Board?
Our organization primarily uses Board ( /products/board-reviews ) for budgeting and forecasting.
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Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB
Tandem Diabetes Care, Reed Exhibitions, SkyGolf, Zep Inc., Thule, Stylesight, Schumacher Group, Parsons Electric, Nextag, Groupon
Find out what your peers are saying about Board vs. Planful and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.