INDUSTRY: MANUFACTURING
Simplifying Financial Reporting for Manufacturers
Automate reporting, budgeting, and forecasting without leaving Excel®.
Manufacturing finance teams manage complexity every day — multiple plants, cost centers, inventory movements, production variances, and shifting input costs. Vivid simplifies financial reporting and budgeting in manufacturing environments by enhancing Excel and connecting directly to your existing ERP data.
- 60+ ERP Integrations
- 20+ Years Supporting Finance Teams
- 6.9/7 Rated Support
Designed for Manufacturing Finance Teams
Production volumes shift. Input costs fluctuate. Margins stay tight. Vivid enhances Excel and connects directly to your ERP so manufacturing finance teams gain faster reporting and clearer cost visibility — without rebuilding spreadsheets every month.
Multi-Plant & Multi-Facility Operations
Unify reporting across facilities, divisions, and production sites while maintaining visibility into plant-level performance. Centralized logic ensures every P&L reflects consistent definitions — even as new locations are added.
Product-Line & Cost Center Reporting
Track performance by product line, department, or cost center with drill-down access to GL detail. Identify labor variances, material cost shifts, and margin pressure quickly — without waiting on IT.
Inventory & COGS-Driven Environments
Pull ERP data directly into Excel while maintaining centralized controls. Adapt reporting to changing SKU structures, production cycles, and input costs — without breaking formulas across dozens of workbooks.
Multi-Entity & ERP-Integrated Companies
Whether managing multiple entities or transitioning between ERPs, Vivid centralizes financial logic and enhances Excel so reporting remains consistent, secure, and scalable.
Manufacturing Financial Reporting Is Operationally Complex
Finance teams face constant pressure:
Fluctuating raw material and input costs
Production volume variability across facilities
Plant-level performance and cost center visibility
Multi-entity and multi-plant consolidation
Margin pressure from supply chain volatility
Budgeting around shifting demand and production capacity
The challenge isn’t just complexity — it’s managing it manually.
Easily Navigate Changing Input & Production Costs
Material costs, labor availability, freight, and production volumes shift constantly — static reports can’t keep up.
With Vivid, you can:
Drill into cost drivers by plant, department, or product line
Refresh reports instantly with live ERP data
Analyze production and cost trends across periods without rebuilding spreadsheets
Simplify Consolidation Across Plants & Entities
Manufacturers often manage multiple plants and entities, making consistent financial reporting difficult to maintain manually.
With Vivid, you can:
Consolidate financials across plants and divisions automatically
Maintain centralized reporting logic across locations
Ensure consistent financial definitions across the organization
Gain Clearer Visibility Into Product & Plant Profitability
Understanding profitability requires visibility into plant performance, product lines, and operational cost drivers.
With Vivid, you can:
Drill from consolidated financials to plant or product-level detail
Identify labor, materials, and overhead cost drivers
Analyze performance across facilities and production lines
Build Resilient Budgets for Changing Production Demand
Manufacturing budgets must adapt quickly to changing demand, input costs, and production capacity.
With Vivid, you can:
Budget by plant, department, or production unit
Compare actuals vs. budget instantly using live ERP data
Adjust assumptions without rebuilding complex spreadsheet models
Reduce Manual Excel Risk
Excel is essential for finance teams, but disconnected spreadsheets create risk and inconsistency.
With Vivid, you can:
Centralize reporting logic while keeping Excel workflows
Reduce broken formulas and version conflicts
Maintain a single source of financial truth across teams
From Manual Reporting to Real-Time Manufacturing Visibility
Manufacturing finance teams can’t wait weeks for new reporting systems. With Vivid, many organizations go from setup to fully operational in as little as two weeks — leveraging the Excel environment their teams already use.
Step 1
Connect to Your ERP
Integrate directly with one or multiple ERPs. No exports. No copy-pasting. No rebuilding plant or cost reports.
Step 2
Automate Excel Reports
Enhance your existing templates. Pull live data into Excel automatically with one-click refresh.
Step 3
Drill Into Plant & Product Detail
Click any number to explore transactions, plant performance, product line profitability, and operational cost drivers.
Step 4
Plan for Changing Production Costs
Build budgets and forecasts that adapt to shifts in materials, labor, production volumes, and demand.
Get A Closer Look: See How Vivid Works In Under 10 Minutes
Why Manufacturers Choose Vivid
Real-Time Visibility Into Production Costs
Material costs, labor, and overhead directly impact margins. Vivid gives finance teams clear visibility into production cost drivers across plants, products, and departments — all within Excel.
Consolidation Across Plants & Entities
Manufacturers often operate across multiple plants, divisions, or legal entities. Vivid automates consolidation and standardizes reporting logic so financial results stay consistent across the organization.
Excel — Automated, Not Replaced
Manufacturing finance teams already rely on Excel. Vivid enhances the spreadsheets your team uses every day by automatically pulling live ERP data into your reports while maintaining familiar workflows.
Faster Reporting & Better Planning
When reports take days to prepare, decisions slow down. Vivid automates recurring reporting and streamlines budgeting and forecasting so finance teams can focus on analyzing performance and planning ahead.
Case Study Snapshot
See how Avinger simplified financial reporting with Vivid Reports.
“Implementing Vivid has allowed the FP&A team at Avinger to deliver accurate financial reporting in a timely manner to our senior leadership.” – Jeff Miller, Director of Finance, Avinger, Inc.
Vivid Products
Whether you're building reports, managing budgets, or analyzing results, Vivid makes it simple.
Financial Data
Transform Excel into a powerful, secure workspace for financial reporting, budgeting, and analysis with Vivid Reports.
Operational Data
Get direct access to your data from within Excel, so you can build operational reports without the manual export.
With You Every Step of the Way
When you choose Vivid, you’re not just getting a product. You’re gaining a long-term partner who listens, responds, and evolves with you.
Rated 6.97 out of 7 for Support
Chat with real people. Vivid’s support team is fast, has deep product knowledge, and a genuine commitment to helping finance teams succeed.
Results That Speak For Themselves
Don’t just take our word for it.
Read how controllers, CFOs, and analysts transformed their financial reporting and budgeting with Vivid.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is VividCPM different from traditional reporting tools?
Unlike traditional BI or static reporting tools, VividCPM works natively in Excel, combining the flexibility finance teams love with automated data integrity from your ERP, and scalability to handle exceedingly complex situations. It’s fast to deploy, easy to learn, and built specifically for finance professionals.
Vivid’s Corporate Performance Management software is also distinctive in the depth of Excel integration. Where other tools generate pages in Excel, export to Excel, or use complex cell formula to get data into Excel, Vivid is true native Excel where a user can build any format they wish.
Does VividCPM work with MY accounting or ERP system?
Yes. Vivid integrates with leading systems such as Microsoft Dynamics (GP, NAV, BC, F&O, D365), Epicor, Sage (Intacct, 300,500, X3, PFW), Acumatica, NetSuite, SAP, SYSPRO – Vivid has well over 60 integrations in our VividSync Library. Configuring and testing Vivid for a new customer typically takes about 2 hours – with Vivid located on-prem, in a private cloud or as a Vivid hosted cloud solution.
If your ERP is not already in VividSync we are constantly working with customers that have bespoke needs to get them the outcome they need.
I'm building a business case, what are the proven gains from implementing Vivid?
From customer quotes – the provable gains of Vivid are:
1. Faster Reporting and Close Cycles
Finance teams using Vivid consistently cut reporting and month-end close times by 50–80%. Automated updates and real-time ERP connections eliminate the need for manual data exports, copy-paste work, or multiple spreadsheet versions. On average, 25% of the controller’s time is freed as a result of Vivid.
2. Dramatic Time Savings in Budgeting
Organizations report reducing their budget cycles from six weeks to one week. Shared templates, centralized data, and built-in audit tools remove the inefficiencies of email-based spreadsheets. With this dramatic reduction in time, Vivid enables companies to consider advanced or continuous forecasting where this would have been unapproachable before.
3. Total Confidence in Data Accuracy
Every report in Vivid is connected directly to your accounting database – and – Vivid centrally manages the account definitions so numbers are always correct and traceable. Users gain a single version of the truth that eliminates reconciliation errors and manual refreshes – and – every spreadsheet across the customer shows the right information. Unlike other solutions, Vivid is first and foremost designed for bullet-proof period reporting of complex consolidated financial data.
4. Financial Self-Service
In a survey of Vivid customers, we found that 10% of the finance team’s time is consumed by answering questions that users could answer for themselves. User self service through Vivid increases financial acumen across the company, reduces the load on finance teams, radically improves the budgeting process and makes financials a forward-looking management tool rather than a historical reporting function.
Who benefits most from Vivid?
Vivid scales well from the single-person in finance at a school board or not-for-profit up to thousands of users or a dozen currencies without performance degradation. For small teams – it’s about getting more done with less, automating rather than being reliant on only one person knowing how to do reports, and having simple, approachable tools to respond quickly to inquiries.
Mid-sized and large Vivid customers typically have multiple entities, or multiple currencies, or acquisitions, or multiple ERP, or large reporting trees, or a lot of change, or complexity in the segment analysis – something makes the manual effort of producing reports time consuming. For these customers, the gains are 1) “speed!” – significant time savings in preparing financials as well as the time to close ; 2) Bullet-proof financials even in the face of severe complexity; 3) Decentralization, visibility and operational alignment – Vivid enables far more participation in using financial statements and participating in budgeting; and 4) future-proofing financial operations – Vivid makes organizations far more adaptive to change.
We're considering an ERP migration, what happens with Vivid?
Stay confident in your numbers before, during, and after your ERP transition
Migrating to a new ERP system is one of the most disruptive projects a finance team can face. Reporting, consolidation, and budgeting often stall while systems are being reconfigured — but they don’t have to. Vivid is fully transferable, your first call should be to your Vivid team solutions consultant who can help you significantly reduce risk and stress through the systems change.
Remember: VividCPM keeps financial visibility intact through every stage of the transition.
1. Bridge Old and New Systems Seamlessly
VividCPM connects directly to multiple ERP databases, so you can report and consolidate from both your legacy and new systems in a single view. That means you can continue producing management reports, board packages, and budgets — even while data is being migrated or validated.
Combine financials from old and new ERPs during parallel runs
Validate balances and trial data between systems in real time
Maintain consistent chart-of-account structures across both environments
2. Accelerate ERP Implementation, Data Validation and Reconciliation
Migrating to Vivid prior to an ERP change requires very little time – however – it frees significant amounts of time for the finance team juggling monthly closing while also doing the work of an ERP migration. This increase in availability not only significantly de-risks ERP implementation, it means the finance team is not learning both the new ERP and a new reporting platform simultaneously.
Additional gains – Vivid is part of your validation plans
Data migration errors are one of the top causes of ERP project delays. With VividCPM, finance teams can verify migrated data instantly by running side-by-side comparisons of GL accounts, entities, or periods — directly in Excel.
Detect missing or duplicated accounts, confirm that balances tie out, and sign off on migration accuracy faster and with full audit transparency.
3. Preserve Reporting Continuity
Most teams lose months rebuilding reports after a system change. Vivid eliminates that downtime. Your existing Vivid reports and templates remain usable — they simply point to the new ERP once its connection is established. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have remapping to do if the underlying chart of accounts changes – but the time to be live with comparative year-over-year reports is hours or days, not months.
This means your standard Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and department reports stay consistent before and after go-live, with no rework required on the base report layouts.
4. Enable Budgeting and Forecasting Mid-Migration
ERP changes don’t stop business planning. With Vivid’s centralized budgeting tools, you can continue your forecast and budget cycles without waiting for the new ERP to be live.
Budgets can even be mapped across old and new account structures, keeping your planning data consistent for year-over-year comparisons.
5. Reduce Risk and Dependence on IT
Because Vivid operates independently of the ERP’s native reporting tools, your finance team can keep working confidently while IT manages the migration.
No waiting for new cubes or reports to be built. No dependency on consultants. Vivid becomes your continuity layer for reporting and control.
Real-World Outcomes
Maintain uninterrupted monthly reporting throughout ERP transitions
Verify and reconcile migrated data in hours, not weeks
Eliminate report rebuild costs and delays
Preserve trusted KPIs and board reports from day one of go-live
Does VividCPM support multi-company or multi-currency reporting?
Yes. Vivid CPM handles hundreds of entities, dozens of currencies, and even multiple fiscal years with ease. It automatically applies exchange rates and consolidates results. Vivid can also:
- easily manage complex nested reporting trees.
- manage sophisticated segmentation and show 10 segments on a single report
- use control panels on reports to easily flip between views of any of the the above in within the same report template.
What is Vivid Budgeting?
Vivid Budgeting is an add-on to VividCPM that lets you create, manage, and analyze budgets directly in Excel using your live financial data. It connects to your ERP data to populate budget templates with historical data, and let’s managers enter their budget data into the familiar excel templates they’ve always used. Behind the scenes, Vivid manages version control, data validation, input consolidation, auditability, comments and assumption management, while also providing managers with powerful tools to support the budgeting process.
Can I budget at different levels of detail?
Yes. You can budget at any level — from summarized departmental totals to detailed account-by-account planning — or functional budgeting, or product-based, or project based, at any level of granularity you choose. Vivid’s team will help you set up the filters and templates that align with your needs, and show you how to evolve toward increasingly sophisticated and accurate budgets.
How does Vivid Budgeting handle manager collaboration?
Multiple users can work in parallel using controlled access and user-level security. Budget data is entered into Excel, Vivid collects and stores inputs into a central SQL database, and executives have consistency and auditability while eliminating spreadsheet version chaos. Version control, iteration locking and template distribution are all managed by Vivid.
Clients can have 1 person entering all budget details – or hundreds of participants in a fully distributed budgeting process… you are in control and decide the level of collaboration.
Can I compare actuals to budget in real time?
Absolutely. Actuals, budgets, and forecasts are all available side-by-side in VividCPM reports. Changes in your ERP or budget are reflected instantly when you refresh your report.
Can VividCPM Budgeting support dynanic forecasting?
Yes. Vivid supports rolling forecasts, quarterly updates, and scenario modeling — allowing you to plan continuously throughout the year, not just at budget season. Customers can have as many budgets, scenarios, plans or stored models as they wish.
Vivid is exceptional for dynamic forecasting – supplying the functionality Excel specifically needs to blend budget, actual, and dynamic planning data into a single spreadsheet that automatically updates. No more rebuilding spreadsheets each month – just push refresh to advance the month.
How secure is my financial data in VividCPM?
For our customers demanding the highest level of security – your data never leaves your environment. Access is managed through SQL security, Windows authentication, and user-level role-based permissions — ensuring that users only see what they’re authorized to view.
For customers using Vivid cloud-based systems, Vivid’s hosted environment on Azure is secured using Microsoft’s enterprise-grade controls — including network isolation, encrypted data storage, and continuous security monitoring. Access is tightly governed through Vivid’s role-based access, and SOC 2–aligned operational practices.
How is user access control managed
Vivid has fine grained user access management to organize user access by any combination of:
- Segment / Dimension
- Account
- Drill-down rights
In this method a user could be restricted to only their divisional information, or not have drill-down rights on payroll accounts, or only see product related information or only their information on a function within a department within a company.
Vivid’s secure access provides clients control over access to financial data.
How do I manage access to financial reports?
Vivid can work in a number of ways:
- Access is controlled by your corporate file system access or Microsoft password files governance.
- Data access is controlled by Vivid. A template might be generally available on a report server, but anyone looking at the file only sees the information they are allowed to see.
- File access is controlled by Vivid. For board or other governance reports, Vivid has an additional layer of security to ensure core reports are centralized and secure.
- Multi-Divisional Management. Larger clients look to Vivid to provide multi-dimensional management where certain account definitions and reporting remain standardized across the company or group of companies, while others are owned at the company level. MDM assures governance of standards alongside the flexibility of localization.
