# 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 commend the **automation capabilities** of Causal, enabling quick integration and efficient data sharing for budgeting. (1 reviews) - Users find Causal's **budgeting capabilities** outstanding, praising its simplicity and flexibility for effective planning and collaboration. (1 reviews) - Users value the **collaboration features** of Causal, enhancing teamwork during budgeting and planning processes. (1 reviews) - Users value the **robust data analysis** in Causal, appreciating its seamless blending of actual and forecasted values. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of implementation** with Causal, enjoying quick integration and user-friendly 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, often requiring additional help from consultants to get started. (1 reviews) - Users find the **insufficient training** challenging, often needing external help to get started with Causal. (1 reviews) - Users feel there are **integration issues** with Causal, suggesting a need for more seamless connectivity options. (1 reviews) - Users find the **learning curve challenging** , often requiring assistance to effectively understand Causal's features. (1 reviews) - Users find the **learning difficulty** of Causal somewhat challenging, often requiring additional help to get started. (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. Poor experience with the Causal team and application after Lucanet acquisition **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 11, 2025 **What do you like best about Causal?** Clean visual interface, yet support and feature progress have degraded since the Lucanet deal. They used to be better. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Support has been unhelpful, billing continued after cancellation, and post-acquisition the company feels more rigid and transactional **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** When it works, it helps align team forecasts without heavy Excel overhead ### 2. A very high quality FP&A tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ben L. | Chief Financial Officer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 14, 2025 **What do you like best about Causal?** It is simple to use, with a logcial UI and syntax to achieve the desired results. It is very quick to implement and integrate with other data. The ability to share with key stakeholder and the flexibility in what be represented is brilliant. We rely on it during our budgeting and planning phases. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It could increase the number of integrations, but it is by no means short **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Simplicity and clarity to manage multi-entity forecasting whilst providing excellent insight for steakholders. ### 3. Best in class financial tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sebastian S. | Co-CEO, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 17, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** Last year, when I was looking for a financial tool that I could use for quick and easy financial planning, I looked at several products and ended up sticking with Causal. I still don't regret that decision. On the contrary, I am very happy with it. Causal offers several different out-of-the-box financial models, which makes it very easy to get started. But it's still extremely flexible and made for complex financial modeling. There is very helpful and comprehensive documentation and many very well made videos by the founder himself. I use Causal every day and wouldn't want to be without it. **What do you dislike about Causal?** This is complaining at a very high level, but I would like the dashboards to have even more customization options and to be able to set up different dashboards for different stakeholders for one model. But I'm sure that will come in the future. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** On the one hand, Causal helps us to aggregate and analyze different data on income, expenses or various Saas metrics. On the other hand, we use Causal for our cash flow and budget planning. ### 4. Perfect for startups that need financial visibility **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan A. | Cofounder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is super robust, seamlessly blending my actual with forecasted values. I love the cross tab references and beautiful charts too **What do you dislike about Causal?** It was a little challenging getting started and learning the Causal way-- I did hire an amazing consultant who helped us out **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Calculating runway and building models ### 5. Phenomenal product with great support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael G. | Marketing Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** The functionality is so advanced. We've been able to build out some crazy in-depth financial models and forecasts, despite not having a CFO/financial specialist on the team yet. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There is a steep learning curve due to the product being so advanced. Thankfully, the education and support is excellent - even during our free trial period. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We're able to forecast forward and apply different scenarios (e.g. if we raise X amount in funding, then what happens to our numbers?). Everything is all connected and changes flow downstream so we can see the effects throughout the sales funnel and right through to our bottom line. Building this in spreadsheets would be an absolute nightmare and would take vast amounts of time longer. ### 6. I don't know why anyone still uses spreadsheets for Finance **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tara L. | Head of Operations, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Using Causal allows me to focus on what the numbers mean, rather than having to worry about whether the calculations are correct. I can quickly understand the assumptions behind models, compare scenarios and track changes in ways which are impossible to do in a spreadsheet. Migrating into Causal was very easy - when we hit roadblocks, the support team are always quick to respond and help solve our problems. The product team are really responsive and features / fixes are released really quickly. **What do you dislike about Causal?** More Xero's fault than Causal's but for a cash-focussed startup, having a pre-built template of a direct cash flow (which we managed to do manually in the end) would have been REALLY helpful. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal is allowing us to present information in a way that makes sense to both the Finance team and the rest of the business. It's also allowing us to make higher-quality decisions - when modelling a scenario is so easy, doing so before pulling the trigger is a no brainer. ### 7. The first legitimate excel killer I've come across **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andres D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal excels in facilitating complex financial modeling. Its user-friendly interface simplifies the integration of intricate formulas and scenarios. The aesthetically pleasing outputs are straightforward to configure. A standout feature is the emphasis on Monte Carlo simulations, which seamlessly incorporates variables with uncertainty. This allows for a clear visualization of the potential range of outcomes, enhancing decision-making in financial analysis. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I honestly don't have anything materially bad to say about Causal. I think for a while it was hard to do things like IRR modeling but I believe they've fixed that more recently. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows me to build beautiful and complex forecasting models quickly. Most importantly it incorporates uncertainty at its core which allows me to quickly see how multiple uncertain inputs affect the range of possible outcomes. Furthermore, for anybody interacting with the model, they can play with those ranges of inputs and quickly see the modification in the results providing even more confidence in the model. ### 8. Useful FP&A Tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Everything I have thought about trying to do, Causal has the ability to do it very cleanly and quickly. I really like the ability to quickly collapse up months into quarters into years without SUMIF formulas. I also like that formulas are based on names rather than cell references. It seamlessly integrates into Xero as well which is really useful. Any issues we have had were looked into quickly by Taimur and team. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It is quite tech-heavy and so it takes some getting used to but it is a powerful tool once up and running. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easier budgeting and forecasting that lis linked to live Xero figures (without having to manually update, I can get real-time budgets) ### 9. Approachable FP&A tool with easy set up and lots of great support. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah T. | Business Operations Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** As an Operations Specialist having a tool that is approachable and easy to set up/navigate but still sophisticated in its ability to provide solid financial forecasting and scenerio mapping is what I appreciate most about Causal. Also love that they have a network of fractional CFOs for set-up guidance, we appreciated this and used one of their recommended folks. Implementation is super easy compared to what was out in the market. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It lacks some key integrations for SaaS, such as Recurly and it would be great if the Xero integration had some more attention paid to it, you cant link the cash summary which is a report we like using and I needed to reach out to support to have the numbers adjusted due to the expenses coming through as a positive deduction in the formula. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** The visual dashboards were what was really missing from our previous set up, which was using Google Workbooks and pivot tables, now we have a much clearer picture for forecasting and cashflow. Causal has also significantly reduced the EOM reporting time and because its all connected to our books less room for data entry error. ### 10. Causal is more than a spreadsheet software & has become my business analysis and planning superhero! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammad A. | Director of Finance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Its intergation with google sheets, and Quick Books Online has made the possibilities unlimited. Visualizing your analysis is also very easy with Causal **What do you dislike about Causal?** Categories make modellling and analysis super easy, yet the number of categories allowed are quite limited even for the extra upgrade! They also quoted the top tier as unlimited categories, but their support told me that it is actually limited to 3000 categories and they in reality do not offer unlimited categories, rendering it useless for me. I am very close to using my full 1000 categories for the extra upgrade tier! **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Speed of financial analysis and visualization ### 11. Automate your regular FP&A tasks **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 06, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** - Connect to your source data (e.g., Xero, Stripe, HRIS, CRM, GSheets, and more) to automatically import up-to-date actuals and compare them with your forecasts. - Experience faster and more accurate modeling than Excel thanks to intelligent data structuring. - Utilize excellent wizards, templates, and documentation for a quick and precise setup. - Enjoy fast and efficient customer support. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It is surprising that it isn't yet more widely used as an alternative to GSheets or Excel - but it will be! **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Speed of comparing Actuals to Budget Producing Models and scenarios ### 12. Causal / FP&A **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Intuitive Interface: Causal boasts an intuitive interface that simplifies the process of creating financial models, making it accessible to every user. Documentation: the well-structured documentation makes it easy to understand features, functions etc. Responsive Customer Support: customer support team is being responsive and helpful. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Limited Advanced Features: For advanced users seeking highly specialized or complex modeling capabilities, Causal may fall short in comparison to more advanced software. Wizard should encompass the entire three-statement model for Xero (BS, PL, CF) and include the consolidation piece. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Traditional planning and scenario exploration can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Causal streamlines this process, enabling me to quickly prototype and test different scenarios. This not only saves time but also enhances strategic decision-making by providing a dynamic platform for evaluating potential outcomes. ### 13. I am throwing away my Excel models by scaling FP&A with a robust platform! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2021 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal has built a financial modeling platform with the power and functionality of Excel and the reliability and integrity of an ERP. The ability to share views into the model and allow 3rd parties to change variables for forecasting scenarios is hugely powerful. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The Causal platform has amazing functionality and has the ability to model very complicated scenarios. There are many templates and tutorials to help you put together a methodology that works. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Building powerful financial models with structural integrity, easy data integration, and powerful scenario planning. Excel models take a lot of time to maintain and update. Having integration with the accounting ERPs and other key financial data saves a ton of time providing the BvA analysis. ### 14. An intuitive alternative to Excel for modeling **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** I appreciate how easy it is to carry work forward without having to do manual entry, and scenarios make it very easy to play with the model without breaking it. The wiki is also very helpful for getting started on it The onboarding process was pretty easy and the team offered support throughout **What do you dislike about Causal?** I struggle to remember some of the formulas, etc but usually solved via the wiki. People who are Excel diehards are difficult to persuade over to it. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has really simplified the process of evaluating opportunities and has made it easy to demonstrate why certain opportunities have been prioritised to the rest of the company ### 15. Finance = Reinvented **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is a game changer for our finance function. Our finance team has been able to demistify a lot of our numbers and effectively communicate decisions to the rest of the organization. I'm now able to back hiring and other decisions with real numbers and fully understand them despite not being on the finance team and not being deep in spreadsheets. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Nothing yet! I haven't used every single piece of functionality, but from what I've seen as a viewer, it's been really amazing. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal helps us manage every aspect of our cash. From BvA to initial stages of headcount planning, the tool has been incredible. ### 16. Goodbye Google Sheets **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charlie K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** There's so much easy-to-use functionality to make our monthly reporting process easier. Pulling data from multiple live-updating systems is incredibly easy, and having this data live-update the same platform as where our execs are consuming information from is really powerful and saves us countless hours of data wrangling. The support team is also extremely helpful and quick to respond. We won't be going back to Google Sheets! **What do you dislike about Causal?** As a user with a non-financial background, there is a bit of a learning curve to get up-to-speed with all of the functionality on offer in Causal. It's extremely powerful which can be a bit overwhelming, and I'm not sure I'll ever get to use it to the fullest potential (mostly due to my own lack of knowledge). That said, the Causal team have built out comprehesive and helpful documenation, and their support team is very responsive and willing to work through problems. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We've replaced our entire manual process for producing monthly management accounts with Causal. Rather than sharing clunky and formula-heavy Google Sheets, our exec team now access all our financial information they need in a single platform that live-updates. We're now in a place where we can start building out our financial models for business planinng purposes alongside up-to-date information being pulled from a variety of different sources. We couldn't be happier with Causal! ### 17. Great Product, Fantastic Support **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alek Z. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** One of the best things about Causal is the ability to connect to all of your different systems (Salesforce, Netsuite, ADP, etc.). This allows us to do analysis that we could never have done in the past. Beyond that, their support is unparalleled. I have never had more individualized attention, and it is extremely refreshing. They are very customer focused, and I feel like I am really being heard and helped. I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for new FP&A software! **What do you dislike about Causal?** Causal is constantly being updated on the backend (from their own pipeline as well as from customer comments). So the only thing to dislike is that it is not already completely perfect, but that is also actually a benefit because they are building it up at all times! I have had a few comments to them that were implemented in less than an hour... amazing! Never seen this flexability with any other platforms. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** One thing that Causal really solves for us is transparency and visability. Now that we can access data across many of our systems, we can use that data across different departments for analysis and forecasting. ### 18. Great tool for fast insights into your sturtup.businesscase! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lukas P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** - templates for standard issues - work in progress, keeps getting better - great support **What do you dislike about Causal?** - i find it not easy to connect the dots if you are looking for en error in your calculation - takes some time to "get it" after years of excel-brain **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** the concept of categories gives great ease to expanding complex calculations very fast and easy. ### 19. Causal is great! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bob K. | President, Management Consulting, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Having implemented and used many CPM tools, I find Causal refreshing to use and is more intuitive to use than other applications. Even though it doesn't use Excel as a framework, it is still very Excel-like in terms of approachability and continues to grow its functionality to offer many of the things finance and FP&A folks need to prepare their financial plans and scenarios. **What do you dislike about Causal?** As mentioned before, the downsides of Causal are its newness in this application space so some functionality is not available (although enhancements may be on the product road map). As the application matures to be more of an enterprise tool, cross functional security will be an important consideration for users. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** General producing financail plans and budgets for monitoring performance, reporting and variance analysis against budgets, plans and scenario planning for decision analysis ### 20. GREAT TOOL FOR MODELLING AND VISUALIZING MODELS **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ralph I. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** - intuitive to use - great for dashboarding - make financial models and easily visualize how your input variables affect your model - approachable and responsive CEO **What do you dislike about Causal?** - the price tiering could be improved - integrations with other apps are limited **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Great for data visualization when conducting financial analysis, modeling, and conducting/visualizing sensitivity analysis is easier with Causal. ### 21. Make financial modeling massively efficient **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yoichiro H. | CEO, Co-founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Compared to traditional tools like Excel or Airtable, Causal has huge advantage to manage multiple scenarios and update the data with connecting the external data source. By using the "Category" feature, it makes it quite easy to handle multiple departments. Moreover, via the "Dashboard", you can share the visualized summary/chart with anyone with ease or embed to daily tools like Notion. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It requires a few hours to learn all the features even if they provide templates. Especially "Functions" looks super useful but hard to understand nad master how to use them. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Normally it take a few weeks of time and effort to make/maintain financial projection for more than 3-5 years. But thanks to Causal, it could shorted to few days to make and easy to update by connecting external data source. And by using "Input" section on dashboard, team/investor can play/simulate with testing hypothetical numbers for each metrics. ### 22. Great Excel FP&A modelling replacement **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal has allowed us to build our SaaS models with a lot more flexibility than if we used Excel. Learning curve is a lot simpler than other FP&A tools that I have worked with. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Like any FP&A tool, there is still a learning curve so still need to teach users of models how Causal works. More complex models require some time to run calculations but team is working on this. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Efficiently building budget models ### 23. Quite nice tool but feels a bit "clunky" sometimes **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Very good versioning system - allows comparing versions very easily easy graph plotting tool. Time series formulas are very useful when dealing with financial data and projections and now the live collaboration capabilities fill a gap that I previously missed. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Quality of life: Resize columns at once Conditional formatting on dates (e.g. actuals are different than model/years are different colours Show the value of a part of the formula when hovering (similar to F9 behaviour in Gsheet) Expand all categories with one click General usability: This is more a generic comment but I do feel that Causal is less intuitive and has a steeper learning curve than the usual spreadsheet calculation platform. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal has been implemented mainly by our local finance function to handle our P&L and help the S&OP process. So far it hasn't benefited me per se as I am still in the early stages of the learning curve but my colleague seems pretty happy about it. ### 24. Extraordinary **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Automatically updating dates for historical and projected. Create and save multiple scenarios 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 **What do you dislike about Causal?** There is no way to export to excel while keeping the native functions made in causal. This was a major pain in the rear and cost me a bunch of extra. Please improve the function export! **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 ### 25. Excellent tool for modelling **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robbie O. | Head of Finance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is a very well designed tool. It's got great flexibility on the back end, it can be linked directly to your sources (for live, single source of truth data), it has a really clean front end allowing the user to edit only the inputs you decide. It's also really great for linking multiple models, giving a clear history so you can follow how a model was designed. I also love the speed of new feature releases. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I think not having unlimited categories (unless you pay for them) is a little frustrating. It's not a payment model that encourages ambitious building. Not every integration is there yet - though this is quickly changing. Some limitations om sizing of charts etc. But overall these are nit picks, it's a great tool! **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** KPIs are great, but building models that allows you to tie those KPIs together and to other business assumptions is a really great way to drive decisions and insights ### 26. Great app. Very smart. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Writing and Editing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** It's like a specific sort of spreadsheet that allows you to create forecasts more easily and smartly than you can accomplish in a traditional spreadsheet. It takes a bit of learning to find everything, but it is quite powerful. **What do you dislike about Causal?** It can be a bit difficult to understand and use at first. I often created things in a spreadsheet and then copy-pasted those over to Causal once I knew how they looked there. I'm not sure how it could be fixed. Maybe there are some UI things that could be done? However, It's a powerful tool, and worth taking the time to learn. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal excels at value ranges, showing you your models' best-case and worst-case scenarios. This is where spreadsheets fall short. So Causal is helping me forecast my business and allowing me to get an idea of the possible outcomes and not just the mid-range estimate. ### 27. Non-finance founder, loving Causal **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mental Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** As someone who doesn't enjoy spending too much time in Excel spreadsheets, Causal is a super helpful tool to do strategic finance for my start-up. It actually helped me enjoy the financial side of things. Their support is also very strong. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I lower tiered pricing option would be desirable. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal makes it easier and more enjoyable to build and visualized forecasts, which can in turn help with GTM strategies. ### 28. Comprehensive modelling solution for Finance teams **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Great customer support and assistance. Open to suggestions about new features. Regular updates and explainers on the updates. It is a very powerful system for complex models and the outputs you can get graphically are great **What do you dislike about Causal?** Takes a while to get to know the terminology. The tables/graphs are a bit immature (e.g can't change font, etc) however they are improving this. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Financial modelling (budget and actuals) and reporting ### 29. The only tool you need for forecasting **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** easy to set up and instantly work with the product **What do you dislike about Causal?** not the most intuitive with some of the functions for building more complex models **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our forecasting model was difficult to track in spreadsheets and Causal has allowed us to align on a way/methodology of forecasting internally while also allowing for manual edits & flexibility that comes with a typical spreadsheet. Huge time saver. ### 30. Google Sheets on steroids **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thiemo G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 06, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal is made for financial modelling from the ground up. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Missing connections to Zapier and common CRMs (such as Pipedrive, Close, etc.) **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Time it takes to build and update financial models ### 31. Powerful and dynamic planning tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian J. | Asst. Controller, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Flexibility, data integrations, analytics **What do you dislike about Causal?** There is a little bit of learning curve with formulas and categories **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Financial modeling and budgeting with several different drivers ### 32. Powerful and Flexible **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark T. | F, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Causal?** Building models is fast and fairly easy. Editing models is so much easier than in excel. The concept of assigning categories to variables is really powerful and makes scaling models very quick and easy. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Auditing large models can be time-consuming and occasionally it's not instantly apparent if a variable in a formula is filtered **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** The processing time of our models in Causal is usually less than a minute whereas in our old model it was around an hour. Making changes to the model is o much quicker and we are now able to generate many more scenarios than before. ### 33. Very intuitive and functional. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Food & Beverages | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** The ease of use. The multiple scenarios you can build. The cost. We were able to integrate it into our tasks and are relying on it to build our company and department budgets. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Nothing yet. It's still early but we haven't experienced any hiccups. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a budget now for the whole company that doesn't live in a spreadsheet. ### 34. Great software for forecasting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Will B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** I use Causal a few times per week for quick and reliable stock forecasting and marketing dashboards. Much easier to use than Google sheets. Great customer support as well. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Took a few mins to learn how to use it, but well worth the effort. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Large marketing forecasts that are reliable and don't break ### 35. Great product and customer service **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Great tool for scenario planning, budget variance analysis and generally keeping on top of the commercials! Updates seem to come freqeuntly and are communicated well through slack or the product itself. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Nothing much to dislike so far. Easy to use. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were previously trying to create several potential financial models for the business based on scenarios we may wish to execute. These can become unwieldy quickly, and Causal allows for a much clearer picture of a base model that can be compared with alternative models. ### 36. Extremely impressive software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Easily import data from so many sources. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There's a bit of a learning curve. Coming from Excel I did a few things incorrectly or not optimally. Ended up rewriting a lot of variables once i got the hang of things **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Budget v actual Runway analysis ### 37. Never go back to Excel / Google Spreadsheets for startup financial modeling **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Martin K. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** It is super intuitive to use. I love th visualisation dashboard which enables the investors to immediatly ge tet a grasp of your startups ecomnomics. Rapid customer service! **What do you dislike about Causal?** I found it to be very expensive. I'd have gladly kept the plan but at I think $300 it was very hard to justify after I was done creating my model. Perhepas you could offer a more flexible plan like, one time payment to build your model but then $10-20/month just to keep it alive? **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Building a financial forecast for my startup. I love the fact that it's much more intuitive than excel. After the inital learning curve it was really easy to use. ### 38. Causal is the best modeling software I've ever used **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fouad M. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Making projections based on existing data and scenario-based modeling is one of the most important things for a company to get right. Causal makes this so easy with a simple tool and out-of-the-box templates. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Nothing, it works well for our use cases. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal helps us visualize high-level financial performance and plan our goals around different scenarios. ### 39. Go Beyond the Spreadsheets **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adam I. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal allows us to easily and quickly run multiple scenarios involving lots of different variables. As a Saas business we have so many moving pieces that make modelling quite tricky but Causal handles this with ease. **What do you dislike about Causal?** A better selection of pre built templates would be amazing. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its moving our budgeting and forecast from spreadsheets into tools that handle inputs in a better way. ### 40. Causal is the most powerful planning tool I have seen so far **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lukas G. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal formulas are easy to set up and very understandable, plus the product is soo incredibly feature rich that everything you need is there (you just need to find it among all the features!) **What do you dislike about Causal?** Causal is very powerful which sometimes makes it quite complicated to understand at first. They definitely need to work on UX and explainability inside the product. The docs are very good, though. I just wish many things would be easier and more intuitive in the product itself. The learning curve was very steep and I had to watch lots of videos and continuously search the docs. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** We want our startup to be more numbers driven and Causal helps us set up plans, add actuals, and then compare actuals vs plan data. Everyone in the company can access models and contribute. Additionally, we will use it for shareholder/investor reports because the dashboard graphics are very nice. ### 41. Robust and complex financial planning & analysis software with great visuals **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karen B. | VP of Finance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** I think Causal produces great charts, visuals, and reports that make it easy for a startup to share information with investors. As long as one keeps the forecast up-to-date, Causal's dashboard and charts tools produce excellent turn-key reports that can be submitted to investors, stakeholders, etc. This saves time because I don't have to put the numbers into my own format and create reports from scratch. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Causal takes some time to learn. A new user should really invest time into learning how to use Causal by watching multiple videos and training. There is a lot of training available on Causal's site but it requires some time and dedication to learn. Even if you are an expert Excel/Google Sheets user, Causal works differently and you can't easily just jump in without spending time to learn first. I also think that it can be hard to remember which file I was working in and switch between different files easily. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mainly Causal helps me be able to run scenario analysis on a certain spreadsheet/financial forecast, and it provides nice-looking and professional visual charts and reports. ### 42. It's good, but not user friendly enough to stakeholders outside the core build team **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Traceability of the formulas making the formulas easy to understand and pull apart for review and analysis. Furthermore, the support has generally been very helpful and responsive. **What do you dislike about Causal?** Inability to easily drill down within the main dashboards. Very difficult for non-core users to dive in and understand without a steep learning curve. Most users do not want to remain on the Dashboard screen. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Forced us to rebuild an overly complex excel based model. Given it's ability to handle large amounts of data vs Excel it enabled us to rebuild with proper cohort modelling without breaking everything! ### 43. Powerful forecasting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ignacio O. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Using categories, formulas, tech support via slack **What do you dislike about Causal?** Integrating outside data into models, adjusting graph features, online chat support **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Forecasting and presenting actuals versus budget, runway, MRR and other metrics required by the Board. I would like to use it more on a biweekly basis to guide the team ### 44. Flexible financial planning tool that even allows for complex models **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel T. | Operations Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Compared to Excel models, Causal makes adjustments and additions to an existing model much faster. Additionally, it is possible to easily create charts and visualizations for your model. The video explanations of the different features are very helpful in understanding the tool. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The written documentation could be improved and elaborated. While the videos are helpful in getting to know the software at the beginning, they are not so useful for just looking up minor things. Sometimes usability is not totally intuitive, e.g. simple click vs. double click. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal allows us to work with several people on financial models, and we can set up different views and permission. It is also much easier to update data compared to Excel due to some smart features such as Categories. ### 45. Excel on steroids **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Xavier R. | CEO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** easy to use and super nice interface, for any kind user **What do you dislike about Causal?** sometimes it takes some time with calculation compared with excel, obviously **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Calculating easily confidence intervals with a pretty nice interface and keeping people updated in front of any change ### 46. Easy to use and adapt **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Causal?** It is easy to use and understand so you can have a big impact quickly **What do you dislike about Causal?** It does have some limitations that mean you can't necessarily do all modelling you want **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Financial modelling predominately ### 47. Incredibly helpful tool for internal and external uses! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Real Estate | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal has been really helpful for us to visualize how we are tracking our projections vs. our actuals and present this information to our shareholders. **What do you dislike about Causal?** The system requires a bit of getting used to and is not super intuitive at first. The Causal team though is very responsive and always eager to help. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal has helped us solve clearly tracking our progress vs. our goals and making sure we stay on budget and on course. ### 48. Forecasting Gamechanger **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Oliver W. | FinOps Lead, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal makes forecasting for businesses so easy. I appreciate the API will connect in to lots of places and pull live data. This means I can create great rolling forecast data that is more accurate. It's a lot easier and faster to use than excel. **What do you dislike about Causal?** There is a bit of a learning curve to Causal for those unfamiliar with it. However, they have a wealth of training material on their website. You can also try the FinOps Academy Causal training course for extra help. Once you're used to the system it's an absolute joy. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Causal is helping us more accurate and better forecasts than using tools like excel. This means we're able to spend more time giving strategic insights to the business. ### 49. Solid product with updates shipping regularly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joe M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Visualisation and live dashboard with customizability **What do you dislike about Causal?** Can be quite confusing for new users who are unfamiliar with Causal capabilities **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** Budget vs Actual and month end financial reporting used in presentations ### 50. Causal Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2023 **What do you like best about Causal?** Causal can easily connect outside data sources from google sheets, bigquery data tables, netsuite and more. They also have a team that is very responsive to questions and platform feedback. Causal allows users to easily build models and present the data in customizable graphs. **What do you dislike about Causal?** I have faced a few challenges with causal. One of the challenges is getting a new employee up to speed on the platform. Causal offers a large amount of training but there is a learning curve between the simple trainings and a companies fully built complex model structure. Another challenge is due my companies vast usage of causal and the amount of interconnected models and scenarios we have there have been speed and model size issues. **What problems is Causal solving and how is that benefiting you?** When we have run into issues with model size and speed Causal has swiftly stepped in to identify the root cause of these issues and how we could address the problem. They have also been willing to discuss large model changes we want to make prior to making them to ensure we optimize the platform. ## 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?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-28+15%3A19%3A01+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=a81297fa-484b-43f9-8451-61a167158a13&secure%5Btoken%5D=61b01243b45ff5a0ee98a0640146d9152983c182924a104874b6785bc192af98&format=llm_user) ## Causal Integrations - [QuickBooks Online](https://www.g2.com/products/quickbooks-online/reviews) - [Rippling](https://www.g2.com/products/rippling/reviews) ## 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 (190 reviews) - [Mosaic Tech](https://www.g2.com/products/mosaic-tech/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (217 reviews) - [Pigment](https://www.g2.com/products/pigment-2024-01-19/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (104 reviews)