FAQs

Drivetrain is an AI-native business planning platform that helps companies accelerate budgeting, reporting, and forecasting with autonomous FP&A. It integrates data from across your systems to automate reporting, simplify modeling, and support better decision-making through robust collaboration.

Known for its extensive native integrations (800+), flexibility, ease of use, and responsive customer support, Drivetrain is trusted by mid-market and enterprise companies looking to move fast and plan with confidence.

Drivetrain is used by CFOs, FP&A teams, and business operators across functions like sales, marketing, HR, and RevOps. It’s built for teams that have outgrown spreadsheets and need faster, scalable planning with better cross-functional collaboration.
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Here’s how different teams use Drivetrain:

• FP&A: Build and manage budgets, 3-statement forecasts, cash flow models, and run real-time BvA analysis.
• HR and People Ops: Plan headcount by role, region, and start date, forecast compensation and ramp, and model attrition and backfills.
• Sales and RevOps: Align revenue forecasts with pipeline data, model quota coverage, and track rep productivity.
• Marketing: Plan campaign budgets, model CAC, and forecast lead flow and ROI.
• Executive teams: View consolidated dashboards, compare scenarios, and track progress against strategic goals.

Whether you're an HR leader planning headcount or a CRO forecasting bookings, Drivetrain brings all your operational and financial plans into one connected platform.

Drivetrain is used by fast-growing mid-market and enterprise companies across industries such as software (SaaS), professional services, non-profits, manufacturing, crypto, mining, private equity, fintech, and consumer goods. These teams are leveraging Drivetrain to create more accurate forecasts, streamline their reporting, and make faster, more informed decisions.

Drivetrain is purpose-built for finance teams that want more than just faster reporting; they want to run their business better.

Unlike legacy planning tools that are rigid and hard to maintain or lightweight tools that break at scale, Drivetrain combines depth, flexibility, and ease of use. Our AI-native approach automates the heavy lifting, from building models to surfacing insights, so finance teams can spend less time fixing formulas and more time guiding the business.

We integrate with 800+ systems across ERP, CRM, HRIS, and more, giving you a unified view of your business. And with fast onboarding and intuitive, spreadsheet-style modeling, most teams are up and running in just four weeks, not quarters.

What also sets us apart is our customer experience. At Drivetrain, we take customer experience very seriously, and it shows in our user reviews. We’re consistently ranked #1 on G2’s Relationship Index for FP&A, thanks to our hands-on support, fast response times, and true partnership mindset.

Most importantly, we think like operators, not just tool builders. We work closely with customers to understand how they plan, communicate, and make decisions, and we bake those workflows into the product.

Excel and PowerQuery work well in the early days of a company. They’re flexible, familiar, and get the job done for basic reporting and ad hoc analysis. But as your business grows, so does the complexity. Suddenly, you’re stuck stitching together data from multiple systems, managing version chaos, and triple-checking formulas before every exec review.

Drivetrain is purpose-built to replace this fragile setup with a scalable, collaborative, and automated planning environment.

Here’s how it helps:

• Live data syncs: With 800+ integrations, Drivetrain connects directly to your ERP, CRM, HRIS, and other systems so your reports are always up to date.
• Multi-dimensional modeling: Build flexible models with any number of entities, products, regions, or departments.
• Collaboration without chaos: Role-based access, audit trails, and version control so everyone works off the same source of truth.
• Faster reporting cycles: Automate BvA, board decks, and operational reviews with reusable templates.
• More time for strategy: Spend less time cleaning data and more time driving decisions.

With Drivetrain, finance teams can stop being Excel firefighters and start being strategic partners to the business.

Drivetrain sits on top of all your source systems. It acts as a planning and reporting layer that consolidates data, automates workflows, and provides a single source of truth for forecasting, budgeting, and analysis.

BI tools are built for visualizing past data. Drivetrain is built for planning the future. While BI tools answer “what happened?”, Drivetrain helps answer “what should we do next?” It supports complex financial modeling, forecasting, and driver-based planning, capabilities that go beyond typical dashboards and charts.

Drivetrain supports the full spectrum of planning, forecasting, and reporting workflows across your business. Common use cases include:

• Financial planning and budgeting
• Sales and revenue forecasting
• Headcount planning
• Variance analysis and management reporting
• Cash flow tracking and forecasting
• Scenario modeling and what-if analysis
• Board and investor reporting
• Financial consolidation and reporting

It adapts to complex pricing models, department workflows, and multi-entity structures.

Yes, the platform offers a custom metric builder. And it's easy to use, too. You can use Excel-like formulas and plain English to create these metrics. You can build a custom metric, drawing from any connected data source. These metrics can be used in models, dashboards, and reports.

Yes, you absolutely can. Drivetrain supports usage-based, seat-based, and hybrid pricing models with ease. It doesn’t matter how your pricing is structured: per-seat, per-unit, tiered, volume-based, or with overage charges. You can model all of it in Drivetrain without workarounds.

Yes. You can plan, forecast, and report at daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly, and yearly depending on your business needs.

Yes. Drivetrain supports multi-entity / multi-subsidiary / multi-currency consolidation with rollups, inter-company eliminations, and currency conversions across business units. The platform also enables data consolidation across multiple ERPs, giving you a unified view of performance without manual effort.

Read this page for more details.

We offer native integrations with 800+ systems. Popular integrations include NetSuite, Sage, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Hubspot, BambooHR, ADP.

You can see all our connectors here - https://www.drivetrain.ai/integrations.

Not a problem! Our team can build a custom integration for you if you don't see your system in our list of native integrations.

Yes, you can absolutely use Drivetrain with Excel. Drivetrain is designed to complement Excel and supports several integration points for teams that still rely on spreadsheets for parts of their workflow.

You can import Excel files (including Google Sheets, CSV, and XLSX formats) directly into Drivetrain, use them as data sources, and export reports or models back into Excel when needed.

Absolutely! Drivetrain supports dynamic scenario planning. You can create multiple scenarios, adjust drivers and assumptions, and compare outcomes across best-case, worst-case, and base-case scenarios in real time.

Yes, of course. Drivetrain includes built-in budgeting workflows with support for budget hierarchies, version control, and approval tracking. G2 user reviews rate Drivetrain’s budget creation, hierarchies, versioning, and “what-if” planning all at 9.3 out of 10, showing how effectively the platform handles complex budgeting needs.

Drivetrain also enables collaborative budgeting across departments, automated consolidation, and full audit trails for transparency and governance.

Drivetrain integrates with major ERPs and pulls in real-time data so you can build your own dashboards, without modifying your ERP’s native interface.

You can create custom metrics, slice data by any dimension, and drill down to the transaction level in any report, all without writing SQL or relying on IT support.

Drivetrain also lets you combine ERP data with information from other systems like your CRM, HRIS, billing, and other tools to create rich, cross-functional dashboards tailored to your business needs.

Drivetrain is delivered as a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It’s optimized for scalability, security, and continuous updates. No on-premise deployment option is currently available.

Our production systems and databases run on AWS and Google Cloud facilities, all hosted in the USA.

Absolutely not. Your data is strictly isolated and secure within your dedicated Drivetrain instance. Each customer's data is maintained in a completely separate environment, and there is no sharing of data between accounts.

Drivetrain seamlessly blends AI into every stage of your financial planning process. Key capabilities include:

• AI Model Generation: Build the first cut of your models in one click from your ERP, CRM, or HRIS data – whether it’s the 3-statement, pipeline movement, or headcount model.
• AI Transforms: Dig deep into your data with natural language prompts such as ‘Show me all customers with ACV > $100k from North America region’.
• AI Analyst: Get answers instantly to all your burning questions, like “What’s driving margin decline?” or "Who are my top 3 performing sales reps?"
• AI Alerts: Automatically monitors your data pipeline and flags sync issues or anomalies before they show up as variances in your reports.
• AI BvA: Generate board-level commentary that explains variances in seconds.

Learn more about how you can leverage Drive AI in your workflows here.

Drive AI is built to be transparent and auditable so you can trust its output and verify every step behind it. Every time Drive AI gives you an output, it also shares the source with the response. You can audit inputs, review formulas, and drill into source systems to validate the output before taking any action.

When it comes to questions on any kind of metric or report, all responses are computed by our internal compute engine. Drive AI serves as an interface for accurate data retrieval. By transparently including the exact query in the response, you can quickly identify and rectify any omissions or errors, ensuring precise results. When it comes to questions around FP&A and Drivetrain, the AI is trained exclusively on handpicked expert-written finance data to ensure higher accuracy of answers.

In addition to this, for every response, Drive AI will also share the source so that you can validate the output yourself.

Most Drivetrain implementations are completed in 4-6 weeks. Timelines vary based on model complexity and the number of systems to be connected to Drivetrain, but the majority of customers see value within the first month.

Customers receive hands-on onboarding that combines implementation and learning into a smooth, frictionless experience. A dedicated implementation team supports you through every step, including system setup, data mapping, and model configuration tailored to your workflows.

At the same time, your team gets access to detailed documentation and the Drivetrain Academy, a self-paced learning hub that helps users quickly get comfortable with the platform and make the most of its capabilities.

You can choose your mode of implementation. We currently offer three engagement models via dedicated CSMs:

1. Self-serve: FP&A experts provide best practices, training & project management.
2. Co-build: FP&A experts provide training, best practices & on-call co-building.
3. White glove: We take care of end-to-end implementation & training.

Yes. Customers get a shared Slack channel with the Drivetrain team for real-time collaboration, faster response times, and ongoing support during and after onboarding.

Yes. Every customer is assigned a dedicated Customer Success Manager who acts as a strategic partner, helps optimize usage, and ensures long-term value from the platform.

Yes. Drivetrain provides ongoing technical support through Slack, email, and ticketing systems.

No. Drivetrain’s onboarding is fully managed in-house. With 800+ native integrations and implementation specialists on staff, customers do not require external consultants. This ensures your time to value and total cost of ownership are lower than most FP&A tools on the market.

Drivetrain is SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and ISO 27001 certified. The platform follows enterprise-grade security protocols for data encryption, access controls, and operational monitoring.

For more details, visit: https://www.drivetrain.ai/trust-and-security

Yes, Drivetrain includes built-in audit and activity logging. Every action within the platform, such as data imports, model changes, metric updates, and user collaboration, is tracked with timestamps and user attribution.

In addition to this, an impact log is also maintained to help you understand the impact of changes to your key metrics as a result of changes to models.

Drivetrain offers robust role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure only the right people see the right data. You can easily manage permissions by role, department, or individual, controlling access to models, reports, and even specific metrics and dimensions.

For added security, Drivetrain also provides data masking. You can protect confidential or regulated data (such as individual salaries) while still allowing users to access the rest of the model for planning and analysis.

Drivetrain does not offer a self-serve free trial. However, we provide guided demos and proof-of-concept engagements to help you evaluate the platform using your own business needs and data.

Our pricing depends on the systems you integrate and the features you need. We offer fixed plans tailored to your setup and share a custom proposal based on your requirements.

We'd be happy to walk you through it whenever you're ready! Reach out to us here.

Implementation costs are included in your pricing package. There are no surprise setup fees, and onboarding is handled directly by Drivetrain’s team as part of the engagement.

G2 reviewer data shows an average ROI timeframe of 5.7 months (one of the fastest in the industry). Customers cite faster reporting cycles, improved forecast accuracy, significantly reduced manual work, and quick onboarding as the key drivers behind early value realization.

Find how customers drive value with Drivetrain here: https://www.drivetrain.ai/customers.

Pricing depends on multiple factors including model complexity, number of data sources connected to Drivetrain, and implementation model. It is not strictly tied to company size or usage volume.

No. Drivetrain pricing is transparent and all-inclusive. There are no hidden charges for integrations, support, or additional users beyond what is agreed in your contract.

No, absolutely not. All AI features and capabilities are natively a part of Drivetrain and are covered as a standard offering in your contract. There is no separate fee required to use these capabilities.