Frustrated with Datarails?
Need a Datarails® alternative that keeps your reports in Excel®? Vivid gives finance teams a flexible, transparent way to report, analyze, and consolidate financials—without rigid data models, long implementations, or hidden logic.
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Why Teams Look for a Datarails Alternative
No Proprietary Datarails Cell Formula
Stay in Excel, but with Vivid, there is no proprietary formula layer to learn and maintain.
Weeks, Not Months to Get Going
Vivid can often have your team running with refreshable reports before your next month end close.
No Power-User or Certification Training Needed
Vivid values simplicity for the user – anyone on the finance team can build reports in minutes.
More Drill and Analysis
There’s no cell formula! select a number, or even a sum, hit drill and see details like associated invoices, transaction details, variance analysis or trend analysis.
Lower Ownership Cost
Less admin time for mapping, maintenance, and rework. Changes are made once to update every spreadsheet across the company.
Vivid: change once, change everywhere.
Don't risk a cell formula being out of date and returning wrong data, missing data or Null.
“A DR formula placed in the workbook will pull the specific value from the database based on the parameters in that cell.” — Datarails Help Center
Do you really want to manage thousands of cell formulas?
Reports leverage a semantic library.
Change once - it's in sync everywhere.
“Editing Functions or mapping requires updating report formulas.” — Datarails Academy: Creating and Editing Functions
If the mapping changes (like adding a new location), every DR formula referencing that mapped field may return wrong data, missing data, or NULL — unless updated individually.
Report definitions are centrally managed.
Change once - change everywhere.
Datarails vs Vivid
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Datarails
Formula Model
Proprietary DR formulas for every cell of data
(e.g., DR.GET…)
No cell formula. Just Excel features and functions.
Libraries
Function library to maintain. When functions change, individual formulas on reports can show no value, incorrect value or Null. i.e., reports can be wrong.
Semantic library to maintain. Change once, test to ensure change is correct, rolls the change to every report. Reports are always in sync.
Data Preparation
Separate data mapper; Fileboxes & mapping. You maintain.
“Out of the box” replication of dimensional model; no separate mapping tool for reporting. Vivid maintains.
Implementation
4-6 week minimum project that can extend to months; can’t know if it will work for you for months.
Most clients reach initial live reporting within a couple of weeks, which making it easy to confirm Vivid’s support of even complex reporting and budgeting requirements.
Learning Curve
Certification highly recommended – requires power-users to maintain. More challenging learning curve.
No power users – everyone in finance can build reports with minimal training.
Scalability
Unknown. Significant change means report formula must be rebuilt – potential to become brittle in a dynamic/changing environment.
Vivid scales effortlessly across ERPs, changes to divisional structures, new entities or offices, and currencies.
Confidence
Reports will need to be checked. Cell formula error or editing functions/mappings can produce errors that reduce confidence
Accuracy is extremely high – particularly in multi-currency, multi-entity, complex environments.
Simplicity
Processes could feel fragmented, every new report adds another layer of manual effort.
Everything connects through one intuitive system, making complex reporting feel effortless.
How Do I Convert to Vivid?
Assess
Share reports and structures; let’s isolate the few things we need to focus on fixing. We’re candid about our ability to be successful, and will back that with a free POC to demonstrate it will work. Typically, clients are up with a proven pathway to success within weeks.
Convert
Convert your existing Excel reports rather than replacing them. Each report you build will make it faster to build the next one. Move incrementally from building your month end package to building extremely sophisticated dynamic reports or FP&A product analysis to moving into budgeting and forecasting.
Enable
Short training; finance owns and manages report definitions. Roll-out user self service so managers can refresh, drill, and get their own answers.
Great Software Isn’t Enough — You Need a Team That Has Your Back
Vivid’s Support Stands Out — and the Data Proves It.
There’s a simple way to measure and quantify what it feels like to work with a vendor, in every interaction, ask yourself: was it easy to get my issue handled?
That’s what the Customer Effort Score (CES) asks. It’s a tougher test than satisfaction survey because it penalizes friction anywhere in the process—waiting, repeating, or being passed around. Vivid scores 6.97 out of 7—well above benchmarks. In plain terms, customers tell us: every interaction feels easy.
We’ve built the company to remove friction in every step of the process.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Vivid uses centrally stored definitions; you simply place definitions onto the Excel surface.
When converting from Datarails, the same Excel reports are used, you add the definitions, delete all the cell formula, and Vivid refreshes the reports.
Initial wins in weeks; By this we mean – in a few days or weeks, you will know with absolute certainty that Vivid reports are correctly generating the right financial numbers and that changes or corrections are easily cascading across all work you’ve done previously
A full timeline varies by company because a company could have hundreds of reports. With Vivid, implementation is rapid iterations of report building. Once done, reports require minimal maintenance.
Yes. Vivid connects to 60+ ERPs and runs in Excel as the design surface.
Yes—drilldown is options are: to account, transaction, transaction detail, invoice (when the client has AP automation). Drill also to variance, variance impact, and trend over time.
Yes, Vivid uses a similar Excel-based model. Vivid has bi-directional write-back from Excel for manager input, automated template distribution and consolidation, unlimited budgets and scenarios, can lock input to manage iterations, provides input auditing, notes and assumptions capture, and FP&A teams can budget at whatever level of granularity chosen while selecting from multiple budgeting techniques (such as account-based, project based, function-based, driver-based or zero-based budgeting).