Cube

Avantages

Cube is a very deep tool and can be utilized for a variety of business purposes including financial reporting, account reconciliations, budgetary analysis, etc. In my experience, depth and flexibility with this type of tool often comes at the sacrifice of usability, but Cube is the exception. Both the online portal and the Excel plug-in are very intuitive and user-friendly. There was a bit of a process to initially get everything set up, but the experts at Cube were very friendly and helpful in walking us through every step, answering questions, and generally going above and beyond to ensure we got the most out of their product. The online dashboard is very easy to set up and personalize and can give a great at-a-glace illustration of business trends or any other company-specific metrics you would like to track. As an avid Excel-user myself, the Excel plug-in is my personal favorite feature that Cube offers. Using the plug-in allows data pulled into spreadsheets and sliced and diced as necessary within seconds, without resorting to macros, power queries, or any over-complicated formulas that would otherwise be needed to accomplish the same task. Cube is an all-around strong product that will only continue to improve and I would highly recommend.

Inconvénients

As with any software tool, there are occasionally small things with Cube that can be improved. What sets some companies apart in this area is their willingness to listen to feedback and continuously improve their product - Cube absolutely passes this test. They have been very patient and willing to listen to any and all feedback we have offered, and I can tell they genuinely care about hearing customer feedback that they can use to continuously develop new features and improve existing ones. The software is designed with the end-user in mind and it shows.

Avantages

Lots of great things to share about Cube! Firstly, the implementation support has been excellent - extremely helpful and knowledgeable technical advisors who have had a solution to every complex request we have had. Secondly, the ability to overlay Cube into our existing Excel forecasting models and management reporting has made it exactly the right tool for our business. Finally, the data integration capabilities are powerful and easy to use - it is most robust data integration between an FP&A system and ERP for actuals that I have ever been a part of.

Inconvénients

Currently there is a lack of flexibility in the reporting in Excel. Retrieving data to produce reports is quick & accurate, but takes a lot of formatting to be presentable, especially to users outside of Finance. For example, when retrieve data, it shows all parents and children in the same column rather having the option to present these in a tabular format, unlike an Excel PivotTable. I haven't yet used the dashboard functionality in the Cube web portal which I expect would improve this, but given our wider business is reliant on excel, improvements to the reporting out of the Cube Excel add-on would be helpful.

Avantages

We've been using Cube software for a little over a year. So far, the experience has been excellent. We are able to pull the data from our accounting software, which is Sage Intacct, right away after setting up the initial connection. The end user interface is in Excel format, which is super friendly for people like me who do analysis via Excel frequently. On top of all these, Cube is able to integrate with other software like Salesforce. We've been able to pull the sales data from Salesforce via Cube successfully, which is great news considering the more integrated it is, the less effort the user needs to put in. Customer experience has been decent and timely. Whenever we had issues with Cube like importing/exporting entries or setting up new dimension accounts, we usually receive a response promptly from Cube support after sending an email over to explain the situation. The actual time that takes to solve the issue is typically within 24 hours.

Inconvénients

Not that I am aware of. If there is one thing I have to say about it, the integration setup via Salesforce was taking longer than we anticipated. It's also partially our fault since we didn't have enough hands to help set up the API on our end.

Avantages

Cube improves the efficiency and customization of the day to day functions of FP&A. Using Cube, we've reduced the preparation time of recurring reporting immensely. Cube is highly customizable in both Google sheets and excel making it a versatile tool to enhance FP&A deliverables.

Inconvénients

In the year my Company has utilized Cube, we've experienced numerous issues with complete and accurate reporting. There have been multiple instances where the integration between Cube and our accounting system were not functioning properly rendering the capabilities of Cube unusable. The customer support team is very responsive, however these issues sometimes takes days to resolve.

Avantages

Cube is very user friendly, you do not require alot of training or technical knowledge to access Cube. Perfect tool for FP&A department of a mid size company as it enables you to drilldown to the leaf level information while maintaining the high level information the executive team is interested in viewing. Most impressive aspect of cube is that it allows you to fetch huge amounts of data within seconds and the recent enhancements cube implemented like 'remove 0 rows from results' is a major plus in reteriving relevant data.

Inconvénients

The only shortcoming i can think of is that it is limited to 8 top line Dimenions. Although you can bring in as many attributes of data as you want, but i would really like cube to increase top line dimensions to 10. Also, the ability for cross level interaction within multiples cube would be a major plus once implemented.

Avantages

By far have gained the most traction with other areas of the business like sales, operations or marketing as they can intuitively use this embedded in excel vs a new system. Transition and understanding super quick and easy

Inconvénients

Dashboarding still not intuitive enough like a PowerBI or Tableau

No detailed project management tool to track progress of important FP&A projects like budgets, long term plans or rolling forecasts.

Avantages

Quick and easy to implement. Customized templates are great and flexible. Streamlining old manual processes through automation.

Inconvénients

Processing speed could be a bit better, especially when running routine data fetches.

Avantages

Cube had a quick implementation window with a small learning curve to get up and running. Our team was hesitant at first migrating off a more robust financial planning tool and back into Excel, but it was seamless and has ended up improving te reliability and timeliness of our reporting.

Inconvénients

It would be nice if Cube had a more robust headcount planning tool. We are a small company so managing this in Excel is okay, but I could see this becoming a challenge as we grow and scale.

Avantages

I like the ease of use. Along with the ability to integrate the reports/data with google sheets & excel.

Inconvénients

I don't have any major complaints at the moment.

Avantages

Cube is quite fast to get up and running and offers a lot of flexibility with aggregating multiple data sources thanks to integrations with Excel and Google Sheets. Allows for easy template creation to streamline routine financial reporting. Customer support is usually quite responsive and helpful.

Inconvénients

We could never get an automatic data connection with NetSuite working, so it is always a manual upload process each month. Missing certain features like a headcount planning module or robust forecasting capabilities in order to be an effective end-to-end FP&A platform for larger companies at scale.

Avantages

Cube provides an interactive, easy to use and simple interface to access and analyse financial data in a matter in which many finance professionals are familiar with - within Excel itself. Once it's set up, it works well in achieving its goal through simplicity and intuitive template building. It provides a great way to quickly update budgets, drill into detail from the underlying Cube data table, and data is easy to update (such as dimensions or mapping) or export raw data for analysis in external platforms.

Inconvénients

Detail isn't as easily visible as it could be, as drilling int detail requires first creating a Cube template and then drilling into a specific value. While this simplicity is a key strength for high level updates or budgets, or even GL-level data, analysisng underlying transactional data using Cube isn't as effective as it could be. Cube should aim to implement the ability to query its data warehouse via external platforms such as Power BI or Tableau, which doesn't currently exist. Being able to query the Cube data via API, Odata feed etc would elevate the solution to a higher level, and would allow Cube to not only provide value in Excel, but to be used as a warehouse solution as well, which would remove the need for software such as Snowflake in small or medium sized businesses. Currently to analyse Cube data in more granular detail requires exporting the data manually to the tool of choice. This is unfortuante as it seems Cube already has the tools and setup in place to act as a good warehouse tool - the customer has set up the dimensions, structures, queries and rules within Cube to create Excel Cubes, would be good if it could then be queried externally.

Avantages

The integration with Netsuite was extremely helpful in our analyses we run monthly

Inconvénients

There is a slight learning curve when it comes to Cube and its functionalities

Avantages

Cube is easy to use once you get a hang of it. I love how we can go into Cube and pull any information that we need since most of our data are in Cube. I love how easy it is to integrate our system with Cube as well. I mostly use the system for month end close process and never encounter any problems so far!

Inconvénients

It took a few trials to be able to fully understand and function it seamlessly, but once you know how it works, you can basically do anything. Our Cube support is very helpful and quick to jump into any questions we have.

Avantages

Very easy to use. The big win is Cubes native gsheet/excel addon.

Inconvénients

Not as powerful as some more expensive competitors.

Avantages

Cube has helped speed up month-end reporting by days! What used to be an amalgamation of multiple spreadsheets filled with errors has turned into an easy click of the button.

Inconvénients

Manually importing data - although it's still a click of the button, having to click that button a few times a day can be a little annoying. Although, I hear that they will be automating this feature in the near future so looking forward to it!

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning

Avantages

Ease of use. Integration with Netsuite and the Excel addon are both very straightforward and easy to use.

Inconvénients

Integration is not completely automatic, any new addition/change to your chart of account needs a manual add. Customer service was excellent at the beginning but am now slower to respond.

Avantages

My favorite thing about Cube is the amount of time I save. Whether it is pulling budget vs actual, filling in templates for board reporting. All of it is done in a single click of a button.

Inconvénients

The one thing I would recommend is an automatic sync. But the manual Sync only take 3 minutes, so not a huge negative.

Avantages

Overall an excellent product that is intuitive, simple to use, and agile. We needed the flexibility for FP&A and many of the enterprise tools have high barriers of entry and up-front configuration needed.

Inconvénients

Integration into our ERP is a bit clunky as it needs file download and upload. Better integration would be helpful.

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Ease of use, cost and time to setup

Avantages

it is super easy to understand and use for the new users

Inconvénients

There is nothing; I am enjoying using Cube till now

Avantages

The ability to fetch well mapped data for ease of responding to stakeholder requests

Inconvénients

Data mapping, data input configuration. It took sometime to set-up and there was some lag in getting integrations sorted successfully.

Avantages

I love the drilldown function and the ability to fetch data super quickly. In addition, it provides a really intuitive view of our accounting software and how the 2 map together.

Inconvénients

Not as feature-rich when compared to some of the larger ERP alternatives.

Avantages

The ability to slice and dice information as one source of truth is very important.

Inconvénients

It did take a little while for this exec to navigate and work out the functionality.

Avantages

Cube allows an easy overview of P&L which can be used in excel, making month on month reporting easier for an accountant.

Inconvénients

It can be slow for information on posted in the accounting system to be updated on Cube.

Avantages

The ability to integrate the product in our models on Google Sheets.

Inconvénients

The product doesn't have many features. It lacks analytics, dashboards, and other comprehensive features.

Avantages

The software is easy to use and quite intuitive. I've used other planning and reporting tools and was able to use their tool without watch any training, just trial and error.

Inconvénients

1) Limitations/restrictions to publish and override data by GL intersect
2) Limited to 7 dimensions

Avantages

One of my favorite parts of Cube was how quick and easy the implementation process was. We were up and running in less than a month after signing the contract and the team communicated with us the whole team. The training was super simple and our account manager is almost always available instantly to help us with whatever we need. I can actually sleep better at night knowing that all my information is correct and accurate and stored somewhere other than google drive. It has also helped me cut down immensely on the time to create a monthly report book.

Inconvénients

I would say the only downsides are that there is a limited number of dimensions your organization can have. As a nonprofit, we report on a lot of different areas and having more dimensions available to us could make things easier. On top of that, we show things at a very granular, detailed level in reports and having more dimensions would allow us to showcase these details more easily. It also can be a bit slow to run the imports from our accounting software Intacct to bring in actuals each month so I have to make sure I plan in advance to give 30 mins to an hour for the details to come through.

Alternatives envisagées 

Prophix et Vena

Pourquoi passer à Cube

price, implementation timeline, ease of use and flexibility, ongoing support.

Avantages

Cube has allowed my team to automate several aspects of our budgeting, forecasting, and monthly financial reviews. We're able to quickly drilldown into the details to see assumptions around our budgets and line item expenses. We have created templates that allow us to upload monthly forecasts in real time as we meet with our department leads.

Inconvénients

I would love to see some payroll and headcount planning and tracking capabilities in the future. Potentially a link with our payroll system that helps forecast all compensation related costs by employee that we can roll-up into our forecasts

Avantages

It's Simple. Cube takes in your KPIs and other data, and connects to your accounting systems. Then, connect to Sheets or Excel, create your output mapping, and now you have a single source of truth you can manipulate without worrying if someone is going to hard code a cell and throw off downstream calculations. Cube will allow you to give your department leaders the ability to create their own scenarios and forecasts, track their budget to actuals, and see their own P&Ls, all within a spreadsheet.

Inconvénients

Cube is a newer platform, and as such they're doing aggressive feature building. This means that some functionality has been impacted on occasion for a short period of time. Thankfully, their customer service teams are on top of the issues and able to support.

Avantages

Cube is very flexible and is easy to layer onto existing worflows in excel and google sheets. It is a fairly lightweight solution that makes reporting and analysis a lot easier.

Inconvénients

As a growing product, Cube still has a little ways to go with functionality, specifically around headcount/staffing planning and data import functionality. That being said, as a lightweight tool I appreciate that they have not overloaded with unecessary features - the core product works well.

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning, Vena et Anaplan

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Cube was the best option for our needs. We are a fairly light and nimble team so the ability to quickly make dimension changes, easily load and pull data, and integrate with our existing excel models made this an easy decision. You can't beat it for the price point.

Avantages

The data import and export features were indispensable in achieving a quick implementation. Also, I love the time dimension element that really facilitates making sure the equity roll and balance sheet and cash flow calculations work correctly regardless of the time period you're looking at. This product was very thoughtfully built.

Inconvénients

I think in the future there will be a SQL-like language that will facilitate analysis. Also, any forecasting or visualization capabilities would be a huge plus.

Avantages

-Integrates with Excel and Google Sheets
-Robust push/pull cloud functionality
-Easily customizable data mappings
-Good value

Inconvénients

-Limited features, does the basics well but lacks intermediate functionalities like suppress zeroes
-Interface can be clunky at times

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning et Vena

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Cube met our cost and functionality needs while allowing us to continue working out of spreadsheets

Avantages

I really enjoy the ease of use when it comes to pushing and pulling data from excel as well as how easily that transfers over to Google sheets! Implementation of the software was very quick and it was a delight working with their team.

Inconvénients

The only downsides that I have seen so far are some limitations when it comes to automatic data importing from Sage Intacct. We have a ton of lines of data and only being to review through cube on a summary level can be a bit of a burden sometimes

Avantages

Cube helped us to take a huge step forward in our planning and reporting. It allows the team to continue to work in spreadsheets (both Excel and Google Sheets), while ensuring accuracy of data and providing version control.

Inconvénients

I don't have any major complaints about the software. There are a few small features we have requested (suppress zeroes, etc). The team has been very responsive to our requests and the tool meets our needs overall.

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning et Anaplan

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Cost, speed to implement, flexibility, compatibility with both Excel and Google Sheets

Avantages

The customer support aspect is superb. I am able to get help almost instantly most times when I get stuck with an upload or download of data or anything else. Either my client rep is available or someone else steps in. There is a continued effort with bi-weekly calls even months after implementation so I love the customer support part. The software has done everything I need so far to get my budget into the system and get our actuals in from NetSuite is simple so I can do Budget vs Actuals very easily or Latest Forecast vs Actuals.

Inconvénients

I really like Cube so far, it has done what I need so far. I've been using it for 8 months since starting at my company to create a budgeting process.

Avantages

Integration was seamless, the people are all from FP&A so great to work with and fully understand all questions. I am a former Hyperion user and find Cube to be friendlier in some ways.

Inconvénients

There is no drilldown, I would love to be able to drill down by double clicking on revenue and have it list out all of the accounts that roll up to revenue, that way I dont have to manually enter them and would not miss any of the lower level accounts. It is also missing QTD calc. It would also be nice if a new GL account was created and it automatically mapped to the parent account rather than having to manually map new accounts each month.

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Went with a different HR system, and wanted to keep using Intacct which Cube is partnered with. Also a great cost point and great product.

Avantages

By far the best tool on the market for FP&A. Cube works by connecting existing spreadsheets & source systems into a powerful analytics hub which means faster insights for us. This makes it incredibly easy to automate, actualize and analyze all our reporting as well as collaborate with the team to build accurate forecasts. We save hours and headcount because of this tool. Having a single source of truth means we have been able to eliminate errors in our calculations.

Inconvénients

I wish I knew about it earlier as we were wasting so much time and money doing this manually.

Avantages

It allows us to keep the team lean and effective. We run a very robust FP&A process and being powered by cube uplevels our work that is done in excel and google sheets.

Inconvénients

There could be more reporting functionality

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning, Vena et Anaplan

Pourquoi passer à Cube

Because we wanted to stay in excel

Avantages

Ease of use, integration, customer service, sensitivity

Inconvénients

Sometimes software is very sensitive and causes errors in retrieving info, however I completely understand why this sensitivity is there.

Avantages

The ease of implementation and administration is one of the biggest pros of Cube. The post-sales team at Cube was very hands-on and responsive during our implementation and beyond which made an often difficult process very manageable. And the ongoing administration of the tool is relatively light touch. The UX is intuitive which makes training and adoption efficient. And our small Finance team is able to effectively manage everything well.

Inconvénients

I'd like to see new features rolled out more quickly: things like suppress zeroes and better aggregation calculations come to mind. There are small bugs as well that come up frequently - like needing to reinstall the Excel add-in every few weeks.

Avantages

Cube is very easy to use, its interface is clean, and operating it is intuitive. Cube makes it easy to maintain many accounts/dimensions and to map QBO COA to custom FP&A/Management presentations. Fetching and Publishing data is also very easy. We also very much appreciate the connectivity we have with the Cube team if there are ever instances where we require support or advice.

Inconvénients

There isn't really anything that I dislike about using Cube. They are also very open to product feedback and suggestions.

Avantages

I honestly like everything about it. its ease of you, it's flexibity, dynamics. It makes reporting very streamlined and straight forward

Inconvénients

the import process could be sped up a bit.

Avantages

Quick time to value - the implementation Cube took a little over two weeks vs. 6-9 month implementation timeline for some other legacy tools. Huge kudos to the customer support team of Cube, they been extremely responsive and helpful in navigating our various system integrations.

Inconvénients

Would be amazing to have more pre-built templates and standardized reporting for budget owners as well as more options to customize access for various stakeholder groups beyond FP&A

Avantages

Cube is very easy to use, the integration with Google Sheets is great! no need to have a separate software installed. I am able to break-out all my forecasting correctly and makes my monthly reporting very easy.

Inconvénients

It might take a while to understand how it works at first but once understood there are no issues, it becomes very straightforward and easy to use! The Cube team is accessible and always there to help with any questions.

Avantages

It's great to have everything in one place with our team budgets, as we use google sheets for most things. This way, we have great version control and can easily look at all our teams' budgets in many different with just a few clicks.

Inconvénients

Not the software's fault, but you certainly have to have checks in place when you upload any new information, as the chart of accounts may not align with the way you have a sheet setup.

Alternatives envisagées 

Causal

Pourquoi passer à Cube

The quality for the price was most important to use in our stage of business, and Cube offers exactly that.

Avantages

It is really easy to use and well integrated with the accounting ERP. Also the fact that it can be used on Google sheet is a great advantage.

Inconvénients

Depending on the action I request it takes a while to be processed, and also there are a few features that are about to be developed so this might impact your expectations

Avantages

Ease of use! Very user friendly and agile. Suitable for analysis and scenario planning that require quick turn around. Excel-based, so it's very familiar to all of finance folks.

Inconvénients

Product still under constant development so it's lacking functionalities and features.

Avantages

Once integrated with our latest budget / operating model, I believe the cube product will make reporting / forecasting/ budgeting super easy and seamless! Comparing actuals vs. budgets was also very very easy to do within Cube

Inconvénients

Integrating our model within Cube has been difficult

Avantages

Ease of building reports and providing insight to our stakeholders on a timely basis.

Inconvénients

I don't have any negatives at this point in time.

Avantages

It makes financial reporting easy and you are able to export the data in a clean format

Inconvénients

It is time consuming setting up the reports, but easy once you have it setup.

Avantages

Cube is truly a smart tool. Not only is it easy to implement and understand but the team encourages feedback and works with you to tailor the solution to your unique business needs.

Inconvénients

There is nothing I can complain about truly.

Alternatives envisagées 

Workday Adaptive Planning, Vena et Anaplan

Pourquoi passer à Cube

It's ease of use, price, and and functionality all beat it's competitors.