Planful AI Analyst is a powerful generative AI assistant built into the Planful platform. It enables users to run natural language financial queries, analyze trends, compare performance across scenarios, and visualize data instantly without the need to build reports or write formulas.

Analyst Assistant streamlines financial reporting and analysis, enabling faster and easier access to actionable insights in seconds.

Planful AI Analyst enables you to:

• Get simplified financial data analysis with natural language processing, making data retrieval and analysis effortless.

• Obtain clear financial data overviews complete with tables, narratives, and charts, for easy interpretation.

• Compare actual financial performance against budgets or forecasts and analyze trends over the past months/quarters.

• Quickly drill down into financial reports without the hassle of manually generating new reports.

• Instantly locate and view Reports and Dashboards using natural language queries.

• Enforces data access controls, ensuring users can only view authorized information.

• Provides clear messages for scenarios such as data unavailability, access restrictions, and other limitations.

Important: Planful AI Analyst Activation

You must contact your Planful Account Manager to enable this feature.

What’s In Scope?

The current scope of Planful AI – Analyst includes:

• Finance domain: Focused on delivering actionable data and insights from the financial reporting area

• Main and Alternate hierarchies: Supports the metadata of the finance main and alternate hierarchies

• 12 Periods: Covers standard 12-period financial reporting cycles, enabling monthly, quarterly, yearly, and year-to-date analysis

Note: The following features are not currently supported in Planful:

• Finance attributes and attribute hierarchies

• Configurations with more than 12 fiscal periods

• The Workforce Reporting Area

• Consolidation data-related queries

Natural Language Data Queries

Ask intuitive questions like:

• What’s the EBITDA variance to budget for Q1 2025?

• How much did we spend on Travel in Q4 last year?

• What is the forecasted revenue for 2025?

• Drill into Travel & Entertainment in North America by department.

• What are the top 3 departments by spend?
  

Interactive Exploration

Users can dynamically interact with the AI responses and further analyze retrieved data using:

• Table/Chart View - View data in table or chart format

• Drill Down/Analyze Data by Dimensions - Ask follow-up questions to break down reports by relevant dimensions (e.g., region, department, or product line)

• Data Summary - Get AI-generated summaries for a quick narrative overview

• Exporting Capabilities - Download reports to share in Excel and PNG formats

• Copy Summary - Copy and share data summary for seamless collaboration

• Dimension Details - View dimensional information for the data

• Expand Window - Display large datasets in a full-screen table or chart view

• Sorting Capabilities - Organize the data within the data table in ascending or descending order

• Chart Type Customization - Specify the type of data visualization (Bar, Line, and Column chart types are supported)

Follow-up Questions and Context Retention

Users can refine or expand their analysis with follow-up questions. Planful AI maintains conversation context for smooth and continuous interactions.

For example:

• Initial query: Show revenue for Q1.

• Follow-up: Break it down by region.

• Further analysis: Compare it with last year.

Favorite Questions in Planful AI

The Favorite Questions feature in Planful AI enables users to save and reuse frequently asked questions.

1. Click the Favorite (star) icon next to a question to add to your favorites.

Notes:

• Each user can  store up to 20 favorite questions, so you can easily access them later. If you would like to save more, just remove one of your existing favorites to make room for a new one.

• Users can remove favorites by clicking the delete icon in the Favorite menu or clicking the filled Favorite (star) icon to unmark it directly from the conversation.

Troubleshooting Checks Post Enablement/Activation

Follow these steps to verify proper setup and address any issues after having Planful AI Analyst enabled:

• Test Planful AI Functionality

  Open the Planful AI dialog by clicking the Planful AI button on the top toolbar.

  Ask a data-related question such as:

  How much did we spend on travel in the last quarter?

  (Replace "travel" with a relevant keyword or partial account name, e.g., “Sales”)

• Error Responses in Planful AI

  If you encounter an error response for multiple question like above:

  Click the Dimension Details icon (above the data table in the Planful AI response) to review the dimensions involved.

• Validate Data Visibility Using Dynamic Report

  Create a dynamic report using the same dimensions shown in the Dimension Details.

  If the report returns data successfully but Planful AI continues to show errors, submit a support ticket to the Planful Support team for further assistance.

How To Use Planful AI - Analyze Assistant?

You can access Planful AI's Analyze Assistant by following the steps below:

1. Navigate to the top toolbar and click Planful AI.
    

2. The Planful AI dialog box displays.
    

3. Click the expand icon beside the Help mode field, and select Analyze.
    

4. Type your question in the chat field, click the Arrow icon, or press Enter.
   Planful AI retrieves information in a default tabular format and provides an AI-generated data summary.
    

• To expand the table in full view, click the Full Screen icon.
  The table opens on the left panel.

• Right click on the table and select the Drill down option.

  

  

  
   

• If the response is incorrect or irrelevant, click the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down icon to share feedback.
  The Feedback screen displays the applicable options and a feedback text field.
   

Click New Chat.

FAQs