You’re a busy business owner and you don’t have time to waste. You want to get things done, but you can’t just hire someone to manage your finances for you. That’s where budgeting software comes in. Whether you run a small business or are starting one, budgeting software is essential for keeping track of your expenses and making informed decisions about how to spend your money. Here are some top picks for the best budgeting software on the market today!
This comprehensive guide will help you get started with budgeting and find the right tool for your business. It covers related topics such as Budget Software free, Best Small Business Budgeting Software, and Budgeting and Forecasting Software.
Good Budgeting Software for Business
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 Without the use of spreadsheets or outdated solutions, their technologies seek to foster collaboration across the organization.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 Small Business Budgeting Software
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!
Budgeting and Forecasting Software
Workday Adaptive Planning
best overall
A corporate performance management (CPM) product called Workday Adaptive Planning has forecasting and budgeting functions. Businesses in all market segments—Enterprise, mid-market, and small—love the Workday Business Planning Cloud.
Forecasting models supported by Workday include::
- Budgeting expenses
- Forecasting revenue
- Workforce planning
- Capital Planning
- SaaS account modeling
- Sales planning
- Academic calendar modeling
Those who are closest to the business can plan thanks to the purpose-built solutions provided by Workday software for finance. the whole collection of cloud-based software products supported by a strong in-memory technological platform that enables large-scale built-in analytics and functional and corporate-wide business planning.
Xero
Best for small business
Xero is a popular small business online accounting solution because of how simple it is to use. Tools for financial reporting provide immediate, current reporting with direct links to all original transactions. You can also view cash flow in real-time, wherever you are, with online accounting.
At its core, Xero is a robust yet user-friendly accounting program created from the ground up. It is all you need to run your small business because it is written in straightforward language for users who are not familiar with accounting jargon.
Budget Maestro
Best for mid-market
For mid-market and even enterprise-level businesses wishing to handle budgeting and forecasting with reliability, Budget Maestro is the perfect answer. For the purpose of creating more accurate budgets and financial predictions, the program automates many of the labor-intensive and error-prone activities involved with using spreadsheets.
Budget Budget accuracy is continuously maintained by Maestro’s built-in financial intelligence and business rules, which are based on your assumptions and processes. Working with a centralized database eliminates the possibility of human error leading to data disparities. Additionally, any adjustments to estimates or hypotheses are immediately updated, ensuring that you are constantly working with the same version of the truth.
Prophix
Best free to start
A free trial of PROPHIX’s budgeting and forecasting software is available, and it contains a central database, periodic forecasts (monthly, mid-year, multi-year), and other forecasting requirements that are all easily accessible. For proper analysis and management, this software provides income statements, balance sheets, cash flow, and other company-specific budgeting requirements to your desktop.
PROPHIX provides several options to increase forecasting precision. With PROPHIX’s versatile modeling capabilities, it is able to undertake what-if analyses, inter-period forecasts, actual to forecasts/budget comparisons, rolling forecast development, and forecasting based on numerous key performance metrics.
Budgyt
Best for cloud
A budgeting and forecasting tool for any company, Budgyt is simple to use and intuitive. With this cloud-based solution, creating budgets is quicker, more precise, and more dependable thanks to an intuitive budgeting tool that takes the place of cumbersome spreadsheets. Clients in any industry with several stores, units, or divisions can use this service. Individual budgets are rolled up by Budgyt, which also produces reports and analyses. Additionally, Budgyt imports and exports data from the general ledger accounting software you now use.
Enterprise, mid-market, and small firms in the for-profit and non-profit sectors all favor this approach. If you are a for-profit organization or a non-profit, there are different price options.
Limelight
The financial planning and reporting software platform Limelight is simple to use and quick to set up. The web-based Limelight software enables collaboration, data integration, real-time planning, and reporting from any device.
Dynac CPM
Imagine if your income statement and balance sheet are integrated, producing current cash flow statements whenever you require them. Add to that dynamic rolling predictions with “What if” scenarios so you can see the results of company choices.
Vivid Reports
is made to be an add-in for Microsoft Excel that is completely integrated with the general ledger accounts, balances, and transactions in your ERP. You can utilize all of Excel’s features, and it is quite simple to learn and use.
CALUMO
For accountants, CALUMO is a reporting, budgeting, and forecasting tool. Organizations can easily and rapidly report on, budget for, forecast, and plan their financial, sales, operational, manufacturing, and other initiatives with CALUMO.
Solver
The main factor influencing the expansion and profitability of your firm is quicker and better decision-making. Managers may readily get the data they need to examine business operations and financial data because it is all conveniently available in one package.
Pricing: N/A
Budget Software Free
Managing your money successfully includes keeping a close eye on your expenses. One way to do that is to take advantage of free software and services. Free personal finance software can be surprisingly robust, helping you track spending, create and manage budgets, and run reports.
Mint
The creators of Quickbooks and TurboTax, Intuit, offer a free online budgeting tool called Mint. This software gathers all of your financial information and provides you with a summary of your spending, bills, budget, and credit score. You may set objectives and reminders, make your own budget, and sync your data between the web and apps. Encryption and multi-factor authentication improve security. To keep track of your money and portfolio, utilize Mint.
Access Mint via the web or phone apps for iOS and Android.
GnuCash
GnuCash is desktop software; its features include tracking bank accounts, stocks, income, and expenses. GnuCash is based on double-entry accounting for balanced books and you can run a number of reports to see your financial data. GnuCash also offers small-business accounting tools that let you manage customers and vendors, handle invoicing and bill payment, and even payroll.
GnuCash is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, BSD, and Solaris. There is a companion app for Android that will let you track expenses on the go and later import them into the desktop software.
AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite bills itself as the best Quicken alternative. You can manage your budgets, track your finances in multiple currencies, keep an eye on your investments and analyze your spending habits. You can also do online banking. As this is the lite version, you’re limited to two accounts; the full version supports unlimited accounts.
AceMoney Lite is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital offers free financial software for tracking investments and planning for retirement, in addition to its tools for cash flow, spending, budgeting and net worth. Personal Capital’s focus is on investments, showing you the performance of your portfolio over time and helping you make decisions for the future, so its budgeting components aren’t as robust as other software.
If you’re not an investor or prefer fine-tuning your budget to getting the broad view, Personal Capital may not be the best fit. However, if you want to save for college or retirement, its free tools will show you whether you’re on track.
Personal Capital can be accessed via the web or apps for Android and iOS.
Buddi
Buddi is an open-source budget software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems and has been translated into multiple languages. Buddi can encrypt financial data with a password, and it’s designed to be easy to use even if you have no financial background.
Features include budgeting, tracking accounts, and personal finance reports, but you will have to enter transactions manually. Free plugins add more features, and the online user manual is easy to read and use.
Buddi is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Free Budget Spreadsheets
If you don’t need fully featured personal financial software and you’re just concerned about keeping a budget, there are some great free budget spreadsheet templates you can use with Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc or Google Sheets. Just download and open them in your spreadsheet software to get a handle on your cash flow.
Conclusion
By using a good budgeting software, you can get a better understanding of your business and make necessary adjustments to ensure successful operation. By knowing how to use the software and keep your data amused, you’ll be able to keep your budgeting work as fun as possible. Overall, using a good budgeting software can help you save money on expenses while keeping your business running smoothly.