Which FP&A Solution Should You Choose?

What is an FP&A solution?

An FP&A solution is software designed to support financial planning and analysis. It enables organisations to create, update and monitor budgets, forecasts, scenarios and key performance indicators in a far more structured way than traditional spreadsheets.

A modern FP&A platform should help organisations:

• automate manual budgeting and forecasting tasks
• adopt a driver-based planning approach
• support continuous forecasting processes
• connect planning, reporting and analysis
• visualise actuals, KPIs, trends and variances
• enable broader participation across the organisation

This is where the difference between a traditional budgeting tool and a modern FP&A platform becomes clear. A budgeting solution may address part of the challenge. A comprehensive FP&A platform addresses the entire process. Planacy brings these capabilities together in a single connected platform, combining financial planning, analysis, reporting, dashboards, scenario modelling, integrations and flexible workflows.

What Budgeting and Forecasting Solutions Are Available?

Organisations evaluating budgeting and forecasting software are typically faced with four main categories of solutions:

1. Excel or Google Sheets 

Spreadsheets remain widely used, particularly in organisations that have grown rapidly or developed their planning processes incrementally over time. The challenge is that these processes often become highly manual, difficult to control and increasingly hard to scale.

2. ERP Systems Used for Planning

ERP systems play an important role as data sources, but they are rarely designed to provide the best support for budgeting, forecasting, scenario planning and user-friendly planning workflows.

3. Specialist Budgeting Tools

These solutions can be effective for simpler requirements, but often reach their limits as organisations look to adopt driver-based planning, increase forecasting frequency or integrate planning more closely with reporting and analysis.

4. Dedicated FP&A Platforms

This is the category most growing and mature organisations explore when looking to professionalise their financial planning and analysis processes.

In Planacy's report, The State of Corporate Financial Planning, many organisations still report relying on spreadsheets for their financial planning processes. However, users of dedicated planning software consistently report higher levels of satisfaction, greater confidence in forecast quality and stronger organisational engagement.

What Should You Look for in an FP&A Platform?

When evaluating FP&A solutions, it is important to look beyond feature lists. Equally important is understanding how well the platform supports the way your organisation actually works. Here are six key capabilities to look for:

1. Driver-Based Planning

The platform should make it easy to build planning models around the factors that genuinely drive business performance, such as sales volumes, headcount, projects, revenue mix or other operational drivers.

2. Efficient and Frequent Forecast Updates

A strong forecasting solution should make it easy to update forecasts regularly and continuously without creating unnecessary manual work.

3. Scenario Planning That Delivers Real Value

Users should be able to quickly create alternative scenarios, test assumptions and understand the impact on profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow.

4. Integration with Your Core Systems

A modern FP&A platform should integrate seamlessly with ERP systems, BI tools, Excel and other key data sources. Otherwise, you're simply moving the problem from one place to another.

5. Reporting and Analysis Within the Same Workflow

Planning without performance tracking only tells part of the story. The platform should help you analyse trends, variances and KPIs against both budget and forecast.

6. Flexibility Without Complexity

You should be able to adapt the solution to your processes without creating an overly complex environment that requires constant custom development and maintenance.

Planacy has been built with these requirements in mind, combining flexible modules, powerful integration capabilities, driver-based planning, scenario modelling, reporting and analysis within a single connected platform.

Download our Buyer’s Guide to discover the key questions to ask and the factors to consider when choosing an FP&A solution. ⭢

When Is Planacy a Strong Choice?

Planacy is particularly well suited to organisations that:

• involve multiple stakeholders in the financial planning process, from around 10 users to several hundred
  
• have outgrown Excel and spreadsheet-based planning
  
• find their current solution too manual or too rigid
  
• want to adopt a more driver-based approach to planning
  
• aim to involve more budget owners in the planning process
  
• need greater structure around forecasting, cash flow planning and scenario modelling
  
• want to connect planning, reporting and analysis in a single workflow
  
• require a platform that can support complex processes without becoming difficult to manage or use
   

Planacy is designed primarily for medium-sized and large organisations and is used by finance professionals including Business Controllers, CFOs, Heads of FP&A and similar roles. The platform is particularly relevant for organisations that want to get up and running quickly while also investing in a solution that can handle increasing complexity and scale as the business grows.

For organisations currently evaluating different options, it may also be helpful to explore our comparison of alternative solutions, particularly if you're considering Planacy alongside other budgeting and forecasting platforms.

Why Organisations Are Moving Beyond Spreadsheets and Legacy Solutions

It's easy to understand why many organisations start with Excel. It's flexible, familiar and quick to implement. The challenges typically emerge later.

As organisations grow, spreadsheets often become:

• difficult to govern and quality-assure
• time-consuming to maintain
• dependent on a small number of key individuals
• challenging to use across multiple departments
• increasingly restrictive when forecasts need to be updated more frequently

According to the latest edition of The State of Corporate Financial Planning 2026, spreadsheets remain widely used, with 57% of organisations still relying on them for financial planning. At the same time, more organisations are turning to dedicated planning software as the demand for forecast accuracy, continuous planning and advanced analysis continues to grow. The report also shows that organisations using dedicated planning platforms report higher levels of forecast quality, stronger ownership and greater engagement compared with those relying on spreadsheets.

Read more about the report and explore our latest insights into FP&A trends for 2026 ⭢

Is Planacy the Best FP&A Solution?

That depends on your organisation's specific requirements. However, for many medium-sized and large organisations across the Nordics and Europe, Planacy is a compelling choice. Planacy is particularly well suited to organisations looking for:

• a modern, flexible and scalable FP&A platform
• support for budgeting, forecasting, analysis and reporting
• intuitive and efficient scenario planning
• automated cash flow forecasting
• driver-based planning capabilities
• seamless integrations with existing systems
• a solution that enables continuous, data-driven planning
• stronger engagement and ownership throughout the planning process
• rapid time-to-value

One of Planacy's key strengths is its ability to combine powerful planning capabilities with flexible configuration options and a clear focus on reducing administrative workload. The result is not simply a more structured process on paper, but a practical way of working that delivers value in day-to-day operations.

How to Choose the Right FP&A Solution

Before selecting an FP&A platform, it is worth considering a few key questions:

• How frequently do you want to update your forecasts?
• How much of your current planning process is manual?
• How many people need to be involved?
• How important is it to engage stakeholders across the organisation?
• Do you need support for driver-based planning?
• How important are scenario modelling, cash flow forecasting and analysis?
• How much flexibility do you require in your models and workflows?
• How important is seamless integration with your existing systems?

If your answers point towards greater automation, improved structure, higher forecast quality and stronger analytical capabilities, it is unlikely that another spreadsheet model is the answer. Instead, it may be time to invest in a platform designed specifically for modern FP&A.

Conclusion: Which FP&A Solution Should You Choose?

If you're simply looking for a tool to support the annual budgeting process, there are many options available. However, if you're looking for a platform that simplifies data-driven financial planning and analysis, reduces administrative effort, improves ownership, increases forecast accuracy and enables a more continuous planning process, Planacy is a strong option to consider. This is why more organisations are moving away from spreadsheets and legacy planning methods. Not because they want another system, but because they want a better way of working.