What is Vena, and why is it built on Excel?
Vena is a planning, budgeting, consolidation and reporting platform that uses Excel as its front end, with a governed database, workflow and audit trail underneath. The idea is simple: keep the tool finance teams already know, and fix what spreadsheets can't do on their own, like version control, permissions and data that updates itself.
Is Vena a good fit for a mid-market company?
Often, yes. It suits finance teams that live in Excel, have outgrown linked spreadsheets, and want planning, consolidation and reporting in one place without retraining everyone. It tends to fit best where one or two people currently hold the model together and the business is adding entities, lenders or board reporting.
Should we buy Vena direct or through a partner?
It's the same software either way, and Vena's own team knows the product well. A partner adds the finance side: how your entities, eliminations, headcount and covenant tests actually need to work, built by people who have run a close themselves. If your setup is simple, going direct can be the right call, and we'll tell you so on the first call.
When is Vena the wrong choice?
When nobody on the finance team wants to work in Excel, when the business needs a highly bespoke operational system rather than finance planning, or when there's no one to own the model after go-live. We'd rather tell you that on the first call than find out halfway through a build.
Does Vena connect to NetSuite, Dynamics 365 or Sage Intacct?
Yes. Vena pulls actuals from common ERPs, including NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics and Sage Intacct, as well as HR and other source systems. How cleanly it connects depends more on your data than on the connector, which is why we check data readiness before any build starts.
Same product whether you buy it direct or through a partner. What changes is who builds the finance side, and how they hand it over. Here's how we do it, stage by stage. How we work.