Financial planning & analysis tools are the tools that can help you to get out of debt, build wealth, get rid of unexpected financial disasters and ensure your future safety. Financial planning software usually is a powerful tool, which analyzes data in a variety of ways to enable users conduct financial plan, account budgeting and track spending. They play a central role in financial management. Financial analysis tools are accounting applications. A personal financial software can help you to monitor the performance of your financial statements using some interactive tools that allow for quick identification of trends and issues. Usually, financial statements are statements that measure profitability or the state of solvency on a monthly basis. Either way, these statements determine how well a business has performed in the past month or quarter.”
Financial planning apps are needed by professionals and individual investors alike. Professionals rely on such tools to make informed decisions regarding their clients’ fund management, financial research, etc., whereas individual investors use financial apps for creating budgets, keeping track of their income and expenses, collating their investment details in one place, making it paperless and hassle-free, connecting all their accounts together be it personal, retirement or mortgage and loans with the aim of arriving at a holistic picture of their net worth.
Benefits of Effective Analysis
According to CFO Selections, bad business decisions are the primary reason why 90% of all businesses fail within 10 years and 60% close within three years. Owners and managers fail to consider the consequences of their actions on the company’s financial health. Financial management must include all aspects of the business, because every component and operation impacts its financial health.
These are some of the rewards of good financial planning and analysis:
- Management operates proactively rather than reactively
- Operations run more efficiently, which contributes to profitability
- Sound financial planning makes it easier to receive financing and borrow money
- Financial planning data is available to prospective investors
- Business managers can make better decisions when they have timely and complete financial reports at their disposal\
Tasks typically performed by financial analysts include the following:
- Tax planning
- Planning investment in fixed assets
- Determining accurate and reasonable sales goals
- Maintaining short-term working capital to support ongoing operations
- Boosting profit margins by controlling costs and expenses, and by pricing correctly
- Shaping employee benefits
- Conducting sensitivity analyses to manage uncertainty in mathematical models
Mint (Money Management App)
Mint is one of the most known mobile financial planning apps that helps you track your money automatically. All you need to do is enter basic information, and Mint takes care of the rest of it by providing you vital information from time to time.
Anaplan
Anaplan is a FP&A platform designed to connect teams, systems, and insights, across your entire organisation. One of Anaplan’s big draw cards is its automated processes, which enable faster, more effective planning, budgeting, and forecasting. Made to improve data management, Anaplan streamlines how users import, manage, and re-purpose common data assets across multiple applications.
Built for speed, it enables users to create interactive dashboards that can be adjusted in real-time. It’s also made for collaboration: users can link operational data with financial outcomes and share information between functions, departments, and management levels in a few simple clicks.
Be aware though that some users report that the Anaplan workflow, despite being customisable, doesn’t offer set options, making it somewhat more time consuming to use and easy to over-engineer. There have also been reports that the available visualisations in some cases aren’t as mature as other platforms. But on the whole it’s a powerful FP&A tool, with an attached App store that provides a range of pre-configured integrations to help users get more from their experience.
Level money (Financial Planning App)
Level money, as the name suggests, levels the amount of money you can spend in a month, week, or day. This financial planning app automatically picks data from your smartphone and keeps sending reminders about the amount left to spend, thus leveling the savings and expenses rate. It also gives you a glimpse of your spending habits basis the information received by it.
Prophix
Prophix is a piece of financial planning and analysis software designed to help corporations make more informed business decisions as they scale. Designed for optimum security, user access can be tightly managed to ensure on the right people access the data they need.
Its powerful automation processes enable your business to streamline its workflows, making it easier and faster when managing your data consolidation, business planning, budgeting, and reporting. This also limits room for human error, providing more accurate data on demand, and in a format that makes sense to the end user. From a user perspective, it’s designed to be as instinctive to use as possible, with an interface that mimics the look and feel of a regular Excel spreadsheet—but with far more capabilities.
So if you’re looking for an FP&A software that delivers a better format than Excel, this may not be the platform for you. Also, while it’s highly customisable, some users report that creating and updating individual templates can be time-consuming, and that it takes a large time investment in training and implementation.
But if you’re looking for a FP&A tool that users at all levels ostensibly already understand how to navigate, Prophix may be the right FP&A platform for your organisation.
Financial Planning and Analysis for Different Organizations
Financial planning must be linked with operational planning to go beyond simply predicting desirable results. It must also present a comprehensive plan that serves as a blueprint for the company to achieve those results.
When Strategic Finance surveyed 734 firms to determine those with the most effective financial planning and analysis operations, it identified 12 principles of best practices. These best practices are framed by a three-part decision-making platform.
- Plan: Annual operating plans, budgets, head-count plans, long-range plans, and two forms of financial modeling (what-if analysis and scenario analysis).
- Execute and monitor: Reporting and analysis includes operational reporting, financial reporting, key performance indicators, dashboards, variance analysis, and drill through/roll up/drill across.
- [Re]assess: Forecasting includes rolling forecasts, trend analysis, and predictive analysis.
Companies that adhere to best practices in financial planning and analysis are noted for their agility in responding to financial and operational challenges. They use variance analysis to determine the reasons for shortfalls so they can explain to managers and investors what happened and what the company will do to adapt.
These organizations also understand the importance of establishing operational goals as well as financial goals. They identify the key drivers of their success and codify those drivers so they can more accurately measure their progress in meeting their targets.
One best practice that many organizations fail to appreciate is establishing effective working relationships with managers and others in the company who work outside of finance and accounting. To be effective, financial analysts must have a solid understanding of the specific area or operation they are supporting. That understanding helps financial analysts earn the trust and respect of their colleagues in those areas.
CONCLUSION
Financial planning & analysis tools are software programs used by banks, or financial institutions to analyze the budgets of personal, or business organizations. Financial planning is a method utilized by investors, as well as business owners to determine future cash flow. An investor’s financial planning typically involves deciding how much money must be saved in order to reach a goal. The future flow of cash from those savings then determines values associated with investments that have been selected using the projected rate of return principle. For a business owner financial planning typically entails forecasting expenses over a period of time and combining them with projected future income to arrive at a positive cash flow.