--- title: Causal Reviews meta_title: 'Causal Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 256 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Causal works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.6 review_count: 256 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: Accounting & Finance url: https://www.g2.com/categories/accounting-finance --- # Causal Reviews **Vendor:** Lucanet AG **Category:** [Budgeting and Forecasting Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/budgeting-and-forecasting) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 256 ## About Causal Causal lets you build financial models effortlessly and share them with interactive, visual dashboards that everyone will understand. In Causal, you build your models out of variables, which you can then link together in simple plain-English formulae. This makes your models easy to understand and quick to build, so you can spend minutes, not days, on your models. When you're done, you can share the link to your model with stakeholders. They'll be able to view your model's outputs in a visual dashboard, rather than a jumble of tabs and complex formulae. Causal makes it simple to incorporate advanced modelling techniques like scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty in your inputs. You can also integrate all of your most important data sources, from spreadsheet software like Sheets and Excel, to accounting platforms like Xero and Quickbooks. ## Causal Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **quick implementation and integration** of Causal, enhancing collaboration during budgeting and planning. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use and flexibility** of Causal for budgeting and planning, enhancing collaboration. (1 reviews) - Users value the **flexible collaboration** features of Causal, enhancing teamwork during budgeting and planning phases. (1 reviews) - Users love Causal's **robust data analysis** , seamlessly blending actual and forecasted values with beautiful charts. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of implementation** of Causal, valuing its quick integration and intuitive interface. (1 reviews) - Users find Causal's **ease of use** exceptional, enabling quick financial planning with intuitive features and helpful resources. (1 reviews) - Easy Integrations (1 reviews) - Easy Upload (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **out-of-the-box financial models** of Causal, making quick and complex financial planning seamless. (1 reviews) - Users value the **flexibility** of Causal, enabling quick setups and complex financial modeling with ease. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **difficult learning** curve of Causal challenging, but some seek help from consultants for guidance. (1 reviews) - Users find the **insufficient training** of Causal challenging, often requiring external help to overcome the learning curve. (1 reviews) - Users feel there are **integration issues** with Causal, suggesting a need for more compatible applications. (1 reviews) - Users find the **learning curve challenging** when starting with Causal, often needing additional assistance to navigate it. (1 reviews) - Users find **learning difficulty** with Causal, often requiring additional support to get started effectively. (1 reviews) - Required Expertise (1 reviews) - Users face a **steep learning curve** with Causal, but commend the excellent support and resources available to assist. (1 reviews) - Support Required (1 reviews) ## Causal Reviews ### 1. Potential but not quite there **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is built as a modeling tool for earlier-stage businesses. Version control capabilities. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Lots of potential for improvements: 1. Not currently useful as a reporting tool - this, to me is the biggest deficiency - it's more of a modeling tool, and I need both 2. Lots of low-hanging fruit to make it more user-friendly - UI, suppressing zeros was just launched, which is an improvement, 1:1 planning dimensions not always practical 3. Access and user permissions are labor intensive and could be prone to error. You have to modify via views which is confusing and could be a lot more efficient as a backend permission **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Right now we are stalled on implementation because of our resource limitations so it's not solving very many current issues. I would like it to solve our budgeting process but afraid we wont have it live in time. ### 2. Excellent SQL/data reporting tool. Very free form which is incredible. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jared H. | Senior Paid Media Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** That the tool is relatively 'free form', if I need a single calculation, it can do that, if I need an entire model or multiple calculations it can also do that. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It has a relatively steep learning curve, but the video tutorials and previous SQL database experience made the tool very intuitive. The only other issue from an individual user standpoint is the price. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** This solved reporting issues within the company I work for, basically allowing me to create models and individual sheets to do forecasting and reporting calculations for people in our Operations department using a template rather than free hand. ### 3. Recommended FP&A tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 23, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** People in Causal are helpful, when we have a problem, they will solve it promptly. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The cell limit was too low, we need to ask the team to adjust it for us. Sometimes the category part is not working which need to be fixed in back end. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** To have better modeling tools ### 4. Supercharge your business planning **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal makes financial scenarios for our business easy to put together and share. We can create and save multiple different scenarios. The Causal team also has great support and will help out quickly if we have a question. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Due to the complexity of financial modeling and Causal's extensive feature set, it takes some time to get up to speed with how to use Causal effectively. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal helps us set up scenarios for forecasting revenue and burn of our business. ### 5. A simple, intuitive, and powerful modelling suite. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vaughn M. | Associate Vice President, Strategy & Forecasting, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** - Fast support to a real human on a chat interface - easy to structure models - cohort modeling is native and super helpful - charting is quick, and outputs are attractive - you can build and share an Executive Dashboard in which the variables can be changed to see the impact upon outputs. This doesn't change the underlying model, so all the hard work of structuring is protected. - models can be copied easily for others to use and play with - scenario modelling and exciting ways to display the outputs - versioning to keep track of changes **What do you dislike about Causal?** - large models can get slow in calculating outputs, but this is evident only in the free plans. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** - modeling with large numbers of variables in which the model structure is subject to ongoing change. Excel just wouldn't be user friendly enough for this. - cohort modeling for product development - ability to communicate results and demonstrate scenarios in real time with Executives. ### 6. This is the Financial tool you've been looking for. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Punit G. | Vice President Finance, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Visualisation and dashboard building is taken to a whole different level with causal. This is a no code solution for building financial models and reporting suites which are easy to modify to each audience you have. I really like that you can pull in live data from different sources and have it update in your models on your terms. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Some of the dropping and dragging can be a bit glitchy but I've already spoken to the teams about this and it seems that a lot of this is already in development. I would say one thing people have to get over is the initial learning curve but its honestly worthwhile! **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing a financial model for multiple stakeholders and updating this for different views, scenarios, information sets, is time consuming and leads to errors in work which are usually only picked up by someone else who is reading the report. Causal helps to put an end to this as you only update once, you set views once, you can run as many scenarios as you need and overall month end closing, investor reporting, internal stakeholder views are all automated. ### 7. Flexible and constantly improving tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dina F. | Business Analysis Lead, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** - User-friendly interface and intuitive formulas -> quick onboarding - Higher capacity than Excel - Eager to help support team - Compatibility with many data sources (and more promised) - Constant improvement - Easy version tracking (but see dislikes) **What do you dislike about Causal?** - Driver analysis is still a bit raw and works as long as your model is not very complex Rest are just small things which are annoying but not much more than that - Capacity is good enough, but ideally should be higher (also constantly improving though) - Inconvenient to apply changes to prev. versions if data was different in the data sources (recalculation updates data from the sources to the current state -> need to revert data in your data sources manually) - Presenters mode is convenient but not flexible enough (tile size can't be adjusted, notes can't be added, adj. of input variables doesn't have "apply to all categories" option) **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** - subscription business orders planning (Excel capacity was not enough) - regular automatic update of the forecast saves time - easier to manipulate inputs and faster scenario testing - automatic upload of the result to the database ### 8. An incredible tool for the price. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harold A. | Consultant, Food & Beverages, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 11, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The ability to forecast everything collaboratively is now available to small businesses. We have eight employees, and we can now produce forecasts with uncertainty bands and scenarios just like big companies have been able to. We then distribute these dashboards to investors and look highly competent and professional. This makes it worth the cost. I cannot emphasize enough the power of this tool. It is game-changing. It allows Sales to collaborate with management to produce sales forecasts transparently and rationally. It is also beautifully done. Dashboard users can toggle charts between Yearly, Quarterly, and Monthly. Other products out there might be better, but they certainly cost more. I did not try the more expensive tools because Causal does the job well. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I have had long conversations with Causal about the product's shortcomings, and they are responsive and want customers to be happy. The biggest weakness is that there is no concept of release pipelines for models. Any changes you make, even developing a new idea on the weekend, are immediately viewable to all stakeholders. If you break the model, it is broken for your largest investor. This is not cool. You can clone the model and do development in the cloned model, but there is no merge facility. Causal recognizes this as a significant gap. But again, for $2,500 per year, I'll put up with that for a few months until they fix it. Another philosophical criticism is how Causal limits the number of users, premium integrations, and scenario variables for small business users. Causal's defense is that premium connectors are not yet plug-and-play and require implementation costs on their side. Causal has said their goal is to offer more connectors and functionality to small-business users, who must comprise the bulk of their business. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can collaboratively forecast all aspects of our business and distribute forecasts to investors and shareholders. This allows us to be more productive and professional. ### 9. Causal has taken our modelling to the next level **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jamie D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal has been the missing link to automating our financial modelling and forecasting **What do you dislike about Causal?** It is an early stage product that will build out with time **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Taking manual work out of the equation ### 10. Awesome tool for FP&A **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Utilities | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Seamless integration with Xero which has sped up our monthly rollovers, good model version comparasions, great dashboarding graphics, and has definitely uplifted our forecasting capability. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Sometimes a little bit buggy, but the team is very responsive to get these fixed. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Excel doesn't seamlessly integrate Xero very well, so it is good to have the ability to refresh actual results quickly and easily. ### 11. I like the ability to easily create financial projections. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** The ease of use and intuitive design really help with financial projections. However, some of the default views can leave one wanting just a bit more. I would recommend a bit more UI/UX research for non-traditional users. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I think the UI/UX is really good overall, however, if you are not an accountant, the use of this tool is a bit confusing. This is not a good thing, because a strength of a tool like this is in multidepartmental use. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Financial projections and a revenue climb are the two primary uses that I have for Causal at the moment. I am not sure of too many other use cases for my role at the moment. ### 12. Solid modelling tool **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Ease of modelling complex configurations **What do you dislike about Causal?** presentations are some basic and lack the ability to be esily extrated into better presentation tools. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Forecasting and performance tracking in a dynamically changing environment ### 13. Spreadsheets on steroids: Much better fit for financial/business modeling than Excel **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eugen M. | CEO & Co-Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Dealing with uncertainty - each parameter can have a range of values and all dependent calculations get error bars based on that. Combined with scenarios this is very powerful to assess impact potential of different variables. Also: smart functions for revenue modeling - like 'spread', we use it to distribute revenues of our users by acquisition cohort. **What do you dislike about Causal?** When sending a read-only access to a model to an external person (like an investor/analyst), it's not easy for them to understand the model mechanics and underlying calculations. Working with Scenarios is not very intuitive - but much easier than spreadsheets still. Documentation is not super great yet - but it's understandable for a young product with this complexity. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Building extendable and easy-to-understand business models. In spreadsheets, it's easy to lose control of structure even in low-complexity models and you often forget how the whole thing works after a while. Causal makes it easy to modify and extend models and integrate real-world data. ### 14. Causal helped us to transfer our financial model into an integrated and collaborative environment **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonas G. | Head Of Finance, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** What I like best about Causal is that the team is super responsive and competent. Whenever we had questions they were prompt to support us and guided us into the right direction. With Causal we wanted to solve the following pain points: -Auto refreshing data sources -Granular modeling of assumptions for budgets and forecasts -Fully Integrated financial model (avoid scatter over multiple Excel files/Google Sheets) -Facilitate collaboration within the team (esp. during budgeting) with strict rights management (esp. with regards to salary data) -Avoid formula and input errors -Build appealing and easy-to-refresh investor reporting -Implementation mustn't take 6 months of 2 FTE + consultants as is commonly the case with enterprise FP&A solutions Causal provided great functionality in all of the above areas. **What do you dislike about Causal?** As a company, Causal is still somewhat young. This means that the product improves every week (which is great), but also that it is not finished in all aspects. That said, we looked at many other (also mature) vendors and we are happy to have selected the modern platform that is Causal. One specific area where functionality was less than what I hoped for was target org modeling/planning. We wanted feed in data from our HR system and combine it with local entry of all planned positions. This process was somewhat cumbersome. However, the Causal team was able to help with quick workarounds in all cases. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Today, Causal allows us to stream in data from different databases (Datev for accounting, BigQuery for order related data, Personio for HR data...) regularly and very seamlessly. We also used the opportunity of introducing Causal to rethink the way we forecast our orders in a much more granular way. This especially helps with setting ambitious but achievable targets. Speaking of forecasting - Causal enabled us to run a tighter cadence on forecasting (now quarterly rather than bi-annual). It further allows us to incorporate feedback from different departments into the budgeting and forecasting process without losing our mind in handling Google Sheets. ### 15. Steeper Onboarding, Flawless Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gaurav H. | Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** I love the performance and ease of use of this tool. It is super fast and changes happen quickly. The tool I was using earlier was very slow to update. Performance and simplicity were the main reasons I started my search for another tool. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The power of this tool comes at an expense of a steeper onboarding path. It takes time to understand how variables, models, and calculations work. But once you get a hang of it, it is easy to build upon. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a growing company that wants to keep all its financial models intact. We are also a small team and cannot spend hours tallying everything in Excel. Causal helps us maintain an accurate picture of our costs and expenses. It is easy to modify and expand on. Causal gives us an honest picture of our costs, cashflow and everything $$ related. ### 16. Causal beats spreadsheets for financial modeling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brandon A. | Chief Operating Officer, Real Estate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal has proven to be an excellent tool for financial reporting and forecasting. I built our financial model in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and it worked well, but as our company has grown, the scale of mistakes in formulas and cell references could be quite painful. I like how Causal is more structured than spreadsheets, and as an added bonus, the integration with QuickBooks Online means I can click a button to pull in my month close data and the reporting and forecasting just works...without exporting, copying, pasting, checking references, copying forward formulas for actual vs. forecast, etc. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I don't like that I can't reorder the tabs at the top. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal has proven to be an excellent tool for financial reporting and forecasting. I built our financial model in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and it worked well, but as our company has grown, the scale of mistakes in formulas and cell references could be quite painful. I like how Causal is more structured than spreadsheets, and as an added bonus, the integration with QuickBooks Online means I can click a button to pull in my month close data and the reporting and forecasting just works...without exporting, copying, pasting, checking references, copying forward formulas for actual vs. forecast, etc. ### 17. Great Corporate Performance Management tool! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel S. | FP&A Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 15, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Intuitive platform, the system steps away from "complex" excel formulae toward a readable modeling language that people outside of the traditional FP&A / finance teams can therefore understand. Modular concept enables huge flexibility of use and the ability to share specific models (Revenue / Headcount etc) with specific teams. Scenario modeling is extremely intuitive and thus it is very easy to present scenarios to C-Suite members. Actuals vs Plan version capability is fantastic. Resources and documentation are in-depth and very useful. The team is responsive and very knowledgeable. It's a great platform! **What do you dislike about Causal?** There is no overall "Mapping" tab where you can see which GL Accounts are mapped to which variables - this means you have to go into each individual model and/or data source to ensure things are mapped correctly, this can become very difficult if using Xero as each GL Account is pulled through x number of times dependent upon x number of tracking categories. There is no overall place to see which models are shared with which employee in your organisation - you have to click into each model and then see whom it has been shared with. Some small UI improvements could be made to make outputs look more professional - for example, the alignment of columns in different pivot tables in the same report is dependent upon text length and thus columns don't automatically stack "correctly". Sometimes it can be cumbersome to load models dependent upon the volume of data and the number of charts and refreshes can take a long time. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Efficient Month-End Investor / Board reporting, using relatively straightforward consolidation of multiple entities using different operating currencies. Continuous Planning capability. ### 18. The Go To FP&A solution for high growth scaleups! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Imran K. | Finance Director, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** After a lengthy vendor selection, we were delighted to go ahead with Causal. We love that it's designed for agile, high-growth businesses where you often need a quick answer. Easy to use, very intuitive and integrates exceptionally well with our core systems (general ledger, CRM, HR platform). The team are excellent and a pleasure to work with - I look forward to rolling the models out across Finance and the wider business. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Our only dislike is the absence of multiplayer functionality (two modellers can work on the same model at the same time) - however this is a feature on their roadmap and I look forward to using this when it goes live. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Causal for Supplier Budgets, Headcount Planning, 5 Year Plans, Rolling Forecasts and Investor Reporting. This will consolidate and remove several Google Sheets/Excels and save us time going forward, particularly as the business scales. ### 19. Phenomenal for cash flow forecasting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris H. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 12, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is a forecasting tool that scales really well. We've replaced a massive cash flow forecast with hugely complex formulas with a model that's simple to understand, and simple to maintain. Period "look backs" at previous months and variable "ranges" (e.g. 1%-3%) were the features that sold us. Lots of our income is annually recurring, so understanding the date for when we're expecting different amounts is crucial for us. In Excel this can be done with complicated OFFSET() formulas but it's really ugly. On top of that, we have the scenarios to forecast different possibilities very very useful. For anyone looking to build a complex cash flow model, I can't recommend Causal highly enough. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The pricing model needs work. Right now we're on the free plan despite Causal being a crucial part of our business planning, which feels odd. We're more than happy to pay if needed, but there isn't really anything (apart from perhaps the "Versions" feature in the future) that would prompt us to upgrade right now. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** In short - Causal helps us not run out of money! Cash flow forecasting is our main use-case. We now have the confidence to plan ahead based on revenue projections, which directly guides our hiring and other business decisions. ### 20. Incredibly efficient and helpful! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** It is simply the best tool for business modeling. It removes the friction of needing to know scripts and code to create advanced models. Also, it really makes it easy to share and present! Which is the most crucial part of building a model. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The report, presentation, and dashboard design features could really be an upgrade! It would really help if additional design options for charts, tables, etc.- were added. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** The time-consuming business model creation for better decision-making. Saves me time. It keeps me focused on what's important about the model (the outcome and assumptions) and less wasted time in the programming and construction of it. ### 21. My Go-To Tool For Fast Modelling & Forecasting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gerrard L. | Director & Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The whole interface and approach to modelling is perfect for me. It lets me intuitively see projected trends for the upcoming 12 or 24 months, and I love the ability to create a buffer with the native '1 to 2' inputs. Also, I've created a few calculator tools using Causal and added them to my website as a lead magnet. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I understand that you need to put a price tier on some features, but it would be nice to have a lower bound plan for simple features like color of charts and export to excel. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's by far the fastest way for me to quickly pull together a simple forecast for common things in my business (and for my clients) like: 'How much traffic can we expect, at this rate, in 24 months?', 'How much revenue should we expect, holding these conversion rates consistent?'. It's also my favorite for creating calculator tools that my customers and clients can then use intuitively. ### 22. Causal Cuts out Hours of Endless Modeling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew B. | Director of Ventures, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal really simplifies the modification, input and extrapolation of various assumptions you will need to make in creating financial models (or any really) that serve both technical and non-technical audiences. It makes it intuitive for people to create visually stunning pieces of content that can be consumed quickly. I did also enjoy the way things were easily expanded in terms of applying multiple scenarios and mechanics for like, but distinct models. This was a helpful feature that didn't require too much effort in creating new models. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The learning curve for me is expected and not terribly overwhelming but there are some components that didn't automatically resonate with me. The resource bank does provide a collection of tips/tricks in navigating those conundrums and the team are quite responsive at supporting so it was overcome but still take a transition (as with any software.) **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is simplifying the process of creating models that translate meaningful information to multiple audience types without being overwhelming. The product is currently being used to create portfolio performance models that allow us to understand the nature of a fund without creating a terribly complicated model. ### 23. Great app that solves the exact problem every founder has **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bernard B. | Founder and CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The ability to do scenario planning and present outcomes to all stakeholders (investors and the team) is really powerful. It is so much simpler to build your entire business this way than maintaining multiple excel sheets, and it's also really useful that it uses common programming ideas in this setting. **What do you dislike about Causal?** As with anything that is very powerful, there is a learning curve and you need to spend some time understanding the framing and concepts. They do a good job of encouraging the basic concepts, and you should really spend some time getting to know it before expecting to jump straight in. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows you to plan different financial scenarios, which allows you to see expenses and incomes as variables as opposed to locked-in data which resembles reality much more closely. Tie in headcount planning, and you can really see this as the mainframe for your business. ### 24. Casual,app is Excel on steroids with plain English formulae **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steve K. | CSO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2021 **What do you like best about Causal?** Casual is like Excel on steroids, it allows sheets to be set up using variables that indicate what they are like "growth" or "stock price" and then can produce visually appealing graphs, charts etc. Now can be used by teams, with members being given some access so they can play with variables for their own use without affecting everyone else **What do you dislike about Causal?** Can be a bit complex to get to grips with some of the features **Recommendations to others considering Causal:** If you need to perform complex calculations and have the results displayed in easy to read formats such as graphs with the ability to use parameters so users can see what happens if things are changed (like say margin or percentage of sales etc) then causal.app may be the servuce for you **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows things like financial projections to be displayed online while say giving the user the ability to change things and see how the outcomes are affected. So almost liek a tune-able Excel spreadsheet online but with fancy output (chart etc) options ### 25. Causal is impressive! And super fun to use! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Galen K. | Founder & Strategic Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Spreadsheets are flexible and easy to wrangle into submission. But, if you are wanting to come up with different scenarios or play with variations on data, it becomes challenging very quickly—if not more or less impossible. Causal makes it easy to set up underlying data and assumptions, connect to live data sources, and, essentially, play with the numbers to test assumptions and get more out of your data. Their team is also super helpful and they provide a lot of guidance if needed. **What do you dislike about Causal?** As with any advanced tool, the learning curve can be challenging. I have also found that it’s easy to set up and play with Causal but hard to stick with it and make it part of my day-to-day toolset. This is more a lack of discipline on my part than an issue with Causal, though. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** For anyone working with forecasting data and planning ahead, Causal is amazing. It is extremely powerful and makes scenario planning easy—especially compared to attempting to do it in spreadsheets. ### 26. So easy and intuitive to pick up, had a model built in less than a day **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Wendy W. | Partner Ops, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Intuitive modeling interface, formulas were relatively easy to understand, and super easy to change the timescale. I also love that you can view and build dashboards directly from the modeling page. The data integration into Google sheets has also been a life saver since you don't need IT to set up anything in order to get started. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There can be more organizational elements in the model building. Currently, you can only go two layers deep in the organization. I imagine as models get more complicated, there has to be better organization the model building interface to make the models easier to read and digest. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Financial modeling without human error in excel. The ability to spin up different scenarios in the push of a button. Visually displaying info instead of numbers in a table. ### 27. Solid FP&A Software for Running Easily Model Scenarios and Creating Visual Outputs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adi D. | Fractional CFO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Most helpful - Monte Carlo simluation capabilities (ranges for all key inputs) - Ease in building visuals (charts, tables etc.) - Ability to link to QBO to update actuals **What do you dislike about Causal?** Hardest part is learning a slightly new "language" after years and years of using Excel. Some bugs in the Monte Carlo simulations creating unstable outcomes. No easy way yet to record (high, median, low) from Monte Carlo outputs. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating scenarios in the budget forecast which can easily be changed and compared. Creating charts easily for Board meetings summarizing actuals and plan ### 28. Causal is my new favourite platform! Models are easy to build and even easier to present. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luke T. | Finance Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 07, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Linking to databases is so important as I can keep almost my entire workflow (on any given day) Causal and no need to refer to other platforms/apps. Personally, working with one platform with as few tabs open as possible helps me to focus and get things done. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Working with teams can be challenging as there seems to be no functionality that allows me to see if another team member is in the same model at the same time. Google sheets do this fairly well, and it can be extremely helpful when the models are being used by separate stakeholders simultaneously. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal is a huge time-saver; the ability to enter in a formula and have it cascade throughout the entire model is so powerful as I'd typically have to take those few extra seconds to drag manually. Those saved seconds add up. ### 29. Overall great user interphase, improving everyday but could benefit from more excel compatibility **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** How easy it is to use subcategories to avoid repetitive modeling, nomenclature for variables. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Hard to input data from copy paste in excel when not pasting directly in T-O. e.g. model starts in Oct 2022, and I want to paste input data into Jan 2023 and won't let me do it. Hard to audit / know if aggregations are done properly when putting together variables with different subcategories Not easy to export to an excel table (CFOs and VPs will still prefer Excel over Causal) make it more excel friendly to increase penetration of your product Not easy to link to a historic data source to constantly refresh model outputs **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** High level Financial modeling, and making tasks more automatable ### 30. Intuitive, powerful and incredibly valuable. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David S. | Founder and CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Having traditionally built FP&A models in Excel, moving to Causal is a revelation. No cells or cell references, just named variables, automated cohorts, scenarios and simple dashboards. Saves huge amounts of time and more importantly simple to audit and debug to catch any errors. Finally, the support is genuinely outstanding. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Montecarlo modelling for variables can result in the same variable having different values until the model is refreshed. Simple to workaround and I understand this is being fixed, but did cause some head-scratching. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal has become the core financial modelling tool for our business. With a small team, we do not have a large FP&A function but Causal delivers huge productivity gains over traditional Excel models and its dashboards make it simple to collaboratively alter key drivers and see the outputs update visually. ### 31. Very powerful platform, take a little while to figure out how to use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** There is a lot you can do, and most of it can be figured out on your own. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Not everything is super intuitive in the UI, and the discoverability could be improved. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating financial forecasts, plans and budgets. ### 32. Great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Madelein V. | Acting Chief Financial Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The product is easy to use, the support staff are fantastic, great training and Office Hour support, integration with Xero, and use of dimensions/categories across various models. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I would have loved to already see a basic view of primary financials when connected to Xero. It is not ideal to have to rebuild an income statement, cash flow statement and balance sheet for forecasting purposes if the basic framework already exists in Xero (or other accounting ERPs). The limitation on categories in the non-enterprise packages is not ideal. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Forecasting of expenses and cash flow over multiple years. This supports investor reporting and aids in proposals to potential investors. The forecast serves as an early warning for cash runway. ### 33. A dream for every FP&A Analyst **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** - Very easy & intuitive: it resembles Excel enough to make it easy to learn - Unchallenged management of sensitivity/scenario analyses - Updating models is a seamless experience - Top-notch (really, I'm surprised) CS. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Product lacks some elementary analyses (waterfall charts, for instance) that are present in every FP&A piece of work. This is not a deterrent to use Causal, as they have a clear product roadmap based on client's needs. I know they will include this very soon! **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Building a business model to measure impact of each business decision on our KRs - Saves a lot of time and decreases probability of error when modelling - Shits the conversation from 'Expected impact of X' to ranges, scenarios & probabilities In our case, we used Causal to build the company's financial budget and then connected it to our non-financial KRs. Now we know what the financial impact of improving performance for our clients is. It also saved hours of preparing reports. ### 34. The best FP&A and financial modeling tool we've found **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Felix P. | Head of FP&A, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is the only financial modeling tool that combines the flexibility and power of a spreadsheet with the structure and collaboration of a dedicated finance SaaS tool. - Unlike competitors like Anaplan or Adaptive Insights, Causal retains the flexibility of a spreadsheet model to enable rapid iteration on core model mechanics, metric definitions, etc. - Unlike Excel or Google Sheets, Causal supports unified metrics definitions (including across multiple models) - Unlike Excel or Google Sheets, Causal can easily modularize and access-control a model, enabling direct collaboration with different operating teams without needing to share sensitive or irrelevant information with them - Unlike Excel or Google Sheets, Causal can easily and directly import data from a host of other platforms (e.g. Netsuite, marketing analytics tools, BI tools, etc.) - Native support for scenario analysis, variance analysis, etc. - The support from the team has been incredibly good - by far the best experience we've had with any enterprise system **What do you dislike about Causal?** - The product is very new and immature - a lot of basic quality of life features are still being implemented - The way that Causal handles multidimensionality is a little clunky right now - They're working on this, but it can slow down with very large models (still far better/more efficient than Excel models with dozens of tabs, though) **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** As we've scaled, we've really needed a modeling tool that can grow with us. Our business has gotten to the point where Excel is no longer capable of simultaneously modeling both our operations / BI and our financials, and we've been constrained by the fact that other teams have had to maintain separate models and projections from finance because we can't share the full Excel model with them. With Causal, both of these challenges are being resolved, and we're now unblocked to increase the complexity and fidelity of our financial and operational models while collaborating more directly with our operating partners. ### 35. Financial modelling with 10x the accuracy and 10x the speed of spreadsheets **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexey I. | CTO, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal takes away all the painful parts of setting up spreadsheet formulas and trying to model time in a spreadsheet. Time is a variable that is baked into the product so rather than fighting with Excel formulas, every value entered into Causal is a direct representation of your business logic. This makes it incredibly simple to not only build but to also review and understand how an existing model works. Ever opened an Excel file and then struggle for a few hours to wrap your mind around how the math works and which cells depend on what? This workflow is easily 10 times faster in Causal - it is very easy to navigate the relationships between variables and parts of business logic. We used to rely on Excel and would always distrust our model because it was so difficult to verify if someone else had done the formulas correctly. Since switching to Causal, doing the verification work is very quick so whenever we are looking at our model we can easily double-check the accuracy of everything. We have been using Causal for the past two years for our company's financial modeling and I can't ever see us going back to Excel. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It can be difficult to get started at first. I personally have a background in software engineering and the entire user interface was very intuitive right away, but some of our team members with a traditional finance background took a bit longer to get accustomed to how the tool works. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using Causal as our financial modeling tool. We can easily see how our cash balance/revenue changes over the next few years depending on our hiring decisions. ### 36. Excellent tool for modeling uncertainty and scenario comparison **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jamie M. | COO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Once you gain an understanding for the underlying data construction of Causal, it becomes infinitely easy to model complex scenarios across multiple cohorts and time frames. The savings in time vs. Excel as well as the legibility and auditability of the formulas used makes this an exceptional tool. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It does take some time to get used to the data and time structure, and the inherent power of the platform could benefit greatly from more tutorials and more in depth training and manuals. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have to model complex investment structures with multiple scenarios. Using excel, this is a time consuming and error prone process. Causal gives us another tool to quickly prototype and some cases produce finished models that are easy to present to the various stakeholders in our process. ### 37. A stellar forecasting tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin B. | Product Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal makes forecasting easy - dare I say, it even makes it fun! It makes it incredibly easy to test out how different variables will affect your numbers in the future, as well as allowing you to easily give a best case/worst case spread. Would highly recommend Causal. The Causal team also rapidly pushes out new features, and I'm excited to see what the future brings. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There's a bit of a learning curve at first, but once you're familiar with Causal, you can rapidly iterate on your model. Comprehensive guides and videos are also provided to help you learn. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Causal to model out future growth, and how that might change if we pull certain strategic levers. Causal makes it very simple to visual changes over time. ### 38. importing data from XERO with almost no clicking is sweet. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhan B. | Finance Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The ability to connect and import data from XERO is the best part, how you want to utilize it all comes back to you. Create scenarios and you have a pragmatic view of the future. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The awesomeness of Causel comes with some chaos. Fact 1. Not all accountants are super excel users. It's hard to adapt to programmer mindset/mental maps. Fact 2. Not all accountants are programmers, we do not know what is a string or variable, to be honest. (its too much technicality, sometimes) **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've used Causal for some time only and had to stop using it because of its technicality, I have used it for P&L, Actual vs Budget, Depts performance and cash forecasting. Level-based Education required (like a course level 1,2,3) Library tools are required, Not sure how to simply search for a command. especially when in the middle of something,(watching a whole video takes a lot of time and distracts from the main point) Setup a simple Library for commands. ### 39. Radical rethinking of financial (and other) models **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeremy H. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** At the start, Causal seems like a fancy interface to create a financial model in a spreadsheet. As you delve deeper, though, you realise that it's a completely different approach to creating models, which results in a lot of saved time, fewer headaches and features that would have been very difficult to implement in Excel/Google Sheets. Guiding the user into this new way of thinking is something the software does really well. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I found it very difficult to use Causal using a web browser on an iPad - there's definitely much that could be done to improve the experience. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Excel/Google Sheets, I would often break formulas by moving cells around. Causal makes this easy. Formulas, particularly those relying on other cells, are MUCH easier in Causal. It's also very easy to create (and visualise) scenarios. All of this was very helpful for me to create a robust financial model for my company. ### 40. Supercharge your What-If Scenarios **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James A. | Sr Data Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** * Set distribution of possible input values and understand variability in downstream calculations/outputs * Integrate external data into models using native connectors * Replicate calculations across categories without needing to modify a spreadsheet by adding/removing rows and risking critical errors * Modularize model development and use outputs of one model as an input for another * Create multiple scenarios without changing the base case and compare the outputs of each scenario against each other * Lightning fast! **What do you dislike about Causal?** * Organization/Team management is a bit confusing; colleagues who also signed up for a trial were given their own workspace rather than joining my existing one. Would like the ability to create a single domain for our company. i.e. {company_name}.causal.app * Lack of net working days function * Dashboard creation can be a bit tedious **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm able to create operational throughput and revenue forecasts for management and allow them to create different scenarios to understand how decisions will impact key business metrics. It also saves me time and headspace by avoiding development of models in traditional spreadsheets which are difficult to maintain ### 41. Really smart team and product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** The Causal team is so smart and helpful. Their integrations are fantastic, and I love how easy it is to get started. Whenever I have any questions, they're always happy to help out. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Nothing comes to mind right now! We have found it to be very easy to use. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having a dynamic view of our business -- much easier to use Causal versus manually updating an Excel model all the time. ### 42. Excellent Modeling Tool for Scenarios & Visualization **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** My team does a TON of complex cohort analyses that Excel just can't handle as the business has grown (millions of cells..). Causal has been instrumental in many of our product impact analyses and creating different scenarios is pretty seamless. The visual tool is quick and helps us find bugs in our data or more easily figure out where we need to adjust our model. The Causal team is extremely helpful - (shout out Heidi!) listen to feedback and have worked closely with us to build our cohort revenue model. Our team has a long project list of things we're looking forward to building in Causal when we have the time. I would absolutely recommend the product for any FPA, Corp Dev, and Product or Marketing analytics teams! **What do you dislike about Causal?** There isn't much about Causal that our team doesn't like - I would say instead the most challenging piece is understanding the learning curve on how to write formulas and learn the Causal language. Although with the Causal team's guidance, this process was ultimately pretty seamless for our team. Compared to systems like Adaptive, the Causal formulas follow more logic especially if you are strong in Excel. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ability to complete product impact analyses and compare scenarios with more speed and accuracy, helping our CFO and CPO make product and budget decisions based on real ROI data ### 43. Causal is a supercharged financial modeling tool that our finance team uses every day. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The most helpful thing about Causal is their unique way of linking variables and categories between models, that allow us to conduct complex modeling exercises (connected to real-time data) that all build off of each other, without the need to continuously check references and build complex formulas that are hard for viewers to follow. Causal's Cohort function is also one of the easiest ways to do cohort modeling in my experience. **What do you dislike about Causal?** When you use a lot of data integrations, there isn't a lot of flexibility in tinkering with categories or mapping categories of different names between multiple data sources. This causes some pain in ensuring that the data source has exactly the same output format no matter where it comes from, which can take a lot of time upfront. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal is allowing us to do bottoms up, departmental budgeting for our FP&A practice. We also use Causal to build complex models of our product, revenue, and profit that would be atrocious to build and update with actuals in excel. ### 44. Great tool for budgets and forecasts **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mathias N. | Financial Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** - How easy it is to import data from different data sources. - Create new variables without making major changes to the model. -The use of categories across different variables. - Compare actuals with a budget. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There isn't much that I don't like. The most challenging part was getting an understanding of how the tool is used and how to structure the financial models in the most efficient way. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Make it easier to create budgets and forecasts for different business units in the same model to give a better overview of the financial situation of the whole company. ### 45. Elevate your forecasts **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert N. | Performance Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** We use Causal to forecast media spend because it allows us to add variables to the inputs, showing us confidence intervals and reporting to clients the most likely scenarios. In addition, the visualisation aids are beneficial and easy to add, especially for people who are less well experienced with your average spreadsheet tool. Although it might look intimidating at first glance, it's pretty intuitive, and everything fits together seamlessly. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The visualisation tools are limited and can be clunky to use effectively. While they provide simple graphs/distributions, they lack the ability to customise thoroughly. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Primarily forecasting media spend. ### 46. Causal is a simple yet POWERFUL tool, that transformed my FP&A function **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** I love the dashboards and for the basic forecasting the syntax is really easy to learn. **What do you dislike about Causal?** For some of my more complex modeling functions, the syntax is not as clear. I'm sure that will resolve itself as I continue to use the platform. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing ranges of uncertainty and a easy way to visually display our data ### 47. Great product, user experience, and support team **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal allows you to both CALCULATE and COMMUNICATE financial risk with ease. The ability to easily model ranges and integrate scenarios in budgeting and forecasting is second to none. I've tried countless FP&A tools, and while they fit some needs, none of them is on the same level as causal. A few things I like about the product - - Plain English formulas...say goodbye to $A$1:$A$1765 and say hello to "Customer List" - Relative ranges..we can say things like expected churn will be "3% to 6%" for service A and "7% to 10%" for service B. It's difficult to describe how impactful that is to modeling. You essentially reduce your variable count by half. - Support team is incredibly helpful and goes and above and beyond to help you get the most out of Causal I've seen a lot of "spreadsheet alternatives," but this is the first one that seriously lives up to the hype. Do yourself a favor and try it today. **What do you dislike about Causal?** For the Excel users out there, you should expect a learning curve. It took me a bit to break from my cell/column/row mindset, but one year in and I wish I had made the switch from Excel sooner. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** tl;dr - Causal Scenario Planning actually works; for everyone (not just the person managing the spreadsheet). Causal is solving one of the most challenging aspects of the business - How do you effectively plan for the future given the inherent uncertainty? Locking formulas, columns, and sheets in Excel guarantee that you or your CFO will be stuck managing the file and limits your ability to collaborate with other team members. Causal makes it easy to communicate with others, update your model and assumptions, and display the level of certainty you have in the forecast. Your team can now have a conversation about various inputs (churn, wages, inflation, etc.) and see those discussions come to life in your Causal model. ### 48. Best Human Language spreadsheet ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Constantino R. | New Business Development Advisor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** The best is that you can name variables using their actual names and then use those names in your formulas, which makes it very intuitive for you and your team to review and find errors. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I think at this time, there is still lack of templates to help the community to build more and more models and share it with other users. If more templates are available, I think the growth for causal can increase a lot. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helped me to forecast a business model for an e-commerce platform in less than 1 hour with a pre-build template. It help me to make a sensitivity analysis very quickly and in an intuitive way. ### 49. Best way to forecast our cashflow **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Causal?** Collecting your historical data is easy, you login to your accounting or reporting dashboard and press "export". But the ability to use that historical data and make prognoses based on it, is truly a game-changer for us. - It allows us to forecast our subscription revenue in the future. - It allows us to forecast our cashflow with great accuracy in the future. - It allows us to plot out our hiring plan and the impact on our cashflow. All these things end up giving you as a founder (and non-CFO) the necessary confidence to execute your plans, knowing you've got the needed buffer. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It takes some time to get used to the different concepts, especially if were not used to forecasting tools(like me) Building out a model takes time and probably multiple takes. Moulding the data correctly requires some hoop-jumping **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cashflow forecasting, helped us make informed decision around hiring and budgets. ### 50. Time-based models for business the way they should have always been done - intuitive, fast and easy. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** No need to manually do calculations for dates/time periods. Causal handles it all, in the way you expect it to. Enter a formula and it calculates it for all the time periods you have set. Ability to enter values in a range to handle uncertainty, and Causal carries that uncertainty through all calculations for you, automatically, saving you from having to do it manually. This is a game-changer when you need to do scenario planning and quickly switch between different scenarios and variables. The ability to share models and let people play with changing variables, and not change the underlying model makes exploration of assumptions and discoveries not only less risky and easier but promotes a culture where of sharing, transparency and giving all team members an opportunity to discover insights and contribute. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The idea of calculating a formula across many time periods would be excellent to extend to arbitrary periods, not just time-based. I believe this is in the pipeline for Causal, but as yet not there. I have more cases where I need a generic period step rather than time, where the Causal approach would be great. You can work around this using the time periods to mimic a generic case, but it is a little tedious. Other aspects of the program like graphs and how much control over the appearance are still primitive to more mature products, but this will come with time as the product matures. For the most part, the standard graphs suffice, but in certain circumstances, I need to export data to build a more custom graph using another program. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to make complicated time-based model calculations simply and intuitively, without having to write multiple formulas, dragging it out, and ensuring no formula errors in any time-period is a real game-changer compared to doing the same thing in a spreadsheet. There are other programs to do more sophisticated modeling, but Casual brings the simplicity and familiarity of a spreadsheet to more sophisticated modeling and does it well. A lot of potential with what they are doing. The ability to enter values in a range with natural language, and have that range and uncertainty carry through all calculations has saved me time and allows me to explore aspects of a model that would have been neglected before simply because they were too complicated to do in a spreadsheet and too complicated, time-consuming or costly to move to a more sophisticated software. Then exploring different scenarios based on the input variables allows me to explore the best options quite easily, and feel confident in the decision taken, that you have comprehensively explored all scenarios. ## Causal Discussions - [Are they thinking on lines of coming up with domain-centric solutions to reduce time redundancies for Excel users to help them make the switch?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/are-they-thinking-on-lines-of-coming-up-with-domain-centric-solutions-to-reduce-time-redundancies-for-excel-users-to-help-them-make-the-switch) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Causal pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/lucanet-ag-causal/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-13+11%3A40%3A20+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=33fe6cff-b0ba-40ed-9a56-7a5da7380e57&secure%5Btoken%5D=0a7b21a023f136d701ce0c17fb6fc46368f581f261759a6d91225ed9fc49817b&format=llm_user) ## Causal Features **Budget Creation** - Data Import - Budget Hierarchies - Versioning - Formulas - What-If - Budget Periods **Data Management** - Data Import - Data Consolidation - Data Validation **Cash Flow Management** - File Exports - Income and Expenses - Track Cash Flow **Financial Planning** - Extended Planning - Reporting - Integration **Agentic AI - Accounting & Finance** - Autonomous Task Execution **Agentic AI - FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) ** - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Financial Insight** - Budgeting - Forecasting - Planning **Budget Management** - Consolidation - Adjustments **Reporting Structure** - Reporting Hierarchy - Report Templates - Report Types **Cash Flow Forecasting** - Historical Data - Reforecast - Forecast Types - Rolling Forecasts - AI **Data** - Data Visualization - Data Analysis - Custom Reporting - Reporting Templates **Forecasting** - Historical Data - Reforecast - Forecast Types - Rolling Forecasts - AI **Standard Analytics** - Standard KPIs - Standard Reports - Financial Statements - Drill Down **Analytics** - Variance Analysis - Reports - Forecast Comparison - Forward Looking **Status Communication** - Collaboration - Version Control - Real-Time Data Updates - Scorecards **Analytics** - Variance Analysis - Forecasts Comparison - Forward Looking **Custom Analytics** - Dashboards - Custom KPIs - Custom Reports - Self Service - Multiple Entities **Financial Data Transfer** - Data Transfer - Data Exchange - Reporting - Access - Integration **Agentic AI - Cash Flow Management** - Autonomous Task Execution **Agentic AI - Budgeting and Forecasting** - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Agentic AI - Financial Analysis** - Cross-system Integration - Decision Making ## Top Causal Alternatives - [Jirav](https://www.g2.com/products/jirav/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (191 reviews) - [Pigment](https://www.g2.com/products/pigment-2024-01-19/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (108 reviews) - [Vena](https://www.g2.com/products/vena/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (469 reviews)