Cube vs accoPLANNING Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

accoPLANNING is a planning, forecasting and budgeting solution from Accobat, a Danish company, built to work natively with Microsoft Power BI. Many organisations use Power BI for reporting and analysis but still conduct budgeting and forecasting in spreadsheets, which creates version control problems, manual consolidation work and a disconnect between planned and actual figures. accoPLANNING addresses this by adding write-back and planning capabilities directly inside Power BI reports, allowing users to enter budgets, adjust forecasts and model scenarios in the same environment where they analyse results. This approach removes the need for a separate planning application, keeps data centralised and means finance teams and business users can work with familiar Microsoft tools, shortening planning cycles and making it easier to compare plans with actual performance and analyse variances in detail. For Power BI-centric organisations, this reduces the need to train users on an additional planning interface. Key capabilities include data entry and write-back within Power BI visuals, driver-based planning, top-down and bottom-up budgeting, allocation and spreading functions, rolling forecasts, and scenario and what-if modelling. Workflow and approval features support structured planning processes across departments, while comments and audit trails help document assumptions and changes. Plans and forecasts are stored in a central database and can be combined with actual data from ERP, CRM and other systems through the Microsoft data platform, including Azure and Microsoft Fabric. Typical use cases cover financial budgets, sales forecasts, workforce planning, project and cost planning, and profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow projections. Because the solution runs within the Microsoft ecosystem, it benefits from existing security, governance and user management. accoPLANNING targets mid-sized and large organisations, finance and controlling teams, and Power BI users across industries. Pricing starts from around USD 14 per user with a free trial available; there is no permanently free version.