When it comes to getting information and managing finances, you can’t go wrong with a business budgeting app. This type of app will help you track expenses, create budgets, and much more. Not only that, but the built-in tools make it easy to use and understand your financial situation. And if you have trouble budgeting on your own, a business budgeting app can help—literally! With the right tools in place, you can get on track to achieve your financial goals without any fuss.
Budgeting App for Small Business
Mint
With over 30 million users across industries and different business sizes, Mint, which was created in 2006, is considered the pioneer of budgeting apps. This software gives you a thorough overview of your monthly savings and expenses. You can sync numerous accounts, create payment reminders (and actually pay your bills), check your credit, manage your budget, track your assets, and more using Mint. Not only is Mint totally free, but it’s also incredibly simple to set up and use.
FreshBooks
Popular small business accounting and financial software is called FreshBooks. If that’s what you require, it includes some basic budgeting features and might be worth a try. FreshBooks’ entry-level subscription includes common budgeting capabilities including cost tracking, invoice creation, receipt scanning, and information access via the mobile app. Small company owners can obtain helpful guidance from FreshBooks on how to build and keep to a budget.
PocketGuard
An entirely automatic budgeting app called Pocketguard. You can see how much money you have left over to spend each week or month thanks to the special feature “In My Pocket.” The app keeps track of your subscriptions, whether they be to professional memberships, marketing software, or trade magazines, so you won’t be charged for services you don’t use. The ability to manage recurrent expenses like phone and internet bills and find savings opportunities is another advantage of PocketGuard. The monthly price for the Pro version is $4.99.
YNAB (You Need a Budget)
With the help of the award-winning app You Need a Budget (YNAB), small business owners, particularly freelancers and solopreneurs, can revamp their budgets and frequently save $6,000 in the first year. Wouldn’t that be nice? You can access budget data from any device and follow your objectives and progress with the app’s graphic graphs and charts. YNAB’s security feature, which encrypts data and passwords, is a significant advantage. You may attend a variety of online classes through the YNAB app ($14.99/month), which can help you manage your budget even if your income is irregular.
Simplifi by Quicken
Simplifi by Quicken is a fantastic app to take into consideration if you are starting a business where the cash flow isn’t yet consistent or if you are already an entrepreneur. You may create a flexible monthly budget with Simplifi, keep tabs on your spending, and make future spending plans. For only $5.99/month, the app offers real-time updates on daily spending (both personal and business), as well as the overall financial picture, so you can accurately track the progress of your startup.
Mvelopes
Mvelopes is a well-liked budgeting app for solopreneurs and independent contractors that is modeled after a cash envelope system where you enter a designated amount for certain expenses. For any categories that apply to your business, such as home office expenses, client meetings, equipment, and shipping, you can create digital envelopes. You may quickly adjust the income you use to create your budget with Mvelopes, even though it may vary from month to month. The envelope turning red if you overspend is another cool feature. Mvelopes is unfortunately not available for free; the entry-level package costs $5.97 each month, but your company could gain from the $6,175 in average savings that users have recorded.
InDinero
Even if you’re just getting started, keeping track of where all the money is going can be challenging. You can organize your budgets, bookkeeping, and taxes with the help of the comprehensive accounting and finance tool InDinero. Cash flow statements and forecasting models can be produced. Even useful instructions on startup finance are available on the app. If you’re looking for a comprehensive accounting solution, InDinero’s beginning price is $300/month, but there are also customized pricing options.
Goodbudget
You can use your phone or laptop to access the budgeting program Goodbudget. It is based on the tried-and-true envelope-budgeting technique, and it enables new business owners to see both their personal and business finances. One thing to note is that Goodbudget does not instantly sync to your bank accounts, in contrast to its rivals. Transactions can be manually entered or imported. Their instructive books and videos can be beneficial for any beginning businessperson who wants to learn the basics of budgeting. Both a Plus version ($7/month) and a free version of Goodbudget are available.
Toshl
Toshl might be worth looking into if you’re a startup business owner who isn’t very concerned with having all the extra bells and whistles. Toshl is a software for manual budgeting and cost monitoring that offers an easy-to-use interface. You can make a budget and keep track of your spending anyway you like – do you want to keep track of solely your travel or eating expenses? Users adore the River flow graph, which reveals the precise paths taken by your money. You can use the Toshl free version for as long as you like; a more feature-rich bundle is offered for a reasonable monthly charge of $4.99.
Personal Capital
Through a single dashboard, Personal Capital provides both investment and budgeting options. You can keep tabs on your spending, loans, investments, and retirement savings. Investors, financial advisers, portfolio managers, or even a small company owner who is preparing for retirement would benefit greatly from this software. You may still make a budget and categorize spending with the less robust budgeting options than with other apps. The cost of Personal Capital is dependent on your investment amount and starts at 0.89 percent for investments under $1 million.
Albert
Albert is a feature-rich financial tool that supports managing your spending, savings, and investments. Your budget is automatically created for you by Albert, a powerful AI, based on your income, historical spending, and obligations. Additionally, it gives you the ability to monitor the performance of your portfolio and start investing with as little as $1. You will learn about emerging markets, Albert’s hand-picked equities, and other worldwide investment trends as a financial professional. The majority of the features on the Albert app are free, but there is a $6/month minimum fee to use Albert Genius.
PlanGuru
PlanGuru is a quick and effective budgeting tool that’s ideal for new businesses and professionals in the accounting or finance industries. You may use the program to generate a straightforward yet adaptable small business budget that you can divide up into various sections. A key selling point for PlanGuru is its 20 forecasting tools. It syncs effortlessly with Xero, Excel, and QuickBooks Online. PlanGuru costs $99 per month.
Honeydew
It might become a little sticky when managing budgets with another individual. Honeydew is great for partnerships when you and your partner share the business bank account and credit cards because it makes it easier to track costs jointly. How? To be able to view each other’s situation, Honeydew lets you and your partner attach accounts, loans, and credit cards to the app. Additionally, it allows you to make your own unique spending categories, including “office supplies,” “travel charges,” and “raw material cost.” The nicest feature of Honeydew is its alluring cost: free!
Best Budget Software
Mint
Best budgeting app overall
Cost: Free
Mint is one of the most popular budgeting apps and for good reason. It is free to use, something rare among the best budgeting apps, and you get financial budgeting shared by 24 million users.
The app allows you to create a personalized budget and will then monitor your spending. It studies your spending habits and advises how to increase your savings. It will also check your subscriptions to ensure that you are not paying for services you do not need. With MintSights, you can set goals to reach financial milestones and build a stronger financial foundation. Once you connect your accounts, you can easily navigate between outstanding account balances, your monthly expenses versus spending, and even access your free credit score. Mint is compatible with not just banking accounts, but also your credit cards, loans, and investments. You can even file your IRS taxes and receive your refund through the app’s integrated TurboTax services.
Goodbudget
Best budgeting app with digital envelopes
Cost: There is a free version with ads, or you can upgrade to an ad-free plan for $7 per month or $60 per year.
Goodbudget is a budgeting app that helps you create and stick to a budget. There is available debt tracking to keep you motivated and on track. It also helps with money management so you know exactly where your funds are and how they are performing. You will have to subscribe to Goodbudget, but once you do, you will have wide access to the app through both the web and multiple phones. This means that it is easy to share your account with others, like a spouse or family member. It helps you stay connected financially even if you are physically apart, helping to prevent miscommunications and financial mishaps. All transactions are synced to the cloud so you never have to worry about certain financial transactions going missing. Review pie charts and reports to track your spending, with generated reports to show your finances in greater detail. Digital envelopes help you categorize your finances into available funds with each envelope assigned to certain expenses. It is a visual way to improve your finances through the help of virtual tools.
Personal Capital
Best budgeting app for investors
Cost: Personal Capital is free to use.
More than 2.8 million people utilize Personal Capital, and it is a portfolio tracker specifically designed to help with your investments, offering a unique digital approach to your personal finance. The app works with several different types of accounts, including your normal banking accounts, as well as investments, stocks, and retirement funds. The exclusive Retirement Planner tool helps you view your 401K, IRAs, and also your debt so you can have a complete, well-rounded portrait of your finances at the click of a button. The Cash Flow graph stacks your income versus your expenses for an overall financial snapshot that is easy to understand, plus there is an Investment Checkup tool that checks your investments, looking for ways to minimize risk while maximizing rewards. The Retirement Planner is an excellent option when you want to create and manage your retirement. You also have the option to join Personal Capital as an investment client so you can receive direct support from its financial advisors.
Pocketguard
Best budgeting app for overspenders
Cost: There are three subscription plans, in addition to a basic plan with limited features for free.
| Type of plan | Cost |
| Monthly | $7.99 |
| Annual | $34.99 |
| Lifetime One-Time Purchase | $79.99 |
PocketGuard takes a different approach to budgeting, utilizing smart algorithms to manage and track your spending. It also monitors your bills, helping to ensure that you do not miss a payment and risk falling further into debt. There is a bill tracker and organizer available as soon as you link your bank accounts. Any subscriptions you have will be automatically flagged and built into your monthly budget. With the IN MY POCKET feature, the app will automatically calculate your monthly expenses and then advise you on what is left over to spend. It also can help you negotiate better interest rates on your existing accounts, helping you save those extra dollars. It is easy to identify what disposable income you have to spend when the app does all the calculating and reporting for you. You do not have to pay to use PocketGuard, although you will need to subscribe if you want to access all of the best.
Quicken
Quicken is a long-established tool for managing personal accounts, and while its reputation was founded on a desktop version, it is also available as an app for your mobile devices.
Quicken has a comprehensive set of financial reporting features. These are organized around a few different topics, including budgeting, bills, accounts, and even investing. For budgeting, it allows you to enter your purchases and income so you can compare them to have a better picture of how much you spend versus how much you earn.
In terms of bills, you can see which utilities and such services you are constantly paying, as well as the amounts owed and how much money you have left over. For accounting purposes, you can even combine your banking and credit card payments in one location so you know exactly how much you’re paying out. This is especially useful because consumers frequently underestimate how much simple purchases might add to prices.
It also allows you to track your investments, whether they are part of your savings, investment portfolio, or 401k pension plan. This implies that you have a good notion of how much your savings and assets are worth, while it’s fair to say that
In total, Quicken combines your banking, investment reporting, and budgeting into a single dashboard that you can access from a PC or even a mobile device via the mobile app.
YNAB
You Need A Budget, often known as YNAB, is here just in case you require precise instructions. Because, hey, you really do need one if you don’t want to spend every every penny you have and more. Perhaps you have more money than you anticipated as well.
As you may anticipate, YNAB’s main goal is to assist you in reducing your expenditure and avoiding living paycheck to paycheck. Maintain the plan and moderate your spending, and soon YNAB will realize that you are using last month’s funds rather than those you just received.
It is simple to install, supports the bulk of transaction data that can be downloaded from banks, and automatically adjusts for use by either individuals or small businesses by altering its monetary categories in accordance with your requirements.
If you stray from your course, YNAB, which is surprisingly understanding and forgiving for a piece of software, will inform you what to do to get back on track.
Best Corporate Budgeting Software
1. Cube
Our top pick for FP&A software is Cube, a strong and user-friendly FP&A application. Here is a brief description of Cube:
- The first spreadsheet-native FP&A software that helps finance plan for the unexpected and move the business forward.
- Eliminates manual work and provides the real-time insights finance needs to strategize with speed and agility.
- Pairs the flexibility and familiarity of your spreadsheets with the control and power of enterprise software.
- Implements quickly. Cube gets you up and running in days, not months, which means faster time to value at a lower cost.
- Connects with any source system, any browser, and any sheet in moments, so you don’t have to change how you work.
- Access to an award-winning customer team with deep FP&A experience.
2. Workday Adaptive Planning
Enterprise solutions for planning, modeling, budgeting, and forecasting for financial, labor, and sales needs are offered by Workday Adaptive Planning, formerly known as Adaptive Insights. Without the use of spreadsheets or outdated solutions, their technologies seek to foster collaboration across the organization.
For large businesses, Workday Adaptive Planning for Finance offers financial planning and analytics. They also add modeling, teamwork, analytics, management reporting, board reporting, scenario planning, and financial consolidation features to their FP&A system.
3. Anaplan
Complex scenario planning, intelligent forecasting, and quicker decision-making are all facilitated by Anaplan. Their corporate-wide solutions link strategy to results while also linking accountability to a single source of truth.
In order to integrate people, data, and plans across the organization and make the best decisions, Anaplan especially offers FP&A solutions. The solution consists of planning, budgeting, and forecasting, as well as specialist finance planning, operational planning, and planning for financial and operational planning, all of which promote better and quicker decision-making.
4. Planful
A cloud-based FP&A software platform from Planful delivers reporting, consolidation, and structured and dynamic planning. The Planful platform raises the financial dialogue and supports quicker, more certain, and more strategic decision-making.
Planful provides solutions for managing cash flow, employee reporting, financial reporting, annual operations planning, monthly close and consolidation, and multi-dimensional analysis for the finance industry. Early in 2020, the business changed its name from Host Analytics to better target mid-market clients.
5. Vena
Vena provides a comprehensive planning platform with ready-made solutions to automate time-consuming operations that connects people, processes, and systems. Financial planning and analysis, reporting, compliance reporting, and financial closing are examples of specific competencies. Vena provides FP&A software that is “pre-configured” for a prescriptive approach and can be altered to suit particular requirements.
6. Prophix
By automating routine processes, Prophix’s Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution aims to increase profitability and reduce risk. With cloud or on-premise solution options, their technologies assist Finance in automatically budgeting, planning, consolidating, and reporting.
7. Jira
Jirav is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis tool that frees accounting and finance teams from the use of antiquated, error-prone spreadsheets for budgeting and forecasting. You can track, forecast, and share the data that matters most to your organization since it is totally configurable.
8. DataRails
Analytics is what DataRails does for the financial sector. Their financial analytics platform was created to give finance professionals the tools they need to easily gather, report, and analyze data. DataRails automates the data collection from each of your organizational systems and spreadsheets, resulting in the creation of a consolidated database of all your numbers without requiring you to alter the way you work.
9. Centage
With the help of Centage’s Planning Maestro, FP&A can make choices more swiftly and intelligently, respond to market changes rapidly, take prudent risks, and seize new possibilities. You may use the tool to create flexible, driver-based strategies, predict likely financial performance, monitor outcomes, and distribute vital information throughout the company.
10. OnPlan
With the help of the financial modeling software OnPlan, you can interact with your FP&A team to forecast, budget, and perform benchmarking with improved visibility and transparency. You provide OnPlan your current spreadsheet models, and they create a model just for you with useful dashboards, charts, graphs, and more.
What is Financial Forecasting?
Making financial projections in order to forecast and estimate your organization’s short- and long-term financial performance is known as financial forecasting. Organizations all across the world use forecasting as the cornerstone of finance and FP&A and as the basis for decision-making. FP&A often collaborates with the executive team and the rest of the company to acquire information, identify market trends and movements, and eventually produce predictions.
Forecasting in the past has frequently been based on past performance, present performance and trajectory, and projections of future market, competition, and internal performance, strategy, and execution. FP&A analyzes this data to forecast future cash flows, expenditures, revenues, profits, and other financial variables.
How are Financial Forecasts Used?
Forecasts are essential for internal financial modeling, financial planning, budgeting, hiring and personnel, capital expenditures, strategy development, and overall organizational execution.
The CEO, CFO, and other executives can decide to increase budgets in various areas of the company to take advantage of the predicted strong growth in earnings, for instance.
Business leaders might also prepare to depart or reduce investments in some markets or products if FP&A expects slow growth or contractions in certain areas.
The CEO and CFO also utilize financial forecasts externally to communicate with creditors and investors, create reports and projections, and determine broader financial criteria like company valuation, objectives, bonuses, and more.
Best Software for Managing Small Business
1. Best accounting software: Xero
A cloud-based accounting program geared exclusively toward small businesses is called Xero. It offers capabilities for accountants to assist make sure their clients have sound balance sheets as well as tools for businesses to track financial performance and cash flow in real-time. Financial KPI tracking and performance comparisons between actual and chosen time periods are both possible with customizable financial reports. Businesses can quickly take online payments in many currencies from services like Stripe and PayPal as well as credit cards. Additionally, Xero makes it simple to prepare and distribute invoices, as well as to remind clients to make payments automatically when their bills are past due.
2. Best eCommerce software: Shopify
Although there are several excellent eCommerce systems available, Shopify is the best since it offers a hosted, all-in-one solution that makes it easier for small businesses to launch an online store rapidly. Users may utilize marketing tools like meta titles and descriptions, construct custom URLs, and easily enhance promotions across social media networks like as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Users can also sell products globally with local language support. Additionally, Shopify provides a huge selection of plugins to make processes like inventory management simpler.
3. Best project management software: Trello
Trello is a task management and collaboration application that supports a variety of projects, including data entry, marketing campaigns, content creation, customer assistance, and sales tracking. It’s vital to note that, while these types of papers can be attached, it works for the majority of projects except for budgeting and invoicing. It’s a handy and simple application for smaller organizations that tracks tasks effortlessly using due dates, card cover images, users, a task commenting function, labels, priorities, and more. Additionally, each project management pipeline can accept attachments like files, photos, or documents.
4. Best time tracking software: Toggl
For very small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs who just need a simple time tracker, Toggl might be the best bet. While there are many great software solutions out there that include extensive features such as expense management, mileage tracking, employee monitoring, and more, many small businesses don’t need all of those features (and don’t want to pay for them). With Toggl, it’s all about ease of use because employees can instantly track time across hundreds of third-party apps, computers, and devices — just hit Start and the timer gets going. Toggl is free with paid tiers that start at $9/month for add-ons such as invoicing features.
5. Best online payment software: PayPal
Two of the most popular online payment platforms are PayPal and Stripe. Despite the fact that they have many similarities, including a processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 for online payments, PayPal is a superior choice for startups and small enterprises. PayPal is a better alternative for small business owners since it is simpler to set up and use, while Stripe gives more customization choices to suit larger enterprises. One of the most extensively used systems in the eCommerce sector, PayPal enables millions of customers and merchants to send and receive payments using bank accounts and credit cards. Customers can finish purchases using PayPal, PayPal credits, or Venmo by adding the PayPal button to the payment page.
6. Best email marketing software: MailChimp
Because MailChimp is adaptable, reasonably priced, and allows customers to add features and capabilities as business needs evolve, we believe small businesses can’t go wrong with it. In actuality, businesses with fewer than 2,000 users can use it for free. This is a big benefit for small businesses or entrepreneurs who wish to cut costs as much as they can while expanding their enterprises. However, even the higher tier plans are affordable, with the Essentials and Standard plans coming in at just $9.99 and $14.99 monthly, respectively. (Take note that the real rate changes depending on the subscription count.) However, MailChimp includes a wide range of tools, including behavioral targeting, A/B testing, customized templates, complex segmentation, and more, that place targeted marketing and other marketing strategies front and center.
7. Best collaboration tools: Slack
The Swiss Army Knife of team collaboration tools is Slack. It makes it possible for team members to connect on any desktop or mobile device, which is especially helpful for smaller organizations that do not have a single workplace (or whose employees work remotely due to COVID-19 measures). A variety of capabilities, including voice and video calling, are available on Slack. Additionally, it is simple to interface with other business tools like MailChimp and Google Drive, enabling effective information sharing between all of these platforms. Additionally, Slack makes it simple to upload and exchange documents including Word docs, JPEGs, MOVs, PDFs, and Google Drive files. Slack is actually used by some firms instead of email because it’s simpler.
8. Best document management software: G-Suite
Google’s free cloud computing, collaboration, and productivity package is called G-Suite. Because it offers a one-stop shop for all document management requirements, it is perfect for small enterprises and independent contractors. Users can quickly and simply create and share documents (Google Docs), spreadsheets (Google Sheets), and presentations inside the collection of separate apps (Google Slides). Team members can design an email account to make it appear more professional, access email, hold video meetings, and encrypt data. Documents, including large files, may be effortlessly uploaded and shared with anybody inside or outside the company thanks to G-15GB Suite’s of free cloud storage space. Owners of the documents specify how users can access each file and provide them the option to “see only,” “edit file,” or “completely access and edit.”
9. Best human resources/payroll software: Gusto
Many smaller businesses use both full-time workers and temporary or contract workers. They therefore require a payroll management system that can handle both W-2 and 1099 employees. Because it can handle payroll processing and payroll tax obligations for all types of workers, Gusto is perfect for these kinds of circumstances. Gusto makes it simple to add new employees and identify their job classification. Even better, because both categories of workers are regarded as employees, the expense of maintaining payroll for a full- or part-time employee is the same as that for a freelancer or contractor. In addition, Gusto charges monthly fees as opposed to other payroll firms’ per-payroll pricing models. This implies businesses can process payroll as often as necessary.
10. Best customer relationship management (CRM) software: Act!
built primarily to satisfy the requirements of small and medium-sized organizations. We are aware that many CRM tools are created with the robust requirements of enterprise businesses in mind, but our mission is to assist smaller businesses in gaining access to these benefits at a reasonable price point, without additional CRM integration fees, hidden costs, or expensive and pointless features. Key advantages consist of:
- Tiered plans to meet every need: Choose from one of three plans that offer basic to advanced CRM and email marketing that includes thousands of emails per month. With clear features and pricing, customers can choose the plan that’s right for them and scale as business needs change.
- Powerful built-in tools: Take advantage of relationship and task management capabilities across all three plans. Every plan includes a library of email templates, campaign management and reporting features, opportunity tracking, our companion mobile app, cloud storage, and more.
- Advanced automation: In our higher-tiered plans, customers benefit from powerful marketing automation tools, intuitive dashboards and analytics, team management features, app integrations, sales pipeline management, and more.
- Easy setup: Act! offers user-friendly onboarding processes that greatly simplify the experience for newcomers to CRM. Our dashboard is highly intuitive and fully customizable so businesses can adapt it to meet specific business needs, customer profiles, and market requirements.
- Cloud-based technology: Access business apps and data 24/7 from anywhere. The Act! mobile app makes it easy to stay engaged with customers without losing time or opportunities.
Conclusion
Business budgeting apps can be a great way to keep track of your business finances. However, it’s important to use them in a responsible manner and make sure that you have enough saved up for the future. By calculating your estimated income and expenses and setting up a savings plan, you can support your financial plan without feeling overwhelmed. Finally, using a business budgeting app to support your financial plan can help you save money on unnecessary expenses.