Software evaluation

17 best FP&A software tools [2024]

Updated: July 19, 2024 |

Gina Roffo

Head of Product Marketing, Cube Software

Gina Roffo
Gina Roffo

Gina Roffo is the Head of Product Marketing at Cube. With a career spanning over a decade in the fintech industry, she leverages her expertise to drive strategic product marketing in the finance and FP&A tech space.

Head of Product Marketing, Cube Software

17 best FP&A software tools [2024]

FP&A software helps CFOs, finance leaders, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals ensure their organization's financial health. It helps them report, analyze, plan, and forecast. 

But there's a lot of FP&A software out there. Which is the best for you? How do you begin to compare them? That's why we put together the top FP&A software tools to help you make the best decision. 

17 best FP&A software tools [2024]
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Contents

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What is FP&A software? 

Financial planning and analysis software solutions are financial management tools that help FP&A professionals carry out core financial processes.

They can automate manual FP&A tasks, such as data collection, consolidation and verification, planning and forecasting, budgeting, and performance monitoring and analytics. 

FP&A software solutions help finance teams:

  • Build financial models and forecasts 
  • Use predictive analysis to assess the impact of business decisions on profitability, cash flow, and future outcomes 
  • Provide advanced financial analysis and advice to organizations 
  • Develop multiple scenarios and create flexible integrated strategic plans 
  • Keep tabs on the business’s general financial performance, health, and investments 
  • Identify and measure risks or new opportunities for business growth
  • Align corporate strategy with business executions, etc

Of course, the functionality of FP&A software goes beyond this list. It can also integrate with other solutions you typically use, like ERPs, CRMs, HRIS, and business intelligence software.

Choosing the best FP&A software can be challenging. In the next section, we'll walk through how to do this. But first, here's a snapshot of where top vendors stand. We'll dig more deeply in the rest of this article.

Frame 1909

How to choose the best FP&A software

Understand that FP&A software is not one size fits all. A software that works great for one organization may not be the best for you. However, there are certain functionalities that make FP&A software a great solution to use. 

So, here’s what you keep in mind to choose the best FP&A software:

1. Consider implementation time

Picture this: you’ve spent considerable time searching for FP&A software that meets your finance team’s needs. You find the perfect solution, pay for it, and then realize it will take at least three months to fully integrate.

Always look for FP&A software with the shortest implementation time and onboarding process. Don't just take the software provider’s word for it.

Try product demos and read reviews to ensure the software can be integrated into your current processes quickly.

2. Value ease of use

There’s no point in adopting FP&A software with great features if it has a high learning curve and is difficult for non-technical people to use.

Intuitive software with excellent onboarding helps the team adopt it faster, making its use feel natural over time.

Product reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra can help you find software that's easy to use.

3. Look for customization and flexibility

You’ll need the option to customize dashboards, financial models, and reports to fit your business requirements and current processes.

The software should also be flexible enough to integrate data from different sources and connect with your existing systems.

Customizability and flexibility in FP&A software ensure it’s adaptable and will support future changes in your processes, workflows, and business outcomes.

4. Prioritize data security

Maintaining data integrity is crucial to prevent unauthorized access and manipulation of your organization's financial information.

Choose FP&A software that offers enterprise-grade cloud security, including customizable controls, data encryption, authorization, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and single sign-on (SSO).

Ensure the software has passed industry-standard security and regulatory compliance checks, such as the SOC 2 Type 2 examination.

5. Choose advanced analytics and reporting 

Advanced analytics and reporting will enhance your decision-making, providing deeper insights into your business performance and priorities.

Look for software that offers dynamic reporting, machine learning algorithms, predictive analytics, and scenario modeling.

These features will increase your forecasting accuracy and guide when and how to implement strategies to help your business grow.

6. Ask about compliance support 

The FP&A software should comply with relevant reporting standards, financial regulations, and data privacy requirements, such as GAAP, IFRS, and GDPR.

Ensure the software allows you to automate compliance reporting tasks and generate standard reports for stakeholders and regulatory bodies.

By choosing FP&A software built with compliance in mind, you can avoid compliance risks and assure stakeholders of the business's credibility.

Benefits of FP&A tools for finance teams

FP&A software can help finance teams work smarter and faster. Here’s how:

Reduced errors

Making errors in financial reporting can expose your organization to risks such as financial losses, regulatory non-compliance, and loss of goodwill.

FP&A software improves the accuracy of financial planning and analysis by automating manual data entry and calculations prone to mistakes.

It also provides a centralized platform that integrates with various data sources, supporting consistent data input and reducing errors that occur when pulling data from different places. 

Time savings

Automating repetitive tasks with FP&A software gives you and your team more time to focus on strategic decision-making processes.

Most FP&A software is cloud-based, enabling real-time updates and reporting on a single platform. Your team won't waste time sifting through multiple information databases.

Additionally, FP&A software's advanced analytical capabilities allow users to analyze more data, perform complex calculations, analyze scenarios, and conduct predictive modeling in less time than manual methods.

Centralized data 

According to a PWC survey, about 80% of FP&A tasks are being done in offline spreadsheets and databases. This creates data silos and reduces how easily you can access data. 

FP&A software provides a centralized platform where all tasks can be carried out. This allows all stakeholders to access information whenever and wherever they are. 

Beyond preventing data silos, having centralized data also helps you maintain data integrity. FP&A software provides controls to prevent unauthorized access, data loss, or data manipulation.

Quicker decision making 

FP&A tools enhance decision-making by providing real-time access to financial information and automating tasks. This quick access ensures you have the necessary data for rapid analysis.

These tools also enable swift scenario modeling and foster clearer communication with stakeholders, which helps in making informed decisions promptly.

With faster decision-making, your organization can seize more opportunities and better prepare for risks, keeping you ahead in the financial environment.

The best FP&A software tools

FP&A has traditionally been executed using large, complex, interconnected offline spreadsheets. Perhaps no other business team has a more entrenched relationship with Microsoft Excel than FP&A.

While in some ways Excel is a match made in heaven for finance professionals (easy to use, naturally designed for financial data and calculations, flexible for any financial model, etc.), it also comes with some significant flaws that create big problems and inefficiencies at scale (highly manual, stale data, not easy to share and collaborate, few controls, etc.).

To help solve these ubiquitous challenges, several software providers set out to build new solutions to help FP&A teams do their jobs better, faster, easier, and more confidently.

Very robust and capable solutions come from software startups and prominent enterprise software vendors. However, each FP&A solution vendor is focused on different market segments and takes a different approach to helping FP&A teams.

Some are best for larger enterprises with big IT budgets, others are suited for existing customers of a software provider, and others are ideally suited for those who want more flexibility in their software strategy. All you need to do is find the right one! 

These are the top FP&A software providers, with their key features, benefits, pricing, and more details.

1. Cube

cube fp&a software

Cube is a powerful and intuitive FP&A tool that empowers teams to drive better planning and performance without changing how they work.

  • Eliminates manual work and provides the real-time insights finance needs to strategize with speed and agility.
  • Pairs the flexibility and familiarity of your native spreadsheets with the control and power of enterprise software.
  • Gets you up and running in weeks, not months, which means faster time to value at a lower cost.
  • Connects with any source system, browser, and sheet in moments, so you don't have to change your work. 
  • Provides access to an award-winning customer team with deep FP&A experience.

Centralize-image

Best for:  Cube’s simple and intuitive experience makes it an excellent choice for mid-market companies that want to start fast with scalable, enterprise-grade technology at a reasonable price.

Key features

  • Automated data consolidation: Connect data from numerous sources for automated rollups and drilldowns.
  • Multi-scenario analysis: Seamlessly model how changes to key assumptions affect overall outputs.
  • Endless integrations: Leverage native integrations for spreadsheets (Google and Excel), accounting & finance, HR, ATS, billing & operations, sales & marketing, and business intelligence. 
  • Customizable dashboards: Build and share customizable dashboards.
  • Native Excel and Google Sheets integration: Access bi-directional integration with Excel and Google Sheets.
  • Multi-currency support: Evaluate your financials in both your local and reporting currencies.
  • User-based controls: Ensure the correct data goes to the right people at the right time with user controls, validations, and an audit trail.
  • Centralized formulas and KPIs: Store all your calculations in a central location and manage from a single source of truth.
  • Drilldown and audit trail: Get straight to the transactions and history behind a single data cell in just one click.

These FP&A software features translate to easier reporting and KPIs, more accurate forecasting and budgeting, faster close and consolidation cycles, and collaborative teamwork for more control and fewer mistakes.

Integrations:

Cube is built to work directly with most finance and business systems including ERP, CRM, HRIS, Business Intelligence systems, and more. Cube has bi-directional integration with Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, which gives customers an incredible amount of versatility to choose the user experience that is right for them and their business teams.

Pricing:

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2. Workday Adaptive Planning

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Workday Adaptive Planning, formerly Adaptive Insights, provides enterprise planning software to upgrade planning, modeling, budgeting, and forecasting. Their solutions cover financial, workforce, and sales planning to promote collaboration across the enterprise without manual spreadsheets or clunky legacy systems. Workday Adaptive Planning is a financial management solution.

Workday Adaptive Planning for finance provides explicitly flexible, scalable financial planning and analytics for large enterprises; powerful modeling for any size business; reporting that’s easy to use and always up to date, and real-time financial consolidation that accelerates your financial close. 

The solution also covers FP&A solution needs for modeling, collaboration, analytics, management reporting, board reporting, scenario planning, and financial consolidation.

workday-view

Best For: Their strong capabilities outside of Finance and FP&A make Adaptive Planning a good choice for large enterprises seeking a transformational, company-wide FP&A solution.

Pricing:

  • Free trial: $0
  • Planning: Custom quote 
  • Planning & consolidation: Custom quote

3. Anaplan

anaplan fp&a software

Anaplan lets you mobilize complex scenario planning to the smallest detail, intelligently forecast the biggest picture, and empower teams to make decisions faster. Their enterprise-wide solutions connect your strategy to your outcomes and layers of accountability connected to a single source of truth

For Finance, Anaplan specifically provides FP&A solutions to connect your people, data and plans across your organization to empower the right decisions quickly.

Capabilities include planning, budgeting, and forecasting; specialty finance planning; operational planning, which delivers better and faster decision-making; automated cost management practices; and connected financial and operational plans.

anaplan-view-2

Best for: Anaplan is good for large enterprise customers with a strong IT team ready to lead an enterprise-scale transformation initiative.

Pricing:

  • Basic: Custom quote
  • Professional: Custom quote
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

4. Planful

planful fp&a software

Planful offers a cloud FP&A software platform focused on continuous planning. Their solution covers structured and dynamic planning, consolidation, and reporting. Planful’s continuous planning platform marries finance’s need for structured planning with the business’s need for dynamic planning, elevating the financial conversation and helping you make better decisions more quickly, confidently, and strategically.

For Finance, Planful highlights use cases for managing cash flow, workforce reporting, financial reporting, annual operating planning, monthly close and consolidation, and multi-dimensional analysis.

Previously known as Host Analytics, the company rebranded in early 2020 and is focused on mid-market customers.

planful-view

Best for: Planful is ideal for larger companies with big FP&A teams that want to expand their scope of influence beyond Finance.

Pricing: Pricing is not listed on their website.

5. Vena

vena fp&a software

Vena offers a complete planning platform to unite people, processes, and systems. They offer pre-built solutions to automate time-consuming tasks so you can spend less time checking your data's accuracy.

Specific capabilities include financial planning and analysis, integrated business planning, financial reporting, regulatory compliance reporting, and financial close management. Vena focuses on helping companies support overall growth and refers to its platform as a “growth engine.”

For Finance, Vena offers “pre-configured” FP&A software that provides a prescriptive approach to corporate performance management but can be customized to meet specific business needs and industry requirements.

vena-view-2

Best for: Vena is ideal for companies that need the fixed process and planning guidance of pre-built FP&A solutions or that have the resources to uniquely customize those pre-built solutions for their own needs.

Pricing:

  • Professional: Custom quote
  • Complete: Custom quote

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6. Prophix

prophix fp&a software

Prophix offers Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software to improve profitability and minimize risk by automating repetitive tasks so FP&A can focus on what matters. Their solutions help teams budget, plan, consolidate, and report automatically. They also offer cloud or on-premise solution options.

For Finance, Prophix provides solutions for automating repetitive budgeting tasks and business processes, such as data imports, report generation, and allocations.

Prophix also offers the ability to detect and surface unusual transactions with text or voice.

prophix-view (1)

Best for: Prophix is best for companies with slow, manual, repeatable FP&A processes that can be easily automated and replicated using the solution’s pre-built functionality.

Pricing: Pricing is not listed on their website.

7. Oracle Essbase

Screenshot 2024-06-05 123250

Oracle Essbase allows organizations to rapidly generate insights from multidimensional data sets using what-if analysis and data visualization tools. It is a business analytics solution for analysis, reporting, and collaboration across all lines of business within your organization. You can interact with Essbase through a web or Microsoft Office interface to analyze, model, collaborate, and report.

Oracle Essbase would complement existing FP&A tools for Finance with deeper analytics and modeling capabilities. It is not a Finance-focused solution.

essbase-view

Best for: Oracle Essbase is ideal for large enterprises with deep IT resources that already have a robust FP&A solution, have analysis teams seeking targeted analytics and modeling tools, and are already invested in Oracle back-office solutions.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

8. Oracle Hyperion

oracle hyperion fp&a software

Oracle Hyperion Planning is a centralized planning, budgeting, and forecasting solution that integrates financial and operational planning processes and improves business predictability. It supports enterprise-wide planning, budgeting, and forecasting using desktop, mobile, and Microsoft Office interfaces.

It also provides a robust modeling framework that helps develop reliable financial forecasts based on sales and operational assumptions to produce cost-effective enterprise alignment.

For Finance, Oracle Hyperion Planning allows you to align financial plans, models, and forecasts across cost centers and lines of business for faster decision-making. Oracle Hyperion Planning is a component of Oracle’s broader solution for Enterprise Business Planning.

oracle hyperion platform

Best for:  Oracle Hyperion Planning is ideal for large enterprises with strong IT teams seeking a broad performance planning management solution integrated into existing Oracle enterprise solutions.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

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9. Oracle PBCS

Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) empowers operational planners with the flexibility, scalability, and ownership to plan how they want while offering the transparency and control required for corporate finance.

This solution combines built-in best practices with high configurability by providing an innovative configuration framework that can be used out-of-the-box or further enriched for your unique requirements.

For Finance, Oracle PCBS includes business process frameworks that can be used to address your planning needs: strategic modeling, financials, workforce, projects, and capital. Each can be used entirely or mashed up with configured processes to quickly deliver value to your planning.

oracle pcbs

Best for: Oracle PCBS is ideal for large enterprises seeking financial and operational planning solutions, which have already invested in Oracle back-office infrastructures.

Pricing: Pricing tiers and details are not listed on their website.

10. Netsuite Planning and Budgeting

Oracle Netsuite

NetSuite Planning and Budgeting enables organizations of all sizes to quickly adopt a world-class planning and budgeting application offering market-leading functionality across lines of businesses. Planning and Budgeting automate labor-intensive planning and budgeting processes and centralize company financial and operational data.

Finance teams can quickly and easily produce budgets and forecasts, model what-if scenarios, and generate reports within one collaborative scalable solution.

For Finance, NetSuite Planning and Budgeting standard edition can facilitate company-wide and departmental budgeting with pre-built reports, templates, and capabilities. A premium edition offers a planning and budgeting solution developed for a handful of specific industries, such as nonprofits, software, agencies, and services. Expert NetSuite Services consultants must implement the premium edition.

oracle-netsuite (1)

Best For: NetSuite Planning and Budgeting is best for large companies and enterprises in limited industries with NetSuite solutions already deployed in other business areas.

Pricing: Pricing tiers and details are not listed on their website.

11. Datarails

datarails-logo

Datarails is an AI-powered FP&A platform that helps finance teams  build financial models and spreadsheets and automate repetitive processes. 

The platform supports data consolidation, financial reporting, scenario analysis, financial reporting, and ERP-Excel connectivity. 

For finance, Datarails has a FinanceOS solution that offers cross-company alignment between the finance team and other teams in the organization. It allows users to integrate with other business solutions, such as ERPs and CRMs, and provides a consolidated platform for data management.

Screenshot 2024-06-05 124332

Best for: Datarails is best for small and medium business finance teams that use Excel for FP&A.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

12. Jedox

jedox

Jedox is a planning and performance management platform that enables users to create forecasts, budgets, and forecasts. It offers AI-assisted planning, budgeting, and analysis and lets users model attributes and create sets of business logic. 

Its FP&A platform allows self-service no-code data integration from multiple sources for finance and automates transaction recording for financial statements like P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow. 

Jedox has an interface similar to Excel that enables teams across departments to collaborate. 

jedox-view

Best for: Jedox is best for building modular solutions for integrated planning and creating customized ESG reports in-house.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

13. OneStream

Screenshot 2024-06-05 124649

OneStream is an enterprise finance platform that provides agile planning and reporting for finance teams. It enables users to unify their finance processes and deliver actionable analytics, forecasts, and financial signals. 

The platform has an embedded AI solution that enables users to create AI models pre-built on top of their own data models. Its generative AI helps businesses query and interact with financial intelligence data with workflows and data structures. 

OneStream also has an extended planning and analysis (xP&A) platform built to help finance teams align operational plans with financial performance. 

onestream-view

Best for: OneStream is best for building AI models on top of a business’s already existing data models.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

14. Centage 

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Centage is a cloud-native budgeting and forecasting software that enables businesses to automate budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes through advanced financial intelligence. 

It’s a formula-free, drag-and-drop solution that lets users update statements or add new accounts without re-entering formulas.

Centage provides a web-based financial dashboard for tracking metrics, budgets, opportunities, and risks. It lets users combine and layer data from ERP, CRM, and GL systems to get an overview of their business.

centage-view

Best for: Centage is best for expense tracking and asset management. 

Pricing: 

  • Standard: Custom pricing
  • Professional: Custom pricing
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

15. Mosaic Tech

Screenshot 2024-06-05 143016

Mosaic is a strategic finance platform that provides real-time analytics and planning for finance teams. Users can connect their tech stack to the platform and directly integrate data from popular HRIS, CRM, ERP, and data warehouse systems. 

Mosaic offers model builders, 3-statement models, and what-if scenario planning. 

Mosaic also has a chat-based AI tool to help users monitor their workflows, view insights, and automate tasks. 

mosaic-view

Best for: Mosaic suits small and medium businesses that want to maintain 3-statement models. 

Pricing: 

  • Analytics: Custom pricing
  • Foundation: Custom pricing
  • Growth: Custom pricing

16. Pigment

PigmentLogo-1

Pigment is designed to help finance, HR, and revenue teams build flexible plans, budgets, and forecasts. The platform also connects these teams together so they can build a single business plan rather than three. 

It has features like drill-down and waterfall charts that allow users to gain visibility into their business data during collaboration. 

Pigment allows finance teams and CFOs to build and approve agile, integrated business plans. It provides access controls, automated workflows, and collaboration capabilities that smooth the financial planning process. It also lets finance teams build dynamic, multidimensional business models that draw data from multiple sources. 

pigment platform

Best for: Pigment is best for businesses that want to build a single business plan through collaboration between finance, HR, and revenue teams.

Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.

17. Jirav

Screenshot 2024-06-05 143426

Jirav is reporting and planning software purpose-built for small and medium businesses (SMBs) and accounting firms. 

It enables users to forecast, budget, build dashboards, and generate reports that provide insights into business financial health. Users can automate their reporting and analytics and model multiple scenarios for risk situations. 

For accounting and CFO teams, Jirav offers custom planning and reporting tools that help them maintain oversight of the business’s cash flow and working capital assumptions. Its scenario planning tool also supports the creation of agile scenarios that adapt to changing business strategies.  

jirav-Dashboard (1)-png

Best for: Jirav is best for small and medium companies and accounting firms that want to maximize operational growth. 

Pricing: 

  • Industry Safari: $20,000+
  • Strategy Safari: Custom pricing

Choose the best FP&A software

The right FP&A software can transform how financial planning and analysis work in your organization. You must choose one that fits your organization’s size, business model, and internal workflows.

Look for: 

  • Usability: Ensure the software is user-friendly with an intuitive interface suitable for nontechnical users.
  • Scalability: Choose software that fits current needs and can grow with your business to avoid switching platforms.
  • Accessibility: Opt for cloud-based software that serves as a single source of truth for all relevant teams.
  • Automation: Look for software with ML and AI functionality to automate tasks and perform advanced financial analysis.
  • Cost-effective: The software should be a long-term investment with costs aligned to the value it brings.

Still unsure? Get a free demo to see if Cube is the right fit.

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Learn more about FP&A and FP&A tools

  • What is financial planning and analysis (FP&A)?
    +

    FP&A is the budgeting, financial forecasting, financial analysis, and decision-making that support every company's financial health and strategy. 

     

    This team is responsible for various activities, including:

     

    (Among plenty of other responsibilities.)

     

    It’s the job of the FP&A team to understand the financial performance of the company—past, present, and future. They apply context and narrative to what is happening in the business and why. Their comprehensive financial lens allows them to spot new opportunities and anticipate unexpected threats to position the company for success.

    This puts FP&A at the strategic center of the organization, with business leaders all over the company looking to them to provide critical insights and recommendations on how to navigate the business forward.

  • What is the financial planning and analysis process?
    +

    FP&A teams coordinate and collaborate with the entire business to collect financial and operational data, analyze financial performance, model potential plans and decisions, create periodic financial reports, provide strategic recommendations to business leaders, and more. This team is responsible for keeping the organization in good financial health and making sound financial decisions. 

     

    FP&A typically has two key roles: managing the periodic financial close and consolidation, and financial planning, forecasting, and analysis to facilitate better organizational decision-making. 

     

    To achieve those ends, FP&A does the following:

    1. Works across the business to collect, aggregate, understand, and analyze financial data. 
    2. Collaborates with the business and executives to develop plans, budgets, and forecasts and explain variances.
    3. Analyzes corporate activities and periodic performance to publish financial reports and communicate the organization’s financial health.
    4. Provides detailed financial performance analysis and decision guidance to the business, executives, the board of directors, and others. 
    5. Projects future business performance with financial, sales, and performance forecasts and scenario plans.
    6. Analyzes and guides the allocation of assets and investments to achieve corporate financial goals and business objectives.
  • Who uses FP&A software?
    +

    FP&A software is used across many industries, such as finance, consulting, technology, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. 


    It is used by small, medium-sized, large businesses and even startups to streamline their financial planning and analysis processes. 


    Within organizations, FP&A software is mostly used by financial planning and analysis teams, but it can also be used by other strategic decision-makers such as CEOs, COOs, operations managers, etc.

  • What is the difference between FP&A and EPM?
    +

    FP&A and EPM both involve forecasting, analysis, planning, and reporting, which help align financial goals and business outcomes. 


    However, they are tailored to different scopes, target audiences, and technology used. FP&A focuses on financial tasks such as budgeting, forecasting, and cost control and is mainly used by the finance department and strategic decision-makers like CEOs. 


    EPM includes FP&A processes but goes beyond to cover risk management, compliance, and business strategy.