Causal Reviews & Product Details

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing comes to mind right now! We have found it to be very easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- 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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the dashboards and for the basic forecasting the syntax is really easy to learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.