If you are thinking about starting your own business or already have a business then it is important that you learn about the basics of budgeting and forecasting your finances. You can do this using software, freeware or cloud based software.
What is software for business budgeting? What is budgeting and forecasting software free? And how does it help your business to use the right kind of budgeting and forecasting software? These are some of the things I am going to answer as part of this article.
Scoro
Scoro combines budgeting features with other tools to manage your entire company in one system. You can also manage expenses and resources, use a financial dashboard, and manage project budgets.
Top features:
- Budget planning and forecasting
- Financial reports and analysis
- Unlimited project budgets
- Financial KPI dashboard
- Invoicing and professional services automation
- Automated revenue stream from invoices
What’s special about this tool: Scoro combines the tools for budgeting, CRM, and project management so that you can manage your entire business in one solution and access all the financial data in one place.
Pricing: From $26 user/month, 14-days free trial.
Centage
Centage is a comprehensive enterprise budgeting software provider that offers different tools called Maestros for budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, etc. If you’re looking for a highly complete solution, Centage might be the answer.
Top features:
- Budgeting and planning
- Forecasts
- Financial dashboard and reporting
- Comprehensive analytics
What’s special about this tool: Centage integrates with other widely used enterprise management software like SAGE, Dynamics, and QuickBooks.
Pricing: Upon Request
Prophix
Prophix says it has created a software solution for corporate performance management, which means that it includes many smaller tools for managing a company’s resources and planning it’s budgets.
Top features:
- Budgeting, planning, and forecasting
- Financial, statutory and management reporting
- Cash flow planning
- Profitability modeling and optimization
- Personnel planning
What’s special about this tool: Prophix wants to offer its users a wholesome product that scales as the company grows.
Pricing: Upon Request
Float
Float is an easy-to-use cash flow forecasting and budget management software that integrates seamlessly with other tools like Xero, Quickbooks Online, and Free Agent.
Top features:
- Cash flow forecasting
- Business budgeting
- Visual reporting
What’s special about this tool: Float is a highly visual and nice-to-use tool that helps to bring more clarity to your company’s budgets and cash flow.
Pricing: Small (1 user account) $35/month, Medium (3 user accounts) $59/month, Large (10 user accounts) $119/month
Read on: Business Management Trends You Should Quit in 2017
Planguru
Compared with Centage and Prophix, Planguru is a more simple budgeting software solution, which might be what you’re looking for to manage your small company’s budget.
Top features:
- Pre-built Integrated Financial Statement Structure
- Payroll Utility
- Engagement Tools for Professional Accountants
- 20+ Standard Forecasting Methods
- Forecast using Non-Financial Data
What’s special about this tool: Planguru has a separate analytics tool that helps to get a better overview of financials and make better decisions.
Pricing: $99/company/month + $29 for each additional user
Interesting read: 10 Easy Steps to Improve Your Billing Process Right Now
GIDE
GIDE helps companies combine budgeting, strategic planning, and rolling forecasts while consolidating projects/companies and business departments within one comprehensive corporate performance management platform.
Top features:
- Profit/loss statement Balance sheet & Cash flows
- Capital asset planning
- Capital structuring
- Operational data
- Working Capital
What’s special about this tool: GIDE promises a fast implementation process of two weeks compared to the average of 8 weeks of budgeting software implementation.
Pricing: N/A
Maxiplan
With Maxiplan’s cost-effective budgeting solutions, organizations can move beyond the chaos and complexity of spreadsheet-based processes to more effectively plan and track financial performance.
Top features:
- Financial performance management
- Budgeting and forecasting
- Profit & loss and cash flow forecasts
- Actual/budget/plan variance reporting
- Revenue forecasting and analysis
- Ad hoc planning and consolidation
What’s special about this tool: Maxiplan challenges companies struggling with Excel spreadsheets to move their business into a more organized solution.
Pricing: N/A
Tagetik
Tagetik is a simple business budgeting software solution that helps to bring more structure into budgeting and forecasting.
Top features:
- Disclosure management
- Budget planning and forecasting
- Reporting and analytics
- Financial consolidation
What’s special about this tool: Tagetik promises to give you the ease of Excel, the flexibility of the cloud, and the power of built-in financial intelligence.
Pricing: N/A
Adaptive Insights
Adaptive Insights is a comprehensive tool offering cloud-based budgeting and forecasting software combined with reporting and analytics features.
Top features:
- Revenue management
- Capital management
- Balance sheet & cash flow statements
- Expense management
What’s special about this tool: Adaptive Insights has a visual financial reporting and dashboard tool that gives a quick overview of the company’s financial performance.
Pricing: Upon request
Coupa
Coupa is a simple budget management tool that helps to inform every team member about real-time results and budgets. It’s part of a more comprehensive Coupa management suite.
Top features:
- Real-time budget tracking
- Budget roll-up reports
- Informed approvals
- Auto-updates
- Expense management
What’s special about this tool: Coupa calls itself a Savings-as-a-Service solution. It also has a spend and expense management suite to complement your budgeting.
Pricing: N/A
Tidemark
Tidemark is a single-platform analytics suite that provides tools for extensive budget planning and result tracking.
Top features:
- Revenue planning
- Supply chain management
- Financial planning
- Budgets and forecasts
What’s special about this tool: Tidemark has an excellent tool for people and resource management that helps to keep track of non-financial measures as well.
Pricing: N/A
QuickBooks Online
Our top overall pick for the best budget software for small businesses goes to QuickBooks Online. Although QuickBooks is considered accounting software, it can automate virtually all of your business financial tasks, from invoicing and billing to sorting expenses. The user-friendly interface and dashboard let you easily track your budget and expenses.
Most importantly, QuickBooks Online has robust reporting capabilities. Small businesses can build their own customized reports or select one of QuickBooks’s own built-in reporting options, making it easier to generate profit and loss statements and other important financial reports. If you want to customize your software, QuickBooks also allows you to choose from hundreds of integrations.
QuickBooks Online offers four pricing plans for small businesses: Simple Start ($25 per month), Essentials ($50 per month), Plus ($80 per month), and Advanced, ($180 a month). No matter which plan you choose, you’ll enjoy (at minimum) these features:
- Invoicing and payments
- Income and expense management
- Track sales and sales tax
- Capture and organize receipts
- Run standard reports
You can also look into QuickBooks Self-Employed, which includes tools designed for freelancers, contractors, and other self-employed professionals. This software starts at $15 per month.
Xero
If you don’t want a lot of complex accounting features, but still want one of the best cloud-based
business budgeting software solutions, Xero is worth considering for your business.
With Xero, users can keep track of all of their accounts, invoices, and budgets in one place. Plus, Xero has made improvements to their more advanced features such as their expense and project management modules, both of which are particularly useful for budgeting.
Xero offers three pricing plans: Early, Growing, and Established.
The cheapest plan, Early, starts at $9 per month and includes Xero’s bare-bones accounting features and a limited number of invoices, quotes, and bills.
The Growing plan costs $30 per month. It includes everything in the Early plan plus unlimited invoices, quotes, and bills.
Lastly, Xero’s most expensive plan, Established, costs $60 per month. In addition to including everything in the Growing plan, the Established plan allows you to use multi-currency features, as well as the more advanced expense and project management tools.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is another well-known business accounting and budgeting software for small to medium-sized businesses and is really ideal for businesses that want basic budgeting tools.
With FreshBooks, you can create and view estimates during budgeting. FreshBooks also allows you to control your budget efficiently with their expense tracking system. However, it is important to note that FreshBooks is not capable of handling complex budget planning.
There are four versions of FreshBooks: Lite, Plus, Premium, and Select. The Premium and Select versions are skewed toward larger businesses, while the Lite and Plus versions are geared toward self-employed and small to midsize businesses.
The Lite version is the cheapest option, and costs $15 per month and provides unlimited expense entries, unlimited custom invoices, custom functionality, and much more.
PlanGuru
With years of experience helping small businesses and financial advisors, PlanGuru’s business budget software is known for its scalability. Whether you’re looking to create a simple small business budget or a highly detailed operating budget, PlanGuru can make those accommodations. PlanGuru is known for their forecasting and analytics tools, providing over 20 forecasting methods to allow small businesses to easily budget and forecast up to 10 years ahead of time.
PlanGuru offers both a cloud-based app and a desktop application. The desktop version does come with slightly more features, as desktop users can run an unlimited number of consolidations, conduct business valuation, and access the breakeven tool. Both versions of the product cost $99 per month or $899 annually. Additional users cost an extra $29 per month or $299 per year.
Conclusion
Business experts agree that knowing where your business is going financially is one of the most important skills you need to be successful. But not everybody has the skills to produce accurate financial forecasts. Software for business budgeting can help you get real insight into how your business is doing.