Adaptive Planning Tool Adds Cell Notation, Audit Trail, Improved Data Integration

Version 5.5 of SaaS-based financial planning and reporting tool improves collaboration, data exchange, localization

• By James E. Powell
• 01/27/2009

Adaptive Planning has released Adaptive Planning Version 5.5, it financial budgeting, forecasting, and reporting tool for small and mid-size businesses. The software includes new collaboration and analysis features and works with a greater number of applications, and adds features for global companies.

Of special note are two new features. Cell Notes lets you add comments and reminders about assumptions made in a cell's calculation or data. The release also improves data integration using new connectors, an API for secure Web services, and new field/data mapping capabilities. More local languages are supported, as is the Firefox browser.

Bill Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning, told Enterprise Strategies that the company's product makes it easier for business users to import data and compare budgets built with Adaptive Planning with summarized “actuals” from the user's own accounting system. The Cell Notes feature in particular lets you annotate cells so you don't forget how the formula was devised or what purpose it serves. Soward pointed out that Cell Notes appear automatically as footnotes in reports, and you can search for text within notes.

Other new features include:

• Audit Trail lets users track, view, and search through a record of user-entered changes for each and every cell in the financial plan, showing the changes made, when they were made, and who made them.

• Adaptive Planning’s data import and export have been enhanced. Data import and export field mapping is simplified with both manual and automated data integration supported. The company's “connectors” provide automated imports of data into Adaptive Planning from general ledgers, databases, and files, including several popular SMB accounting systems (such as Great Plains).

• Internationalization and localization features allow the application to be displayed in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese, including data entry in that language and according to local number and date formats.

Adaptive Planning Version 5.5 is now available, with local language support coming later this quarter. The company offers a corporate and enterprise edition. More information is available at http://www.adaptiveplanning.com.