Automate Anaplan Data Refreshes in Google Sheets

The manual refresh problem

Every FP&A team knows this workflow: open your reporting spreadsheet, manually connect to Anaplan, pull the latest data, reformat, and distribute. Repeat daily. If someone forgets, the board sees stale numbers.

With aPlan4Sheets, you set up your data connections once and schedule automatic refreshes. Your sheets are always current.

How scheduled refresh works

aPlan4Sheets uses a persistent background trigger that checks your refresh schedule every hour. When it's time to refresh, it pulls fresh data from Anaplan, writes it to the correct sheets, and preserves all your formatting.

Setting up a schedule

1. Open the aPlan4Sheets sidebar and go to the Refresh tab
2. Select the sheet connections you want to refresh
3. Choose a frequency: hourly, every few hours, daily, or weekly
4. Click "Schedule" and you're done

What gets refreshed

Both saved view exports and pivot configurations are supported. The refresh pulls the latest data from Anaplan using your stored authentication, so it works even when you're not actively using the spreadsheet.

Use cases

• Board reporting: Set up your board deck sheets once and schedule daily refreshes. Walk into the meeting with current data.
• Weekly variance reports: Schedule Monday morning refreshes so the team starts the week with fresh actuals vs. budget.
• Executive dashboards: Connect a Google Sheet to multiple Anaplan views and schedule hourly refreshes for a real-time dashboard.
• Month-end close: During close, switch to hourly refreshes to track actuals as they're posted in Anaplan.

Reliability and recovery

The refresh system uses a persistent hourly trigger managed by Google. If a refresh fails (network issue, Anaplan maintenance), it automatically retries on the next cycle. Your authentication tokens are refreshed server-side, so the schedule survives even if your browser session expires.