IBM Planning Analytics vs Patriot Accounting

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

IBM Planning Analytics Software Tool
Patriot Accounting Software Tool

Product Basics

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.
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Patriot Accounting is a cloud-based accounting software designed for small businesses and their accountants. It offers a user-friendly interface and comprehensive features for managing finances, including income and expense tracking, invoicing, bill pay, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting. Patriot caters to businesses with basic to moderate accounting needs, making it suitable for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small business owners who lack accounting expertise. Its key strengths lie in its affordability, ease of use, and customer support. Users praise its intuitive interface, clear navigation, and helpful tutorials, making it easy to learn and navigate even for accounting novices. Additionally, Patriot boasts excellent customer support, readily available to assist users with any questions or concerns. Popular features include customizable invoices, automatic bank feeds, inventory management, and payroll integration (with an additional fee). Compared to similar products, Patriot stands out for its emphasis on user-friendliness, affordability, and exceptional customer service. While it may lack some advanced features found in competitor software, its core functionalities and ease of use make it a compelling choice for many small businesses. Pricing starts at $20 per month for the basic plan, offering essential accounting features. The premium plan, at $30 per month, adds unlimited users, advanced features, and payroll integration. Both plans come with a free 30-day trial, allowing users to test the software before committing.

Pros
  • Easy to use and navigate
  • Affordable pricing
  • Excellent customer support
  • Automatic bank feeds
  • Inventory management (paid add-on)
Cons
  • Limited features compared to competitors
  • No mobile app
  • Payroll integration requires additional fee
  • Not ideal for complex accounting needs
  • Limited customization options
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$825 Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$20 Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • 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. 
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  • Streamlined accounting processes: Patriot Accounting simplifies and automates many accounting tasks, such as invoicing, bill payment, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting. This saves time, reduces errors, and helps you stay on top of your finances effortlessly.
  • Improved financial visibility: The software provides real-time insights into your business's financial health through clear dashboards and reports. This allows you to track income and expenses, monitor cash flow, analyze profitability, and make informed financial decisions.
  • Enhanced organization and control: Patriot Accounting helps you organize your financial data, maintain accurate records, and easily access information whenever needed. This promotes better financial management and compliance with tax regulations.
  • Simplified tax preparation: The software generates tax-ready reports that streamline the tax filing process, saving you time and effort. It also integrates with popular tax software, further simplifying tax preparation.
  • Accessibility and collaboration: Patriot Accounting's cloud-based platform allows you to access your financial data from anywhere with an internet connection. It also enables collaboration with your accountant or bookkeeper, promoting efficient financial management and timely financial advice.
  • Enhanced decision-making: The financial insights and reports provided by Patriot Accounting empower you to make data-driven decisions about your business's finances. This can lead to improved profitability, cost savings, and overall financial growth.
  • Peace of mind and confidence: Knowing that your accounting is organized and accurate can reduce stress and provide peace of mind. You can focus on running your business, confident that your financial data is secure and accessible.
  • Scalability for growth: Patriot Accounting can grow with your business, accommodating increased transactions and complexity as your business expands. This ensures you have the support you need to manage your finances effectively, even as your operations grow.
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  • 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. 
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  • Income and expense tracking: Record and categorize income and expenses to monitor cash flow and profitability.
  • Invoicing: Create and send professional invoices, track payments, and send reminders to customers.
  • Bill pay: Pay bills and track expenses easily, ensuring timely payments and organized records.
  • Bank reconciliation: Match bank transactions with your records to ensure accuracy and prevent discrepancies.
  • Financial reporting: Generate various reports, including profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and tax reports.
  • Customizable chart of accounts: Create a chart of accounts that aligns with your business's unique needs and structure.
  • Automatic bank feeds: Import bank transactions automatically, saving time and reducing manual data entry.
  • Inventory management (paid add-on): Track inventory levels, manage stock, and generate purchase orders (available for an additional fee).
  • Payroll integration (paid add-on): Integrate with Patriot's payroll software to streamline payroll processing and tax filings (available for an additional fee).
  • User-friendly interface: Navigate the software easily with intuitive menus, clear labels, and helpful tutorials.
  • Excellent customer support: Access free US-based customer support via phone, email, and live chat.
  • Cloud-based platform: Access your data from anywhere with an internet connection, ensuring flexibility and security.
  • Mobile-friendly access: View your account and manage basic tasks from a mobile device.
  • Secure data storage: Rest assured that your financial data is protected with bank-level security measures.
  • Free 30-day trial: Try the software for free before committing to a subscription.
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Product Ranking

#335

among all
Accounting Software

#369

among all
Accounting Software

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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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Accounts Payable Accounts Receivable Banking And Cash Management Budget And Expense Management Financial Statements And Revenue Management General Ledger And Chart Of Accounts Integration And Extensibility Inventory Management Journal Entries Mobile Support Multi-company Accounting And Asset Management Platform Capabilities Project Accounting Reporting And Analytics Tax Management 89 90 94 49 71 75 42 58 46 20 57 67 50 54 83 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

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.
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User-friendly interface: Patriot Accounting is known for its intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, making it suitable for users with varying levels of accounting experience.
Affordable pricing: Patriot Accounting offers competitive pricing plans, making it an attractive option for small businesses and freelancers on a budget.
Strong customer support: Patriot Accounting provides responsive and helpful customer support through multiple channels, including phone, email, and live chat.
Basic accounting features: Patriot Accounting covers essential accounting tasks like invoicing, bill pay, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting.
Integration with popular payment processors: Patriot Accounting integrates with popular payment processors like Stripe and PayPal, streamlining payment collection.
Mobile app availability: Patriot Accounting offers a mobile app for managing finances on the go.
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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.
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Limited inventory management: Lacks advanced features like barcode scanning, serial number tracking, and purchase order management, making it unsuitable for businesses with complex inventory needs.
No multi-currency support: Only supports transactions in a single currency, which can be limiting for businesses operating internationally.
Limited reporting capabilities: May not provide the level of customization and detail needed by some businesses, especially those with complex reporting requirements.
Scalability limitations: May not be suitable for large businesses with a high volume of transactions or complex accounting needs, as its features and capabilities may not scale effectively.
Integration limitations: Integrates with a limited number of third-party applications, which may restrict users who rely on specific software or require extensive integrations with other business systems.
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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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Patriot Accounting carves a niche among accounting software with its user-friendly interface, affordable pricing, and strong customer support. Users with basic accounting needs, like freelancers and small businesses, praise its intuitive design and straightforward features for invoicing, bill pay, and bank reconciliation. The mobile app and integrations with popular payment processors like Stripe further enhance its convenience. However, Patriot Accounting's limitations become apparent as businesses grow or require more complex functionalities. Users often cite its lack of advanced inventory management, multi-currency support, and in-depth reporting as dealbreakers. Compared to competitors like QuickBooks, which offers a wider range of features and integrations, Patriot Accounting might feel restrictive. Businesses with international operations or intricate inventory systems may find themselves needing to upgrade to a more robust solution. Ultimately, Patriot Accounting's suitability hinges on a user's specific needs and priorities. For those seeking a beginner-friendly and budget-conscious accounting solution, it stands out with its ease of use and affordability. However, businesses with more intricate accounting requirements or aspirations for future growth might find themselves needing a software that can scale alongside their ambitions.

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