Home > Accounting Software > Accounting Seed > Accounting Seed vs IBM Planning Analytics

Accounting Seed vs IBM Planning Analytics

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

Our analysts compared Accounting Seed vs IBM Planning Analytics based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Accounting Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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Product Basics

Accounting Seed streamlines financial processes for mid-sized to enterprise businesses, particularly those in professional services, non-profits, and project-based industries. Built on the Salesforce platform, it leverages CRM integration and robust customization options to cater to specific needs. Key benefits include automated workflows, multi-currency support, and real-time financial reporting. Popular features range from billing and revenue recognition to inventory management and project accounting. User reviews praise its intuitive interface, scalability, and reporting capabilities. Pricing follows a tiered subscription model based on user count and desired functionality. While considered a premium solution, its feature set and integration capabilities often outweigh the cost for businesses seeking a comprehensive financial management system.

Pros

Easy to use interface
Robust reporting features
Seamless Salesforce integration
Customizable dashboards
Strong customer support

Cons

Limited customization options
Occasional bugs or glitches
Steeper learning curve for some features
Can be slow at times
No mobile app

IBM Planning Analytics is a multidimensional in-memory database for analytics and planning. Part of the IBM Analytics Suite and powered by TM1, it provides forecasting, budgeting and reporting at an enterprise scale through data compression. With all data connected to a central hub, it enables collaborative planning with workflow approvals and review protocols in place. Enterprises perform OLAP analysis faster through in-memory technology.

Integrating with Microsoft Excel, it gives businesses the ease and familiarity of working with spreadsheets with the power of an enterprise database. With automated time-series modeling, it enables self-service predictive analysis. The vendor offers a 30-day free trial.

$750 Monthly

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Tailored to your specific needs

$825 Monthly

Free Trial is available →

Get a free price quote

Tailored to your specific needs

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Product Insights

Better SalesForce Integration: Integrate with SalesForce CRM and use the SalesForce Product Object. Use it as a standalone product if the system is hooked to the complete platform.
Improved Invoicing: Make use of multiple invoice formats with built-in approvals. Set up recurring bills for improved security and compliance and to minimize the possibility of errors.
User-friendly Reporting: Create user-friendly or fully formatted financial reports using SalesForce. Easily track the company’s performance regularly with custom reports.
Time Tracking and Expenses: Manage accounting with built-in time cards. Track and report on expenses using the app.
Better Accessibility: Access and conduct business from anywhere in the world with the mobile app.
Eliminate repetitive tasks: Automate repetitive tasks and personalize the system using point-and-click automation. Leverage the feature to personalize with codes if the automation doesn't work for certain use cases.

Maximize ROI: Save time for analysis of trends, business performance and results by creating project plans faster. Reallocate budget and resources by leveraging deep insights into business performance and market trends. Collaborate with others on a single, unified platform with total transparency and visibility into business data, available for all plans.
Boost Sales: Win more business opportunities – boost annual sales quotas and deal sizes through end-to-end sales workflows. Grow revenue and reduce time to insight with robust sales analytics. Track campaigns for performance monitoring in real time and deep dive into data for buying behavior and customer churn analysis.
Financial Planning and Analysis: Optimize the business’ performance through valuable financial insights. Ensure the business is on track by creating and managing plans, budgets and forecasts. Simplifies the budgeting process through real-time calculations with automatic application of business rules.
Optimize Supply Chain: Create more accurate demand forecasts, get a clearer view of the resources and budget required to fulfill projected demand and update production plans accordingly. View historical data and drill down into summaries for deep-dive analysis and add visuals to spot key KPI trends.
Workforce Planning: Increase the workforce’s efficiency by acquiring and retaining skilled employees at the right time. Effectively manage staff schedules, task assignment and performance tracking through workforce analytics and HR planning tools.
Deploy Anywhere: Access the same data from everywhere with the flexibility to deploy on-premise, in the cloud or as a combination of both.
Scalable: Build and change plans flexibly in real time to match business requirements. Scales with increasing data volumes, number of users and planning models, without impacting existing workflows and performance.

Billing: Create an invoice, start a project or make a recurring billing plan without tedious integration. Customize recurring billing to business requirements. Configure and personalize the system for simple, smarter billing and payment management.
- Bookkeeping: Make sure that the business has relevant tax data and error-free and consistent bookkeeping with Avalara. Ensure seamless high-level security transactions without any fee structure with Stripe. Manage billing at the contract level by monitoring past, present and future activity. Make billing simpler with automatic subscription renewals.
Accounts Receivable: Bridge the gap between invoices and payment cycle for a productive cash flow. Automate collection notices and monitor customer activities, aging balances in real-time with configurable dashboards and reports.
- Single-View Visibility: Maintain visibility of the project lifecycle and manage customer communication with custom processes. Compile accounts receivable data from any date or time and gain real-time visibility. Get a single view of billing quotes and incoming sales orders. Eliminate the need for repetitive billing work and get paid faster.
Revenue Recognition: Free up the finance department’s time with a CRM-integrated customizable revenue management system. Enhance financial accuracy and make well-informed decisions by recognizing patterns, establishing connections and classifying financial data.
- Customizable Accounts Receivable: Customize accounts receivable for revenue recognition based on policies and procedures to ensure an efficient process. Streamline business workflow by automating revenue recognition. Minimize dependency on multiple IT resources with custom configuration. Record and edit contracts natively without the need of any additional integration software.
Recurring Payments: Eliminate repetitive manual calculation with usage-based billing and built-in tiered payments. Customize the solution according to the business model. Make single or batch billing records from single or multiple sales opportunities. Create invoices from sales orders at any stage of completion with a click. Use time cards or expense reports to create bills.
Paying Vendors: Customize the purchasing process and link a purchase order with a manufacturing or construction order as the business demands. Analyze stock level and purchase inventory without the hassle of integration points. Make transactions easier with the connectivity to over 14,500 banks and credit card companies.
General Ledger: Gain complete control of charts of accounts set up with the analytical and intuitive financial management software. Manage user configuration without coding or customization and automate back-office operations with ease.
Multi-Currency: Pay foreign vendors and receive payments in any currency. Keep track of the gain and losses based on fluctuations in the exchange rates with the standard pronouncements. Save time and money by automating conversions for transactions. Create compliant reports in multiple currencies. Minimize the possibility of errors with automated financial consolidation tools.
Multi-Company: Manage budget for multiple companies in a single database. Share sales quotes and opportunities, vendors, charts of accounts, projects and accounting periods between different entities. Get real-time insights by switching between companies and local account views. Boost visibility and control with flexible, multi-company reports.
Bank Reconciliation: Clear bank transactions and make quick reconciliations with minimal data entry using Bank Direct Connect. Ensure correct and up-to-date information by tracking changes with the audit trail function.
- Statement Management: Get statements from any bank and reconcile checking, savings and credit card accounts. Efficiently manage bank errors, keep an eye for frauds and maintain accurate cash flow.
Sales Order Management: Save time and money with a streamlined sales order process. Make a sales order from the inventory in the CRM. Reserve products for a particular customer’s orders by designating the items. Capture packaging and shipping details from a single interface.
- Purchase Orders: Generate purchase orders directly from sales. Monitor and manage warehouse and inventory directly into one integrated system. Build a customized solution with kitting, serialized and non-serialized inventory, historical inventory balance reporting, multi-warehouse and multi-location environments.
Project Accounting: Consolidate general ledger and project accounting into one system. Eliminate confusion and wasted time with an integrated general ledger and connected project system. Manage resources and gain rich insights from the financial reporting dashboards.
- Project Tracking: Keep track of the individual project and monitor overall business health. Analyze past projects and make the right project bid. Effectively track and manage the lifecycle of the project from beginning till the end.
Tax Accounting: Organize and store accounting data in one cloud-based platform. Ensure compliance, accuracy and efficiency with Avalara integration, providing 360-degree sales tax compliance control.
- Real-time Data: Get access to financial data in real-time and gain optimal flexibility for VAT reporting, tax calculation. Get an automatic sales tax calculator. Create VAT returns with Avalara VAT reporting and digitally transmit it to the tax authorities.
Data Security: Keep data safe with secure API, strong SalesForce IT infrastructure, two-factor authentication, user permissions, real-time event monitoring. Make sure your business is safe and the data is secure with a reliable, flexible solution.
Point and Click Configuration: Create translation for the configuration with the translation workbench. Update data fields with workflow rules and process builders.
Integration: Credit disbursement, collection tracking and customer interaction can be managed with SalesForce CRM integration, while Stripe integration helps with online payment collection.
Drag-and-Drop: Drag-and-drop editing allows the managed reports configuration allowing for a future data export to Excel. Track expenses, reports and budgets with a consolidated general ledger.

Architecture: Leverage a three-tier client-server architecture that includes a database, application server and front end, with data stored centrally in the OLAP server.
- TM1: Employs an efficient data compression algorithm to enable faster planning and analytics. Create business models by combining multiple data sources with manual input for effective decision-making.
Workspace: Create and access all plans and forecasts through its web-based interface. Grant role-based access to team members down to cell-level granularity. Collaborate on plans through chats and cell comments in the workspace.
- Data Visualizations: Choose from a rich library of visualizations to apply that includes bullet charts, waterfall charts, treemaps, word clouds and more. Input data intuitively to specific slots through drag-and-drop actions, and customize fonts and styles for personalized branding.
- Books and Views: Access related data in the form of web sheets, scorecards, videos and embedded web pages from a single interface. Leverage defined selections of a data cube — views — for analysis and data exploration, and export as an Excel worksheet.
Performance Tracking: Compare targets with actual results, and with actual performance over time. Quickly find the desired metrics and create visually compelling scorecards such as impact diagrams, strategy maps and custom diagrams. Add existing scorecards to books and analyze data over different periods, metrics and dimensions.
Data Modeling: Autonomously build a financial model by converting business requirements into cubes, dimensions, hierarchies and calculations. Transform and load data easily into a financial model, without the need to code.
Sandbox Environments: Work in a sandbox to manipulate data as needed in real time without impacting actual data. Compare different scenarios and test assumptions to see the impact of potential decisions.
Microsoft Excel Integration: Go beyond what spreadsheets can do – perform multi-dimensional analysis and big data exploration within the Excel interface, retaining its full functionality and formatting. Find answers to business questions by creating reports from Cognos TM1 through interactive drag-and-drop actions.
AI-Based Automation: Speed up planning cycles and get more reliable results. Create plans, forecasts and budgets through automated model creation, natural language processing and cognitive analytics.
On-Demand Module: Generate dynamic dashboards from existing Excel spreadsheets through autonomous data exploration. Move from annual planning to rolling forecasts based on real-time information by identifying variances in plans caused by external data.

Product Ranking

#281

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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IBM Planning Analytics

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User Sentiment Summary

84%

of users recommend this product

Accounting Seed has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 337 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

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Awards

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Streamlined Workflows: Automates tasks, reduces manual data entry.

Seamless Salesforce Integration: Unifies financial and customer data.

Real-time Insights: Provides instant visibility into key metrics.

Improved Reporting: Customizable dashboards and reports for better decision-making.

Scalability and Flexibility: Adapts to growing businesses and diverse needs.

Flexible Modeling: Users praise the software's ability to handle complex planning scenarios with ease, such as building detailed driver-based models for budgeting and forecasting.

Improved Collaboration: The platform facilitates better communication and data sharing among teams, streamlining the budgeting and forecasting process.

Powerful Reporting and Analytics: Users appreciate the robust reporting features, allowing them to generate insightful reports and dashboards for data visualization and analysis.

Limited Customization Options: May not fully adapt to specific needs.

Occasional Bugs or Glitches: Can disrupt workflows and require support.

Steeper Learning Curve for Some Features: Complex functionalities might require training.

Can Be Slow at Times: Performance issues can impact user experience.

No Mobile App: Lacks on-the-go access and data management.

Steep Learning Curve: Users have reported that IBM Planning Analytics can be difficult to learn, especially for those without prior experience with similar tools. Its interface and terminology can feel overwhelming initially.

Limited Reporting Capabilities: Some users have expressed frustration with the reporting functionality within Planning Analytics, finding it less intuitive and flexible compared to dedicated reporting tools. They desire more advanced formatting and customization options for presenting financial data.

Performance Issues: Users have occasionally encountered performance issues, particularly when dealing with large datasets or complex calculations. This can slow down budgeting and forecasting processes, impacting overall productivity.

Accounting Seed users share a love-hate relationship with the software. For many, its Salesforce integration shines brightest, with "it truly ties into Salesforce seamlessly" and "no need for an API connection" being common praises. This unified data view across sales and finance wins favor in companies wanting clear customer-to-financial insights. However, some find its customization options "cluttered and confusing," particularly when compared to rivals like Xero or QuickBooks. Users lament "frustrating input screens" and a "steeper learning curve" for complex features. Reporting is another battleground. Some rave about "robust reporting features" that provide "real-time insights," while others criticize "a rework is receiving a rework" and "not integral to any accounting software." Compared to Intuit's FinancialEdge, Accounting Seed's reporting flexibility seems to fall short for some. Despite these frustrations, praise for the user interface and support persists. "Easy to use interface" and "strong customer support" are frequent positives, contrasting with complaints about clunky competitors like Sage. Efficiency gains are also highlighted, with users enjoying "reduced manual work" and "streamlined financial processes." Overall, Accounting Seed seems to be a mixed bag. Its Salesforce integration and user interface charm some, while its reporting and customization limitations disappoint others. For companies prioritizing user-friendliness and real-time financial insights, it's a contender. But for those needing highly customizable reporting or slick on-the-go access (no mobile app yet!), other options might be a better fit.

User reviews from the past year suggest IBM Planning Analytics is a powerful tool for businesses seeking to streamline their financial planning and analysis processes. Users praise its robust features, particularly its budgeting, forecasting, and reporting capabilities. One standout feature is its ability to handle complex "what-if" scenarios, allowing businesses to model different outcomes based on various factors, which is crucial for making informed decisions in a volatile market. However, users also point out some drawbacks. The learning curve can be steep, especially for those unfamiliar with similar software. Some users find the interface less intuitive than competitors like Anaplan or Cube, and the pricing can be a significant investment for smaller businesses. Despite these weaknesses, users generally agree that IBM Planning Analytics offers a comprehensive solution for businesses needing advanced planning and analysis capabilities. Its ability to integrate with other IBM products and handle large datasets makes it particularly well-suited for larger enterprises with complex financial operations.

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FAQ

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