What is Causal?
Causal is a financial planning platform designed to simplify complex financial operations for businesses. It serves as a unified hub for managing financial statements, Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) reporting, forecasts, budgets, and scenario planning. By integrating directly with various business systems, including accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero, CRMs like Hubspot and Salesforce, and HRIS platforms, Causal automates data collection and eliminates manual data entry, saving significant time and reducing errors.
The platform utilizes human-readable formulas, making model building more intuitive compared to traditional spreadsheets. It allows users to visualize business performance, track key metrics like SaaS metrics by connecting to Stripe, and plan for the future with detailed forecasting and budgeting tools. Causal supports multi-entity consolidation with automatic currency conversion and enables teams to create and compare different scenarios side-by-side, facilitating informed decision-making. Collaborative features allow for easy sharing of dashboards and reports with live editing and commenting.
Features
- Integrated Reporting: Pull historical data directly from QuickBooks/Xero and drill down into transactions.
- SaaS Metrics Tracking: Connect to Stripe for customizable ARR reporting and notifications.
- Budgeting & Variance Analysis: Compare plans against actuals automatically.
- Detailed Forecasting: Build bottom-up forecasts using templates or custom models.
- Headcount Planning: Model hiring scenarios and their impact on runway.
- Multi-entity Consolidation: Automatically consolidate financials across different entities and currencies.
- Human-Readable Formulas: Build models without complex spreadsheet syntax.
- System Integrations: Connect live data from accounting, HRIS, CRM, data warehouses, and more.
- Scenario Planning: Create and compare multiple business scenarios with one click.
- AI Wizard: Automatically generate a financial model by analysing connected QuickBooks/Xero data.
- Collaboration Tools: Share dashboards with live editing and commenting.
Use Cases
- Generating financial reports and statements.
- Tracking and analyzing SaaS metrics (e.g., ARR growth).
- Creating and managing budgets.
- Comparing planned budgets against actual performance.
- Developing detailed financial forecasts and revenue projections.
- Planning headcount and assessing its financial impact.
- Consolidating financial data from multiple business entities.
- Building dynamic financial models for scenario analysis.
- Automating financial data aggregation from various sources.
FAQs
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What counts as a 'member'?
A member is someone who has the ability to build/edit models (formulas, etc). You can have unlimited viewers of model dashboards on any plan. -
Is Causal secure? Where is my data stored?
Security and privacy are of paramount importance to us, and we are SOC 2 compliant. Causal is hosted on Google Cloud. -
Do you offer 1-on-1 training/support?
We offer hands-on training and support as part of our Growth plan. We typically run 4 x 1-hour training sessions as part of the onboarding, and use shared Slack channels for priority support. -
How long does it take to learn Causal?
Causal only has a handful of core concepts. It takes ~30 minutes to learn them, and a couple of hours of modelling to really understand the "Causal way" of doing things.
