Since budgeting and forecasting is the cornerstone of any successful business, the IT industry has responded by producing a plethora of helpful financial tools. Every organization can discover the budgeting tool that best suits their needs thanks to the abundance of options available. Additionally, we’ve compiled a list of the top budgeting programs available to help you make a decision.

Companies have shifted their budgets to the cloud in recent years for a variety of reasons. One benefit of cloud-based budgeting software over on-premise options is its lower cost. Additionally, smaller businesses lack the IT skills and infrastructure necessary to handle the complex on-premise software infrastructure.

For any firm looking to manage their budgets more efficiently and effectively, online tools for business budgeting are a great choice. With a focus on the word “intuitive,” these next-generation solutions may be adopted more rapidly and are easy to use, requiring less specialized training. Additionally, to guarantee that your program is current, online software suppliers deliver product upgrades as frequently as every two months.

Choose your new program from this list that details the advantages and disadvantages of each if you want to shift your budgeting out of Excel or add additional structure. To assist you in selecting the ideal tool for managing, planning, and forecasting your company’s budgets, we will begin with the most popular and superior budgeting software and proceed to more specialized options.

What Is Business Budgeting?

A budget is fundamentally a tool for organizing and managing corporate operations. For over a century, the business or corporate budget has been in place.

A corporate budget is a detailed projection of the costs and income that a company expects to incur during a specific fiscal year. A budget is more than just spending, despite the fact that this is how most people think of it.

Revenue guidance and expense forecasts, which are both based on past performance modified for future assumptions, are included in every corporate budget. Finance departments place a high focus on budgets, which are necessary for any firm to function well in part.

Whether you work as a corporate financial analyst or a personal financial planner, financial professionals need to understand the ins and outs of business budgeting in today’s changing financial environment.

Effective financial planning is based on budgeting, which offers a tactical road map for achieving financial goals. Budgets are essential tools that help with cost management and financial decision-making, whether they are used for personal or business operations. Budgeting software is an invaluable tool for organizations since it streamlines the intricate process of creating, monitoring, and analyzing budgets.

Budgeting for businesses is one of the main tasks of financial planning and analysis in the modern world. FP&A is a method of business planning, budgeting, and forecasting that relates a company’s strategy to its plans, combines all of its functional areas, and then tracks the implementation of those plans. A cornerstone of FP&A is budgeting.

Contemporary technological advancements enable enterprises to create budgets with increased assurance and precision. A lot of ERP systems use software programs that combine performance tracking and budgeting, giving more insight into how well a budget is being adhered to over time.

Best Business Budgeting Software

Business budgeting software comes in a variety of forms, from low-cost, single-purpose programs that only cost a few dollars a month to sophisticated financial planning programs for large corporations.

1. Scoro

Since Scoro integrates budgeting capabilities with other tools to manage the entire company’s finances in one system, it’s also a great budgeting software for small firms. However, because of its fewer integrations and incompleter forecasting capabilities, it is not as thorough as Budgyt. If the budget is your primary concern, Scoro can still handle the majority of your budgeting demands, and the pricing even reflects this (far less expensive than Budgyt).

With Scoro, you can handle project budgets, analyze financial data, and manage costs and resources all from a single dashboard. This makes Scoro ideal for businesses wishing to manage their whole financial workflow in one location, especially when paired with its special project management features.

Features:

• Big focus on KPI dashboards and metric settings.
• Sharing abilities on a centralized database makes it good for multiple contributors.
• Some of the best project management tools for budgeting software.

Pricing: 

• 14-day free trial.
• $26 to $63 per user per month depending on requirements.

2. PlanGuru

In terms of cost and functionality, PlanGuru is a fantastic alternative to Budgyt and Scoro for budgeting. Compared to the others, PlanGuru places a little more emphasis on forecasting and strategic planning. It also offers tools like cash flow projection and financial ratios to help with planning.

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PlanGuru is a middle-of-the-road budgeting software system with middle-of-the-road pricing, yet still having a strong budgeting feature due to its emphasis on forecasting and planning.

Features:

• Compatible with QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, Xero or Excel.
• Budgeting and forecasting capabilities go up to 10 years in the future.
• 20+ Standard Forecasting Methods w/ Custom Formula Builder.

Pricing:

• $99/month + $29/ month for each additional user.
  When choosing the annual plan the price goes down to $83/month.

3. Budgyt

Budgyt is a budget-focused program, as its name implies, but it also handles financial planning by managing and organizing financial data. Despite being more expensive than other small business budgeting software, Budgyt is the best option available and takes first spot.

Collaboration and centralized data sharing are made simple by the user-friendly design and straightforward dashboard, which is ideal for small firms with several employees handling the financial department. Small to medium-sized enterprises (as well as nonprofit organizations) wishing to simplify their budget planning can use Budgyt.

Features:

• One of the most amount of 3rd party integrations out of any small business budget software. 
• Forecasting feature with advanced planning capabilities.
• Multi department collaboration and centralized data.
• 5-10 days implementation for most businesses.

Pricing:

• Budgyt has three pricing plans ranging from Easy to Pro with different types of features, users, and plugins available for each one. They don’t provide pricing on their website and you need to book a demo to get a quote.

4. Datarails

An FP&A platform called Datarails offers a full suite of financial planning services: The finance department benefits from Datarails’ budgeting, forecasting, scenario planning, automation, real-time dashboards, and drill-down capabilities, among other features.

Additionally, Datarails is the only fully native Excel FP&A tool available, making platform integration simple and user-friendly. The audit control and consolidated platform are ideal for financial teams with several users who use the data for forecasting and budgeting. Additionally, it offers some of the most affordable prices for FP&A solutions of any size and caters exclusively to medium-sized firms.

Features:

• Ability to continue using your own Excel models for quickest implementation. 
• Dashboards updated in real time with the ability to drill down to the granular level.
• More than 200 integrations to conduct the most accurate and data driven decisions.
• 2 weeks for full implementation.

Pricing:

• Starts at $2,000/month.

5. Mosaic Tech

For medium-sized organizations, Mosaic Tech is an excellent solution for FP&A and budgeting. It simplifies the process of creating budgets and doing financial data analysis. It also combines data from numerous sources and has excellent financial forecasting capabilities.

Although Datarails and Mosaic Tech share many capabilities, the primary distinction is that Datarails uses an Excel platform natively, whereas Mosaic Tech effectively moves the financial team away from Excel. Because the financial staff must become familiar with a new platform, this ends up taking much longer. After integration is finished, forecasting and budgeting decisions can be made more effectively due to the automation and consolidation of data sources (HRIS, ERP, accounting, etc.).

Features:

• Easy to consolidate data across multiple platforms.
• Monitor budgets and track budget performance per project and overall including projects completed, in flight, and upcoming.
• Maps, modifies, and customizes data. 

Pricing:

• Customized quotes upon request.

6. OneStream

For medium-sized firms, OneStream is a great platform for budgeting and FP&A since it offers cash management, KPI tracking, and automation. The budgeting feature is not as strong as it is with Mosaic Tech, despite the implementation time being a little faster.

OneStream works with medium-sized companies as well as enterprise-level firms, with an emphasis on operational and financial insights to facilitate quicker and better-informed decision-making. Data analysis and in-system reporting are its strongest points.

Features:

• Automate and accelerate the financial close and reporting process.
• Personalized dashboards and KPIs.
• Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete). 

Pricing:

• Implementation fee.
• Customized quotes upon request.

7. Vena Solutions

Vena Solutions is an FP&A program designed for Excel users in mid-sized enterprises. Excel templates for forecasting and budgeting are included with the software. These templates can be used for driver-based, zero-based, top-down, and bottom-up budgeting, among other approaches.

Similar to most FP&A budgeting programs, Vena has integrations with leading GLs and ERPs. Although their implementation time, cost, and simplicity of use are all marginally lower than those of similar organizations, they do provide good dashboards and templates.

Features:

• Above average forecasting insights and dashboards
• Centralized database
• Generative AI feature announced that’s not yet live

Pricing:

• 2 different pricing tiers – Professional and Complete
• Implementation fees

8. Workday Adaptive Planning

The best enterprise-level software for FP&A and budgeting is Workday. Large businesses and enterprises find it to be an obvious choice due to its reputation, clientele, and dependability. However, small and medium-sized organizations face a barrier because to the pricey pricing plans and lengthy implementation times.

Workday is a financial planning and budgeting tool made to assist finance and FP&A teams in streamlining their processes, combining many spreadsheets and other data sources, and enhancing the way they use their data for forecasting and budgeting. In addition, Workday offers superior HR and other native Workday software, which is simpler to incorporate into businesses’ financial planning than third-party connections. Access, total dependability, and data formats can all benefit from this.

Features:

• Comprehensive budgeting and forecasting tools including revenue management, capital management, expense management and financial statements.
• Easy to produce balance sheet and cash flow data with a few clicks.
• Automated board and financial reporting.

Pricing:

• Implementation fee.
• Customized quotes upon request.

9. Prophix 

Corporate performance management (CPM) software, such as Prophix, gives businesses the means to collect, examine, and disseminate financial data, including sophisticated budgeting. Prophix provides businesses with all the resources they require to simplify and regain total control over the budgeting process.

One uncommon corporate FP&A program that prioritizes budgeting is called Prophix. It is also one of the few that offers both on-premises and cloud-based solutions.

Features:

• Can drill down into data to a granular level.
• Clean interface with clear visuals in the form of graphs and charts.
• Advanced sales performance forecasting Including reports and dashboards, self-service analytics and a forecasting engine to drive sales performance.

Pricing:

• Customized quotes upon request.

10. Jedox

Jedox is a business intelligence-focused integrated planning and analysis (FP&A) program. Although Jedox has a strong budgeting feature and is an excellent tool for predicting and planning, it lags slightly behind Wokday and Prophix.

However, this does not imply that its budgeting capability is deficient. Instead, Jedox gives businesses the ability to evaluate past data and integrate it with trends and market insights to more intelligently plan, forecast, and budget. Time is saved, and any corporate process may be streamlined while working with several departments to produce the most accurate outcomes.

Features:

• Financial planning for short and long term, meant for enterprises with long term growth expectations. 
• Direct links to many third party integrations and real time updates.
• Multi currency management and detailed audit trails makes it ideal for international corporations. 

Pricing:

• Customized quotes upon request.

Conclusion

There are various varieties of budgeting software available, and based on the requirements of your business, a low-cost solution that only does budgeting may be all you need. Nevertheless, more comprehensive financial management requirements, like as forecasting, scenario planning, automation, and real-time updates—all of which are closely related to budgeting—are covered by more comprehensive budgeting and financial planning software.