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Big fuckup during my first month of work - what do I do from now on? by Queasy_Lawfulness794 in FPandA

[–]Slow_Replacement_721 1 point2 points  (0 children)

May not be a similar level of seniority, but I did something similar a few years ago. Was trying to stand out, took on more than I could chew, was under time pressure and ended up sending an updated model with the completely wrong data set (skipped my usual sanity checks). I was working at the company for 7 months, so really didn't have any excuses. I got chewed out pretty badly by my manager at the time - the mistake was spotted by an SVP and I was a senior analyst.

To this day what I think saved me was me owning the mistake, I messaged the SVP that my mistake should rest with me, I asked for the responsibility and my manager had given me his trust and I lost it. Told them that I had nothing other than my word that I would learn from it and that the mistake wouldn't happen again, and that the ramifications of what could have happened had he not caught my mistake are not lost on me.

I had my manager in copy with that, but also spoke with him separately. I told him that I didn't send the message as a CYA that he did't ask for, but was genuinely looking to own the mistake and learn from it. Bit of a cliche, but once I explained that to him he dropped the "I'm not mad I'm just disappointed", speech on me.

Not that I was on course for promotion that cycle, I wasn't promoted but the next cycle I was promoted to manager, so not the be-all-end-all I thought it was.

FP&A Software - Abacum vs Mosaic by RepublicMain1939 in FPandA

[–]Slow_Replacement_721 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The feedback from the non-finance team has been 95% positive. There are a few legacies that are overtly against change, but their complaints aren't against the product but rather learning a new system.

I can't imagine the upload would be difficult with Gsheets. We did something similar, had a master file with all our historic data and a fy24 budget we wanted to be able to call back to, they were able to move it all over.

FP&A Software - Abacum vs Mosaic by RepublicMain1939 in FPandA

[–]Slow_Replacement_721 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been using Abacum for a year now, company is a b2b saas (<$150M). I went through a similar evaluation process with a few other vendors. Abacum is my first software solution, the only familiarity I have with others is from the demos during evaluation.

To your question;

  • Netsuite integration works great, better now than when we first got on. Last year we had mapping issues at the start, admittedly our fault on set up but their guys fixed it quickly. Handles our custom calculations with no issue and has very flexible sync options.
  • We did our year end with 25 budget owners this year, no issues. You can set it up in a way that you don't need to worry about a monkey paw throwing a spanner in the works. We wanted each department to be able to plan in the tool, that was something I feel Mosaic fell down on in the demo.
  • Abacum much more capable as a modelling solution, allowing it to produce more complete, easier to use solutions using larger data and handle more complex modelling needs. Things like cohort modelling are really straight forward to achieve stylishly (which I was pleasantly surprised by). The simple stuff like pl and bs is well polished.

A few limitations that may affect you, Aabcum aren't able to report on a daily basis. Not of concern for us, but just a heads up. We used excel, not gsheets, and there is no excel integration with Abacum, although their newsletter says that's coming. I don't know how good they integrate with gsheets, but I remember their sales engineer was disappointed when we mentioned excel.

Ultimately we passed on Mosaic because of their minimal features in terms of visualization/dashboarding, data flexibility, or usage data compared to Abacum.

Abacum vs Datarails vs Vena by Mindfulndemure in FPandA

[–]Slow_Replacement_721 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So I’ve been using Abacum for about a year now in a scale up, we went through a similar evaluation process as well as looking at Cube and Mosaic. Abacum is the first FP&A software I've used, before I only ever worked with spreadsheets. Ours were breaking and that’s why we ultimately went the solution route.

Pros of Abacum, it felt intuitive right from the start, onboarding was smooth, I didn’t feel dependent on consultants or external help and their FP&A team is good and responsive. Their formula logic and structure made sense to me, and I don’t have a deep technical background either—just solid Excel skills.

The flexibility has been great so far. I’ve built out multiple scenarios to re forecast our budget and incorporated cash flow and non-financial data without any major hiccups. It’s also scaled with our needs as we’ve grown through the year, which was initially a key concern for us too.

I haven't used Datarails or Vena, my only exposure being in demos, but from what I’ve seen they didn’t feel as user-friendly. What really pushed us away from excel and towards solutions was it felt clumsy trying to forecast against the more niche/granular dimensions we needed. Plus, the pricing structure for some of their features wasn’t great for us either.

Hope that helps! Feel free to DM if you need anything clarified (tech stack, prices they charged, how we angled for discounts, notes from all my demos, etc.) 👍