I have had a great experience on Parallel. It's insightful and helps me think through building a forecast and model starting with the basics. The tool helps me build a budget for my startup tech business and offers a budget vs actual report. It aids in building out my headcount forecast, driving my budget from both an expense and revenue perspective, especially if the headcount is sales-related. The customer success team is fantastic, knowledgeable about FP&A for tech businesses, and assists with setting up my budget and any questions about using the tool. They also help with financial reporting and preparing for equity raises. I love how seamlessly the system integrates with my accounting system, pulling historical data and making life easier. It's easy to create different scenarios on top of my standard budget and compare them to my main forecast. It's designed so that even a non-technical finance person like an operating founder can use it, making it very insightful. The scenarios are useful for deciding on hiring, revenue changes, product adjustments, and sales team planning. The initial setup was very easy, with the team onboarding me quickly and great training. I no longer have to manage spreadsheets and formulas as I did before using Excel and Google Sheets.

Honestly, one of the best things about Parallel is the level of support and attention to detail. The team REALLY cares and works so hard to help us make sure that Parallel was actually useful to me and our business. I love being able to see multiple scenarios so I can plan for different business situations, whether it's doing well or struggling. It helps me understand the impact of headcount and other factors. I like that it connects my expenses with my revenue model, helping me understand how spend impacts revenue growth and whether we should hire more or wait. I like that it's built around helping me make faster decisions as a founder, which is really critical. That's something I would never take the time to do without Parallel.

Being able to easily and quickly model out the impact of spend. I feel like as a founder I'm always hesitant to spend money on growth when I think extra work on my part could do it instead (which almost always is way slow), and this has helped me to recognize when I should be spending money to speed things up.