FAQs

Account- Ability is the leading international sales, implementation, support and training partner of CP Corporate Planning. We have been partners for nearly 30 years and are expert in all aspects of the software, it’s implementation and support. We have implemented Corporate Planner in over 160 organisations ranging in size from £10M turnover to FTSE 100 companies, covering all sectors, including public sector and not-for-profit.

Implementation, depends upon the scope and specific requirements. However typical implementation range from 10 – 20 days, for a P&L balance sheet and cash flow planning model. Sales and P&L budgeting models can often be implemented in as little as 6 to 10 days

Software costs depends upon the requirements, the number of modules and the number and type of users. Typically software costs £500 - £1,500 per month on the CP-Cloud. The software is also available as an on premise, perpetual licence purchase.

Most organisations come to us because they are using Excel spreadsheets for business critical FP&A tasks. Despite concerns that Excel slow to develop, hard to edit, error-prone and frequently dependent on the knowledge of a single individual, they need the confidence that moving to a dedicated FP&A solution like Corporate Planner will deliver the solution to the inefficiencies and limitations of Excel. Our consultative sales process in which we seek to understand your priorities and demonstrate how these can be achieved with your data is a proven way of providing that confidence.

Outside of Excel the FP&A market falls into three broad categories:

1. Systems that have a basic level of dedicated FP&A functionality and efficiency beyond what Excel offers but lack the advanced level features and flexibility that most Finance Directors are looking for. These systems are likely to be most suitable for smaller organisations with a turnover of less than ~ £10M pa
2. Large enterprise-wide systems, typically integrated as part of a ‘whole system ERP project’ and accessed by 100’s of users. These systems offer very high levels of functionality but typically come with a high price ticket and long project implementation times to achieve the objectives
3. Systems, such as Corporate Planner which hit the ‘sweet-spot needs’ of most organisations, in that they solve the problems of Excel, offer very high levels of FP&A capability, are extremely flexible, fast and affordable to implement, and deliver a self-serve solution that is not dependent on on-going consultancy support

Corporate Planner is a generic planning and reporting system. It has been implemented in over 4000 companies across UK and Europe. You can define your own organization structure, charts of account, planning logic, sales channels, reporting formats etc. The Operational Controlling module delivers highly detailed and easy to set up and to maintain up modelling. The CP-Finance module provides a uniquely intuitive and rapid process for setting up the integrated P&L, Balance Sheet, Cashflow and capital asset and loans relationships. For organisations requiring formal financial consolidation, the CP-Consolidation module offers class-leading capability. Corporate Planner is the ideal integrated FP&A for organisations from all sectors, private, not-for-profit, and public (see sector pages)

Corporate Planner is one of the fastest budgeting, forecasting, reporting and consolidation solution to implement. BARC surveys have consistently shown short successful projects and maintained by the finance teams. Corporate Planner has many pre-defined planning, consolidation and reporting tools. These tools enable quick set up, easy maintenance of financial planning and reporting models. Models can be built rapidly in few days and are easily maintained.

Corporate Planner can be implemented and maintained by finance teams. Some other budgeting and reporting software solutions rely heavily on external consultants or internal IT support to help maintain the system.

Corporate Planner has direct integrations with over 400 different finance systems. These include Sage, SAP , Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Business Central, Unit4, Technology One, Infor and many more. The integration team can set up integrations with new finance systems as part of the project.

No data can be imported to Corporate Planner from csv or Excel. We do often recommend using integrations for financial consolidation as these can often ensure faster close with intercompany data postings identified from the transactional data.

Corporate Planner is offered as both an on premise solution as well as cloud based software. The software is the same, the only difference is if it is installed on your servers or in the CP Cloud.

The key benefits of the CP Cloud is software maintenance, security and availability. The CP Cloud is hosed on MS Azure datacentres. The cloud is fast to set up and the software is updated automatically with each new release.