Frequently Asked Questions
What Is PlaidCloud?
Section titled “What Is PlaidCloud?”PlaidCloud is a unified financial analytics platform. Connect data sources, build workflows that transform and combine the data, define dimensions and hierarchies that match how your business is organized, run cost allocations, and publish results to dashboards or downstream systems — all in one platform.
Who Uses PlaidCloud?
Section titled “Who Uses PlaidCloud?”Primarily finance, FP&A, and analytics teams in mid-to-large organizations doing work like:
- Cost allocation — activity-based costing, IT chargeback, shared-service distribution, transfer pricing
- Profitability analysis — customer / product / channel margin at scale
- Financial consolidation — combining data across entities and currencies
- Operational reporting — dashboards over enterprise data with clean, governed metrics
- Data warehousing — building a unified analytical layer over operational systems
Getting Started
Section titled “Getting Started”How Do I Try PlaidCloud?
Section titled “How Do I Try PlaidCloud?”Start a free trial — self-serve sign-up gets you a workspace in a few minutes.
Where Do I Start After Signing Up?
Section titled “Where Do I Start After Signing Up?”The Quickstart walks through your first workflow in about 10 minutes. From there:
Do I Need a Specific Technical Background?
Section titled “Do I Need a Specific Technical Background?”Most PlaidCloud users are business analysts comfortable with Excel and SQL fundamentals. You don’t need to be a developer. The platform exposes workflows and data operations through a visual interface, with SQL expressions available when you need them.
Plans and Pricing
Section titled “Plans and Pricing”What Plans Are Available?
Section titled “What Plans Are Available?”PlaidCloud offers self-service trial workspaces, team plans, and enterprise plans. Plan limits, pricing, and feature availability differ across tiers.
For current pricing and plan details, see plaidcloud.com or contact your account team.
What’s the Free Trial Limit?
Section titled “What’s the Free Trial Limit?”Trial workspaces have time-limited access and usage limits appropriate for evaluating the platform. Specifics are shown during signup.
Can I Switch Plans Later?
Section titled “Can I Switch Plans Later?”Yes — workspaces can be upgraded without losing data or breaking integrations. Talk to your account team about the right path for your situation.
Capabilities and Limits
Section titled “Capabilities and Limits”How Big Can Data Get?
Section titled “How Big Can Data Get?”PlaidCloud’s underlying Lakehouse engine handles small reference tables (hundreds of rows) up to multi-billion-row analytical datasets. For very large workloads, talk to your account team about sizing — compute resources are configurable.
Does PlaidCloud Replace My Data Warehouse?
Section titled “Does PlaidCloud Replace My Data Warehouse?”It can. PlaidCloud Lakehouse is a full analytical store that can serve as your primary data warehouse, or it can sit alongside an existing one (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, etc.) and pull from it via connectors.
Can I Run PlaidCloud On-Premises?
Section titled “Can I Run PlaidCloud On-Premises?”PlaidCloud is a SaaS platform. For accessing on-premises data sources, the PlaidLink Agent installs inside your network and bridges PlaidCloud to firewalled databases and file systems.
Does PlaidCloud Have an API?
Section titled “Does PlaidCloud Have an API?”Yes. The API is exposed per-tenant inside each workspace, so the interactive API documentation lives in your workspace rather than centrally on this docs site. For programmatic integration, the Jupyter / CLI access patterns at Jupyter CLI and PlaidLink are good starting points.
Working with the Product
Section titled “Working with the Product”Can I Use Excel with PlaidCloud?
Section titled “Can I Use Excel with PlaidCloud?”Yes — PlaidXL is an Excel add-in that lets you pull data from project tables into worksheets and refresh on demand. Useful for analysts whose primary modeling environment is Excel.
Can I Use AI Tools Like Claude Code or Cursor?
Section titled “Can I Use AI Tools Like Claude Code or Cursor?”Yes — PlaidCloud exposes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server per workspace. See AI coding agents for setup.
Can I Use Jupyter Notebooks?
Section titled “Can I Use Jupyter Notebooks?”Yes — see Jupyter CLI. Authentication uses OAuth tokens, so the same credentials work across CLI, notebooks, and the REST API.
Can I Use SQL Directly?
Section titled “Can I Use SQL Directly?”Yes — workflows accept SQL expressions for column computations, filters, and joins. The Expressions reference covers every SQL function available, split by Lakehouse engine version.
How Do I Schedule Workflows?
Section titled “How Do I Schedule Workflows?”PlaidCloud has built-in scheduling. See Scheduled events.
How Do I Get Notified When a Workflow Finishes (Or Fails)?
Section titled “How Do I Get Notified When a Workflow Finishes (Or Fails)?”Use a notification step — Email, Slack, Teams, SMS, or webhook. You can also configure a remediation workflow that runs automatically on failure.
Security and Access
Section titled “Security and Access”How Are Permissions Managed?
Section titled “How Are Permissions Managed?”PlaidCloud uses security groups at the workspace level. Members are assigned to groups; groups grant specific capabilities. See Access management.
Can I Use Single Sign-On (SSO)?
Section titled “Can I Use Single Sign-On (SSO)?”Yes — PlaidCloud supports SAML 2.0. See setup guides for Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra, Google, and AWS.
Where Is My Data Stored?
Section titled “Where Is My Data Stored?”PlaidCloud data is stored in the cloud region configured for your tenant. Talk to your account team about region-specific deployments if you have data residency requirements.
How Is Data Encrypted?
Section titled “How Is Data Encrypted?”In transit and at rest. Encryption keys are managed by the platform; key-management options for regulated industries are available on enterprise plans.
Common Gotchas
Section titled “Common Gotchas”My Workflow Step Errors With “No Rows Returned”
Section titled “My Workflow Step Errors With “No Rows Returned””Usually means the filter or join didn’t match what you expected. Open the source tables in Table Explorer and check:
- Are the join key columns spelled the same in both tables (including casing)?
- Are there leading/trailing spaces or hidden characters in the key values?
- Is the filter condition more restrictive than you intended?
My Allocation Results Don’t Reconcile
Section titled “My Allocation Results Don’t Reconcile”The sum of allocated amounts should equal the sum of source amounts. If it doesn’t:
- Orphaned source rows — a source row with no matching driver data won’t allocate. Check that every source row has a driver value.
- Missing target members — a dimension member with no driver entry won’t receive an allocation. Confirm the dimension and driver table are in sync.
- Negative drivers — produce unexpected behavior. Filter them out or handle explicitly.
See Troubleshooting allocations.
My Dimension Load Created Duplicate Members
Section titled “My Dimension Load Created Duplicate Members”Usually a casing or whitespace issue in the source data. Dimensions treat “ACME Corp” and “Acme Corp” as different members. Normalize the source before loading, or use a transform step upstream to clean it.
Can’t See a Project a Coworker Mentioned
Section titled “Can’t See a Project a Coworker Mentioned”Project visibility is controlled by workspace security groups. Ask a workspace administrator to add you to the group that grants access to the project.
Getting Help
Section titled “Getting Help”How Do I Reach Support?
Section titled “How Do I Reach Support?”- For trial and self-serve users: email support@plaidcloud.com
- For enterprise customers: your dedicated support channel, typically Slack or a customer portal — ask your account team
Where Do I File a Bug or Feature Request?
Section titled “Where Do I File a Bug or Feature Request?”Through the same channels as support. Bugs that affect documentation specifically can also be flagged via the Edit Page link at the top of any doc page.
Is There a User Community?
Section titled “Is There a User Community?”PlaidCloud user forums and shared knowledge base are accessible from the in-product help menu once you have a workspace. The docs site is the public-facing resource.