Finance

Planful’s New Product Innovations Enable Finance Automation, Collaboration, and Innovation

Published

2 years ago

May 15, 2024

New Technology, Ideas, and Strategies Shared at Perform24 Support Finance, Accounting, Marketing, and HR Leaders Go Beyond to Drive Peak Financial Performance

SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Planful Inc., the pioneer of financial performance management cloud software, announced today, as part of the Perform24 theme to “Go Beyond,” an array of product advancements tied to three key pillars: Automate, Collaborate, and Innovate. The company unveiled the future of Planful AI, new Planful for Workforce and Planful for Marketing capabilities, connectors with Snowflake and Microsoft Power BI, and more. The company also debuted the Solution Hub, an all-new searchable collection of pre-built solutions, open for anyone to explore, and for customers to configure. With these advancements, Planful is bringing increased value to large and fast-growing organizations and supporting their business leaders in driving peak financial performance.

“Achieving successful financial performance management requires a highly-collaborative effort and organizations who treat it as a team sport will thrive and outperform their competitors,” said Steve Welsh, Chief Product Officer, Planful. “Planful’s purpose-built product delivery and vision is an intentional result of working with our customers to make that team effort easier, faster, and more connected by unlocking the data teams need to make confident decisions.”

Innovate: The Future of Planful AI

The company announced the extended vision for Planful AI and significant investments that will bring its first generative AI experience to customers later this year. Finance and business leaders will have access to a unified suite of Planful AI solutions that include:

Operational automation that anticipates tasks and processes, recommends next steps, and gathers insights into how a process is running and if a reminder is needed to complete data inputs for a forecast
Analytics and decision support for both simple and complex, time-consuming scenario analysis that anticipates tasks to uncover variances and the meaning behind the numbers, while also suggesting next steps to further the analysis when business leaders are evaluating key business decisions

These new generative AI capabilities will complement the company’s existing, industry-leading Planful Predict AI/ML suite of solutions, which have been foundational in automating forecasting, error detection, and manual processes for businesses worldwide.

Collaborate: New Capabilities for Planning as a Team Sport

At Perform24 the company introduced new solution advancements, including Planful for Workforce capabilities and Planful for Marketing features, that improve business outcomes by facilitating collaboration and unlocking access to data across teams.

The new Planful for Workforce capabilities announced at Perform will enable Finance and People leaders to collaborate directly in the platform to generate actionable insights. These capabilities include advanced analytics, actuals data loading at the most granular level, multi-currency capabilities for employee and compensation item planning, and more. With almost 90% of Planful customers using Planful for Workforce, users will be able to leverage their existing data to rapidly conduct complex scenario analysis in managing their most valuable asset–people.

The latest Planful for Marketing advancements include a new integration with Coupa; further reporting enhancements, including custom fields and attributes; and new forecasting capabilities.

Automate: Frictionless Access to Data

Planful introduced several new connectors that will further support customers with their overall data strategy. A new connector with Snowflake, a data-cloud company, enables governed access to limitless volumes of financial performance and other business data. This integration will meet the growing need of enterprises to share data, build AI/ML applications, and power business growth using a modern data infrastructure. It will also reduce friction, speed data access, and enable highly-complex financial modeling and calculations. The new connector with Microsoft Power BI, an interactive data visualization software product, accommodates the consumption of Planful data to augment with other data sources natively in Power BI.

Protective Industrial Products, a global leader in personal protective equipment that offers an extensive range of over 20,000 products, leverages the Planful platform for agile and efficient planning as it continues to expand its market reach and diversify its offerings through many strategic acquisitions. “Planful’s automation capabilities have greatly streamlined our acquisition processes,” said Mark Smith, Director, Corporate FP&A at Protective Industrial Products, and a speaker at Planful Perform24. “Planful has become a must-have tool for our team and we integrate it into each of our newly acquired entities. Its automation capabilities not only help to simplify acquisition processes, but also enhance our consolidation and workforce planning in a very dynamic M&A environment.”

New Early Adopter Program

Customers can now join an early adopter program with Planful to gain access to a range of unreleased product advancements and find opportunities to co-innovate and trial Planful AI. With this new program, Planful continues to prioritize product development that is closely attuned to practical customer needs and top feedback.

Watch Perform24 live today or on demand later this week to hear what Planful customers and industry thought leaders are saying about driving peak financial performance.

About Planful

Planful is the pioneer of financial performance management cloud software. The Planful platform, which helps businesses drive peak financial performance, is used around the globe to streamline business-wide planning, budgeting, consolidations, reporting, and analytics. Planful empowers finance, accounting, and business users to plan confidently, close faster, and report accurately. More than 1,400 customers, including 23andMe, Bose, Boston Red Sox, Five Guys, and Zappos, rely on Planful to accelerate cycle times, increase productivity, and improve accuracy. Planful is a private company backed by Vector Capital, a leading global private equity firm. Learn more at planful.com.

Additional Resources
Hear from Planful customers.
Learn what Planful can do for finance, marketing, HR, and other teams.
Join the conversation on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

SOURCE Planful, Inc.

Finance

How can I illustrate our financial position to a spouse who shows little interest?

Published

4 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

How can I illustrate our financial position to a spouse who shows little interest?

Reader question: My spouse has little interest in our financial position. As we age, this concerns me. I try to share some basic information (income, spending, account balances, debt, and so on) each month but rarely get a response. I think graphs or charts might be of more interest to her than a bunch of numbers. What recommendations would you have for illustrating our financial position so that I am not the only person aware of how we are situated? Thanks!

Answer: Your situation is pretty common. Most couples I know develop a division of labor over time, where one person is in charge of financial matters and the other person is less involved. That’s definitely the case for my husband and me. He’s in charge of paying all the monthly bills and preparing our tax returns, but the financial planning and investment decisions are up to me. This type of arrangement might work well for a long time, but can become less sustainable with age, particularly if the “finance person” in the relationship dies or develops a major health issue.

Online tools and mind maps

Illustrating your financial situation with charts and graphs is a great idea that might help your spouse become a little more involved. Morningstar’s  Portfolio X-Ray  tool includes a variety of images that help illustrate your financial situation. Websites for most major brokerage firms also include some visual tools. Schwab, for example, offers a Portfolio Checkup and a bar graph illustrating your account’s monthly income from dividends and interest income. Vanguard has a Portfolio Watch tool and a variety of performance illustrations, tools, and calculators.

A  mind map, which we used with clients when I worked for a financial advisory firm, can be another way to picture your entire financial situation on one page. There are various  softwaretemplates  for drawing a mind map, or you can simply sketch it out with a large sheet of paper and a pencil. Start with your names at the center of the page. Then draw spokes connecting to various categories, such as names of other family members; investment accounts; real estate and other assets, insurance policies, estate plans, key goals and values, and contact information for accountants, estate planners, and other professionals. It can be helpful to go through the mind map together and make any updates needed at least once a year.

Other ways to communicate about money

A few other ideas—though not related to charts and graphs—might also be useful.

I like the idea of putting together a  net worth statement  that itemizes cash, taxable accounts, real estate, retirement accounts, and debt for each member of the couple as well as items owned jointly. It’s a good idea to update this document at least once a year and  discuss it as a couple. If you set up the document as a spreadsheet, you can include columns with additional information such as account numbers, what each account is used for, which accounts are subject to required minimum distributions, or tax issues like potential capital gains.

Many couples also put together a  binder  (sometimes humorously called a “Doomsday Book”) that contains information about where to find important paperwork, insurance policies, how bills are paid, what each account is for, steps the surviving spouse will need to take, final wishes, and any other critical information.

A well-qualified financial adviser can bridge the information gap

Finally, you could consider working with a good  financial adviser,  who can help involve your spouse in financial matters while you’re still living and step in to fully manage investments and personal finance decisions if you pass away before your spouse. Make sure the adviser holds the Certified Financial Planner designation and charges fees that are reasonable. Although a 1% fee is still the industry standard for accounts of $1 million or less, it’s possible to find advisers who charge significantly less, including a few who price their services based on hours worked instead of a percentage of assets under management.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance.

Amy C. Arnott, CFA, is a portfolio strategist for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast.

Finance

Proximo Congress 2026: US Energy & Infrastructure Finance | Insights | Mayer Brown

Published

14 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Proximo Congress 2026: US Energy & Infrastructure Finance | Insights | Mayer Brown

Mayer Brown is a proud sponsor of Proximo Congress 2026. This senior meeting of the US energy, infrastructure, and digital infrastructure finance community is shaped around the questions credit and investment committees are actually asking in 2026: how asset classes are converging, how risk is being priced in a recalibrated policy and geopolitical environment, and how public and private capital are being structured together to deliver projects at scale.

Mayer Brown has also been recognized for three separate awards which will be presented during the event. These awards include:

Proximo North America Transport Deal of the Year 2025 – SR 400 Peach Partners
Proximo North America Rail Deal of the Year 2025 – Brightline West
Proximo North America LNG Deal of the Year 2025 – Port Arthur LNG 2

For more information, visit the event website.

Finance

What are nonconforming mortgages and what are the risks?

Published

1 day ago

June 2, 2026

Press Room

What are nonconforming mortgages and what are the risks?

If you have ever taken out a mortgage, you’ll know there are a lot of requirements to meet. You may need to put down a certain amount and have a debt-to-income ratio below a certain threshold. You may also run into limits on how much you can borrow or what sources of income the lender will count.

These rules do not apply to all mortgages — just to conforming mortgages, which is what the majority of borrowers take out. However, mortgage lenders are increasingly offering what are known as nonconforming loans, or mortgages that do not “comply with every one of the strict standards put in place after the housing crisis,” said The Wall Street Journal. While “still a small portion,” the “share of mortgages using alternative lending practices” has “doubled in size over the past three years.”