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Abacum
Abacum (FP&A software) for a finance team that has outgrown its spreadsheets.
Constancia, an EPM consultancy, is an official Abacum partner with certified consultants in the UK.
Avoid misalignment as the business changes.
Bring actuals, assumptions and plans together so you can answer what changed, model what comes next and keep leaders moving from the same numbers.
Too many versions of the truth
Actuals, assumptions and plans live in different places. You waste valuable time rechecking numbers and remapping systems.
Models that can't keep up
A pricing change, new hire plan or organisation shift triggers hours of rework, or a systems project that disconnects plans from real decisions.
Reporting that drives drift
When you can't give trusted answers in minutes, leaders move on instinct and finance becomes a back office historian.
Abacum (FP&A software) holds the budget, the forecast, headcount and the scenarios on 1 model and leaves the consolidation alone.
Abacum (FP&A software) holds a finance team's budget, forecast, headcount plan and scenarios on 1 model and takes actuals in from the ledger. A finance team buys it when the budget workbook has stopped agreeing with itself. Constancia is an EPM consultancy and an official Abacum partner, with certified consultants based in the UK.
Abacum connects to more than 700 source systems, so the actuals arrive in the plan without an export and the forecast moves the same afternoon the ledger does.
The platform is built for the plan, so intercompany eliminations, currency translation and the statutory group result stay with the consolidation. Abacum assumes the consolidation is settled and the plan is the thing that has outgrown its workbook.
Where 3 country finance leads each keep a headcount tab, the group forecast carries 3 salary assumptions. The FP&A manager then reconciles the 3 by email on the last Friday of the month.
8 screens from inside Abacum.
Select a screen to see it at full size.
- Scenario review
- Revenue model
- Revenue planning
- Headcount planning
- Budgeting
- Consolidated roll-ups
- Statements
- Investor reporting
Abacum does 6 pieces of FP&A work that currently live in the budget workbook.
Where 2 of the 6 have started to disagree with each other in the workbook, the licence starts to pay back.
- 01
Revenue planning
Top down and bottom up revenue forecasts sit in 1 model with the quotas and the capacity that produce them.
- 02
Headcount planning
Budgeted roles, open roles, forecast changes and approvals sit in 1 place, and headcount is usually the first tab a workbook loses control of.
- 03
Budgeting and forecasting
The budget goes down to supplier level on a model that rolls forward each cycle rather than being rebuilt.
- 04
Scenario planning
A scenario branches off the base version, and the lines downstream of the change update themselves.
- 05
Roll-ups and reporting
Actuals arrive from the ledger onto the same dimensions as the plan, so budget against actual needs no export.
- 06
Data in
Abacum connects to more than 700 source systems, and the survey tests what each source in your estate will release.
Headcount is where a workbook usually breaks first, because more people edit that tab than any other.
- SAP
- Oracle Fusion
- NetSuite
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Workday
- Sage
- Xero
- Salesforce
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Workday
- Sage
- Xero
- Salesforce
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- SAP
- Oracle Fusion
- NetSuite
- Xero
- Salesforce
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- SAP
- Oracle Fusion
- NetSuite
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Workday
- Sage
Constancia added Abacum to its practice for 2 reasons, and both are about what the finance team can do with it once it is live.
01
The model goes live in weeks, so the payback lands inside the same financial year.
Abacum needs little configuration, so the work moves from building the model to agreeing the drivers with the people outside finance who own them. The survey settles those drivers before the build starts.
- A build measured in weeks once the drivers have owners
- Less configuration to maintain, so less of it returns to us
- A fixed price, set after the survey
02
The finance team owns the model afterwards, and the implementer leaves.
A planning model that its implementer alone can change is a subscription to that implementer. We build so an FP&A analyst can add a driver, branch a scenario and change a hierarchy without calling us.
- Every driver has a named owner outside finance
- Documentation written as the build happens
- The handover ends with your analyst making the next change
Three things get quicker once the plan, the headcount and the actuals sit on 1 model.
The platform holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance, so the security review runs alongside the build rather than ahead of it.
- Budgeting
60% faster budgeting cycles
Finance changes the model the same afternoon rather than raising a ticket, so a cycle that used to wait on a queue runs when the team is ready.
- Month end
5 days saved per month end
The actuals arrive through the connector and the report reads them where they land, so nobody spends the first week of the month moving numbers between files.
- Budget against actual
80% less time on budget against actual
The plan and the actuals share 1 set of dimensions, so the comparison is a subtraction rather than a mapping somebody maintains.
The state of the budget workbook decides whether Abacum fits, and 4 conditions describe that state.
Constancia implements the platform and still points a group elsewhere where the structure has no use for it.
The structure fits
Abacum fits a finance team with 4 features
- The budget lives in a workbook that 1 person can open and 3 people email changes to.
- The consolidation already works, in a group platform or in a settled close, and the plan is the thing behind.
- A budget round, a funding round or a board date sits in the diary and the workbook will not make it.
- Somebody in sales, HR and operations has agreed to own pipeline, headcount and volume.
The structure does not fit
Abacum gives no return to a group with 4 other features
- The problem is intercompany eliminations or currency translation, which Abacum leaves to the close.
- A single entity plans in 1 workbook that still agrees with itself, and the spreadsheet is the right tool for now.
- No date sits in the diary, so the drivers will not get owners before the interest fades.
- Nobody in finance will own the model after go-live, and the workbook comes back within 2 budget rounds.
Where the fit fails, we say so on the first call rather than in a proposal.
Abacum plans and OneStream (EPM software) closes the books, and the elimination problem decides between them.
Constancia implements both, so every row compares the 2 platforms by structure.
| Abacum | OneStream | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | FP&A: the budget, the forecast, headcount and scenarios. | The close, consolidation, planning and reporting of a group on 1 model. |
| Who it suits | A finance team whose budget workbook has stopped agreeing with itself and whose consolidation works. | A multi-entity group with several ledgers and a legacy consolidation on a sunset path. |
| What it replaces | The budget workbook, the headcount tab and the scenario copy saved under a new name. | HFM, BPC or IBM Controller and the workbooks around them. |
| Time to live | Weeks, on drivers the business has agreed to own. | Months, because the new close is proved against the old one before cutover. |
| Where it stops | Abacum is built for the plan, so a group with an elimination problem reads the other column. | A single entity with a straightforward close gets no return from OneStream. |
Three things move the Abacum licence figure a finance director is quoted.
Abacum quotes each licence per group, and 3 things move the figure: the count of planning users, the modules taken and the term length. A finance director comparing 2 quotes lines those 3 up first.
The implementation is a separate cost from the licence, and Constancia prices it after the survey of the workbook rather than before. The price is then fixed, so a driver dispute found in week 3 is already in it.
Where a finance director wants a figure to plan against before the survey, we say what we have seen on comparable Abacum builds.
Constancia's Abacum work has 3 parts, and each begins with a survey of the drivers.
Each of the 3 is priced after the survey, and the consultants who did the survey carry it through to handover.
Abacum implementation
Certified UK consultants survey the drivers, fix the price, build the model and hand it to finance.
Read about implementationAbacum Intelligence
Forecasting, anomaly flags and scenario branches from the planning model, switched on after 4 checks.
Read about Abacum IntelligenceAbacum NetSuite integration
Balances by subsidiary, account, period and department loaded from NetSuite without an export.
Read about the connectorsFP&A consulting
Budgets, forecasts and analysis on drivers the business owns, on whichever platform the group runs.
Read about FP&A consulting
Finance directors bring us 6 questions on Abacum, and price is the first.
The 6 come from what Google reports against Abacum's own search results, and a firm that implements the platform answers them.
How much does Abacum software cost?
Abacum quotes each licence per group, and the figure moves on the count of planning users, the modules taken and the term length. Constancia prices the implementation separately, and that price is fixed once the survey of the model is done.
What does Abacum mean?
Abacum comes from the counting frame called an abacus, chosen as a reference to arithmetic rather than as an acronym.
Who is the CEO of Abacum?
Julio MartÃnez is the chief executive, and he co-founded the company with Jorge Lluch. Abacum is a Spanish company with an office in New York, and it sells into the UK and Europe.
Which AI is best for finance?
The model that reads the finance team's own planning model directly performs best, and on Abacum that is Abacum Intelligence. A general chatbot given a spreadsheet export cannot trace a figure to the ledger it came from, so an analyst cannot check its output.
Does Abacum consolidate?
No, Abacum plans and the consolidation stays where it already runs. A group whose problem is intercompany eliminations, currency translation and a group result tied to local books needs OneStream (EPM software) or its like. Constancia says so on the first call.
How long does an Abacum implementation take?
An Abacum implementation runs in weeks rather than quarters, and the length depends on how settled the planning drivers are. Where the business outside finance has already agreed to own headcount, pipeline and volume, the build is short.
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