The best financial forecasting software will streamline the financial planning process but also helps make data-driven decisions for optimal resource allocation.
We’ve reviewed 20+ options using our review methodology for the top financial forecasting software on the market today.
1 Workday Adaptive Planning - Best Overall
Why We Chose It: Workday Adaptive Planning shines as the best overall option for corporate performance management (CPM), specifically in budgeting and forecasting. Its main edge comes from its ability to transcend traditional siloed systems, allowing businesses to plan, budget, and forecast with nimble agility.
This versatility is underscored by its rolling forecasts, which give businesses a real-time operational view, making reacting to shifts easier. Further flexibility is offered through a gamut of budgeting approaches, from top-down to zero-based, ensuring businesses can tailor the software to their needs.
2 Budgyt - Best Cloud-based Option
Why We Chose It: Budgyt stands out as a cloud-based budgeting and forecasting tool ideal for various industries. It replaces cumbersome spreadsheets, offering a more streamlined and reliable budget creation process. Whether it’s enterprise or small businesses, for-profit or non-profit, Budgyt has a pricing plan for everyone.
This solution rolls up individual budgets, delivers comprehensive reports, and easily integrates with existing accounting software. It’s a hit among businesses of all sizes and sectors.
3 Planful - Best for Automation
Why We Chose It: Formerly known as Host Analytics, Planful is a cloud-based Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) suite, specifically designed for continuous planning. The platform boasts tight integration with its business intelligence analytics and reporting.
The software’s planning tools enable interactive queries, financial modeling, and spotlight reporting, making it a go-to option for businesses seeking automation in financial planning.
4 Xero - Best for Small Businesses
Why We Chose It: Xero excels as an online accounting solution tailored for small businesses. It prioritizes ease of use and offers real-time financial reporting. The software’s simplicity doesn’t compromise its power, making it a comprehensive accounting solution for small business owners.
The language is simple, avoiding accounting jargon, which helps in quick adoption and makes it a one-stop-shop for small business financial needs.
5 Budget Maestro - Best for Mid-sized Businesses
Why We Chose It: Budget Maestro is a robust solution for mid-market companies, designed to streamline both the budgeting and forecasting process. It automates the cumbersome tasks often associated with spreadsheet usage, leading to more accurate financial projections.
The software relies on built-in financial intelligence and business rules based on your specific workflow, eliminating chances of human error. Changes to estimates or assumptions are auto-updated, maintaining a single version of the truth.
6 PROPHIX - Best Free Trial
Why We Chose It: PROPHIX offers a compelling free trial option for its forecasting software. With just a click, businesses can access a centralized database for periodic forecasts, whether monthly or multi-year.
The software’s flexible modeling capabilities include a variety of options like what-if analysis and inter-period forecasts, making it easy to compare actuals to budgets and improve forecast accuracy.
7 Intuendi - Best for Demand Planning
Why We Chose It: Intuendi is the best overall demand planning software because of its AI-powered forecasting and advanced algorithms. Intuendi leverages artificial intelligence to streamline the planning process, making forecasting more accurate and efficient. The software’s AI also helps in purchase order management, including real-time container space estimates and order suggestions.
Intuendi offers both top-down and bottom-up forecasting options, and users can further customize how data is used. Beyond forecasting, Intuendi provides strong inventory management tools and continuous online support.
8 Anaplan - Best for Sales and Operations Planning
Why We Chose It: The Anaplan Connected Planning platform is a top choice for businesses seeking to enhance decision-making processes. This software connects data, people, and plans throughout an organization, enabling large and fast-growing businesses to make informed decisions in real time.
While traditional BI systems only focus on historical data, Anaplan’s modeling engine evaluates expected outcomes of different decisions before implementing them, providing a combination of backward and forward-looking data for more precise decision-making. The platform’s Hyperblock engine, capable of detailed planning at various levels of granularity, adds to its appeal by enabling “high-fidelity planning” based on real-time data.
There are three pricing plans, but prospective buyers must request a quote to get exact details. Smaller organizations with under 5 users might not be a good fit for this software.
9 Netstock - Best Integration Options
Why We Chose It: Netstock is a demand planning solution capable of integrating with top ERPs, including:
- Acumatica ERP
- NetSuite
- MYOB
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- SAP Business One
- Sage
In addition to integrations, this cloud-based software offers a range of features designed to optimize inventory control and boost sales. NETSTOCK’s ability to help users place orders quickly, minimize stock-outs, and reduce excess inventory is a significant advantage, ultimately saving time on planning, forecasting, and ordering processes while ensuring customer satisfaction and increased sales.
10 IBM Planning Analytics - Best Analytics and Reporting
Why we chose it: IBM Planning Analytics made our list because it’s an AI-driven business intelligence tool. It can handle budgeting, forecasting, and basic planning but also supports more advanced predictive modeling, integration with statistical packages, and report-sharing tools.
IBM Planning Analytics provides scoreboards and dashboards, personal and multidimensional scenario modeling, and real-time data access. This includes internal and external data from ERP and CRM systems. IBM Planning Analytics also provides automated visualizations and integrates with Excel, SAP Business Warehouse, Oracle Hyperion, and TM1.
Criteria for Recommending Financial Forecasting Software
Here are the key criteria we used for recommending standout financial forecasting software:
Essential Features
Depending on your organization’s needs, the software should offer:
- Financial Projections: The software must provide robust tools for predicting key financial metrics such as revenue, operating costs, and profit margins. This should be accomplished using a diverse range of data sources.
- Sales and Revenue Estimation: It should assist in predicting future sales volumes, revenue streams, and shifts in market demand.
- Budget Formulation: The software should support creating both project-specific and organizational budgets. These budgets should draw from past financial data as well as future estimates.
- Account Tracking: The ideal software would also offer capabilities for monitoring accounts payable and receivable, along with other ledger functions. If not, it should easily integrate with existing accounting software for a seamless experience.
Each of these functionalities plays a critical role in ensuring that you get a comprehensive, reliable, and actionable financial forecast.
6 Types of Forecasting Software
Forecasting software comes in various flavors, each designed to tackle specific aspects of business operations and planning. Here’s a breakdown:
1 Financial Forecasting Software
Financial forecasting software focuses on projecting your company’s financial health, diving deep into revenue estimates, budgeting, and expenses. It’s a staple for finance teams but can also be a standalone feature within broader accounting software.
Key Functions:
- Revenue projection
- Expense planning
- Budget management
2 Sales Forecasting Software
Sales forecasting software uses historical sales data to set realistic sales targets, helping you adapt your marketing strategies like discounts or bundling. It’s not just for the sales team–supply chain folks use it to plan inventory and production.
Key Functions:
- Accurate sales targets
- Marketing strategy analysis
- Inventory planning
3 Demand Forecasting Software
Demand forecasting software zeroes in on consumer behavior and market trends, letting you adjust your inventory before demand peaks or valleys hit.
Key Functions:
- Consumer behavior tracking
- Seasonal demand planning
- Inventory optimization
4 Capacity and Workforce Forecasting Software
Capacity and workforce forecasting software integrates demand and sales projections to help you determine staffing levels, workflow, and even production capacity.
Key Functions:
- Staffing level optimization
- Workflow planning
- Production capacity planning
5 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software
The jack-of-all-trades, ERP software can do a bit of everything. It combines features of many other types of forecasting software into one platform but usually comes with a hefty price tag.
Key Functions:
- Centralized planning
- Comprehensive feature set
- High configurability
6 Specialized Forecasting Software
Specialized forecasting software targets unique needs like cash flow, revenue, or budget-specific forecasting.
- Cash Flow Forecasting Software: Gives you the play-by-play on money coming in and going out.
- Revenue Forecasting Software: Makes educated guesses on your future earnings based on past revenue.
- Budget Forecasting Software: Helps you sketch out your financial game plan by projecting future budgets.
What is Financial Forecasting Software?
Financial forecasting software helps businesses create and manage financial plans, and predict future revenue and expenses. It centralizes forecasting activities, making it easier for department managers and accountants to collaborate.
The software typically offers advanced features like scenario modeling and integrates with other systems such as accounting software and ERP systems. It’s often part of larger corporate performance management suites but tends to focus more on financial planning rather than proactive KPI management. By automating data import and reminders, the software minimizes human error, improves data reliability, and streamlines the budget approval process.
Budgeting Software vs. Forecasting Software
While both budgeting and forecasting software aim to inform financial decision-making, they serve different functions and rely on distinct methodologies.
- Budgeting software focuses on setting financial targets based on historical data and current commitments. It helps businesses plan how to allocate resources—like salaries, overhead, and marketing spend—across departments. The budget acts as a roadmap, guiding the company toward its financial goals for a specific period.
- Forecasting software predicts future financial performance by analyzing a range of variables such as historical data, market trends, and economic indicators. Unlike a budget, which is often fixed, forecasts are more fluid and can be updated as new information becomes available. This allows businesses to adapt to changing conditions, like market volatility or unexpected expenses.
For instance, a company might budget for $20M in revenue but later find that the forecast predicts only $18M. With this insight, the company could decide to cut variable costs or adjust its expense plan to meet cash targets.
A budget sets your financial targets and allocates resources to meet them, while a forecast uses real-time data to predict future outcomes. Budgets serve as a performance baseline, and forecasts help businesses adapt and fine-tune their financial plans.
Can Budgeting and Forecasting Software Handle Demand Planning?
These solutions are sometimes confused with sales forecasting software, which specifically predicts expected sales. If you need a way to measure inventory metrics to forecast customer demand, you’re better off looking at demand planning software.
Features of Financial Forecasting Software
The two key features offered by financial forecasting software include:
- Budgeting: Calculate what your company’s budget(s) should be based on historical data and future projections
- Forecasting: Make future projections on how funds should be allocated at your company
Accurate financial modeling cannot truly be achieved without both budgeting and financing, hence why they so frequently operate together as one software. The key difference lies in their intended purposes: budgets try to determine what a company can afford to spend while forecasts predict potential income. Since both are aimed at improving business financials, they have important features like:
Functionality | Purpose |
---|---|
Departmental forecasting | Departmentalized forecasting provides the ability to create hierarchically categorized budgets organized by units such as business department, location, or cost center; Can be extra specific to differentiate budgets for multi-company or multi-department projects |
Budgeted versus actual comparisons | Compare budgeted figures versus actuals by comparing imported general ledger data against income or profit/loss statements; Enable real-time monitoring of corporate performance against goals |
Collaborative forecasting | Support document management functionality to allow multiple individuals to contribute to forecast creation |
Approvals | Allow for the authorization of operational planning budgets by users at predefined user privilege levels |
Version control | Use versioning capabilities to create non-destructive storage of multiple versions and track document changes to forecasting plans |
Rolling budgets | Generate dynamic revision/extension of budgets for a consistent period of time from the present moment for real-time accuracy |
Benefits of Financial Forecasting Software
Financial forecasting software streamlines planning by providing accurate forecasting data, reducing human error. It helps you make informed decisions based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and forecast demand, revenue, and expenses.
Key Benefits:
- Accurate Forecasts: The software combines historical data and expert input to create reliable financial projections. It replaces rough estimates with detailed, error-controlled calculations, letting you compare actuals against predictions.
- Time Savings: Skip the labor-intensive, error-prone manual budgeting on Excel. Reuse past data and import directly from accounting software like your general ledger. Auto-fill features prevent mistakes that come from manual data entry.
- Real-Time Adjustments: Adapt budgets for unforeseen events like inflation on the fly, saving you the hassle of time-consuming recalibrations.
- Cost-Efficient: Forget cumbersome spreadsheets filled with complex formulas. Software minimizes errors and saves executive time, effectively reducing costs.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Forecasting software centralizes data for team access. It integrates well with enterprise performance management systems, keeping departments aligned on financial goals.
Trends in Financial Forecasting Software
- Cloud-based platforms: Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) are predicted to continue to move to cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. An article from Jedox predicts that by 2020 there will be more expenditures on cloud-based software than on-premise solutions.
- Replacing annual budget processes: According to an article on budgeting by ThomasNet.com, 60% of business spend more than 3 months putting together their annual budgets. Companies are replacing annual budget processes with rolling forecasts to save time by continuously planning for the future, particularly by using:
- Automating planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes: Forecasting software streamlines the budgeting process by automating the basic processes. For example, recurring expenses can be saved in the system to be included in the reports as needed. And FSN’s study: The Future of Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting, found 82% of CFOs listed automating planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes as a top technology priority for their business over the next 3 years.
Types of Financial Forecasting Methods
Financial forecasting software includes all the tools necessary for measuring and predicting financial performance. The most well-known financial forecasting methods compile important information about past, current, or upcoming financial decisions.
Static Budgets vs. Rolling Forecasts
- Static Budgeting: Static budgets are typically set once a year and are not intended to deviate for the remainder of the budget period. An estimate of the upcoming fiscal year’s expenses and revenue is formulated before the year starts.
- Rolling Forecasting: Rolling forecasts predict revenue and expenses over a set period of time. The time period continuously rolls over to always cover the same timeframe (i.e. 12, 24, or 36 months). The predictions are based on year-to-date results and your original budget. Rolling forecasts are constantly updated to reflect events and sudden changes in your business.
Regardless of method, templates included with budgeting and forecasting software make it easy for users to compile the resulting data into visualizations which can be shared with key decision-makers throughout the financial planning process.
Does Financial Forecasting Software Work For Small Businesses?
- Startups and small businesses should look for a lower cost forecasting solution that will help manage and track revenue and expenses. Most startups won’t have historical data, so forecasting functionality isn’t a requirement. If you already have an accounting software system in place, you’ll also need a solution which will easily integrate with it.
- Mid-market companies should look for a software solution with predictive forecasting and financial reporting capabilities, so you can better track business workflows to plan ahead.
- Large enterprise-level businesses with multiple departments or facilities to manage should look for software featuring departmentalized and collaborative forecasting. The former creates a separate forecast to track and report on financial progress of specific departments or locations. The latter allows multiple individuals to contribute to the creation of budgeting plans - particularly useful if you have multiple locations worldwide.
Can QuickBooks Handle Financial Forecasting?
QuickBooks, a popular accounting solution, can handle basic forecasting. Startups and small businesses looking to move away from Excel spreadsheets can use this to set up budgets then monitor current and historical data for the business’s revenue and expenses.
How Much Does Financial Forecasting Software Cost?
Financial forecasting software pricing starts at $99 per month and goes up to $1,150 per month. Some charge per user, increasing the total cost, while others have tiered pricing options based on the number of proposed users. For instance, these plans may charge between $10 to $50 per user on a monthly basis. Finally, there are some SaaS plans which charge annually in order to reduce total costs.
While free forecasting software options do exist, they are typically for personal budgeting and help people achieve savings and retirement goals. When you consider forecasting software for your small business, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a free option which includes all of the functionalities you need like year-end reporting.