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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
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Reporting (18th)
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 (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Business Performance Management category, the mindshare of Board is 4.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planful is 3.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Board4.9%
Planful3.3%
Other91.8%
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

"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."
"We are currently implementing Board Financial Consolidation package with Board consultants with optimum results in terms of time and comprehension of the product."
"The flexibility and the user-experience are the most valuable features of the solution."
"BOARD provides in-depth insight to enable users in their decision-making process."
"I have been totally thrilled with BOARD."
"The most valuable features are the reporting and the charts. The reporting functionality is handy for aggregation, when it comes to planning. That ability is fascinating and our users are very happy with it. The charts and the reporting allow our users to see all the data and to see how things are going this year or in the COVID situation. They're seeing everything. Instead of having to check data line by line, they're seeing it in a graph and they're seeing it in charts."
"I find Board to be simple and easy to use."
"My favourite feature of BOARD is the ability to write back to the OLAP DB, as well as the Rdb, and secure user data allowing databases to be flushed and rebuilt daily."
"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

"The initial setup was very complex for us."
"The one thing that I think we would like to see in terms of improvement of the application is the ability to print."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"At first, the product was not very intuitive, but now if you get it, it is customizable."
"Some of our users are still using an MS Office add-in for Excel for certain calculations, and when they export from Board, some of the values, some of the totals and column names, are not coming through into Excel."
"I would like to see a better Web client, where the controls work the same way as in the Windows client. I do think that the focus is now on the Web, so it should be improved upon."
"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. ​"
"It would be nice to have more connectors for other data sources. BOARD is a great tool to become the single source of the truth. Making it easier to connect data sources for niche software tools will make it easier to keep everything in one place."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
"​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."
"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"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
9%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
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: April 2026.
886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.