A budget determines resources for each part of a company, from salaries to office supplies. It focuses on cash position, including expected revenues and expenses, to set specific financial goals for the future.
Financial forecasts, on the other hand, show potential futures. Teams examine possible economic outcomes based on current drivers and assumptions, commonly using what-if analysis from Excel.
Software exists for both processes:
Businesses often buy budgeting and forecasting software together in a single platform that handles both processes, keeping business outcomes aligned. For instance, a budget might assume $10M in revenue, but the forecast might reveal only $8M. The business would then adjust variable costs and expense plans to meet cash targets.
(Need a refresher on the difference between budgeting, planning, and forecasting? Head here.)
Forecasting software comes in various forms to address different aspects of a business’s needs. Types of forecasting software may include:
There are two main categories of budgeting software:
We’ve covered budgeting software and forecasting software, but what is budget forecasting software?
Budget forecasting software brings these two functions together so businesses can create detailed budgets based on past data while predicting future performance.
This reduces the need for finance teams to juggle multiple apps, cutting down on errors. With everything in one place, processes move faster, and teams make smarter decisions with less hassle.
Without effective forecasting and budgeting, it’s tough to scale your business. The software you use throughout these processes determines the quality of your budgets and forecasts, so it’s crucial to select the right technology.
Consider the following features when choosing forecasting and budgeting software (these apply regardless of your business size or workflow):
Budgeting and forecasting software automates manual and repetitive tasks, saving time and boosting productivity and efficiency. Features like drag-and-drop interfaces, prebuilt templates, and customizable processes enable easy automation without much technical expertise.
AI can enhance automation even further by learning from historical data to provide predictive insights and smarter recommendations. AI can automatically detect trends, spot data inconsistencies, and run automated financial reports. The right software will allow your finance teams to focus on strategic, high-impact tasks rather than mundane data management.
Many large businesses regularly revise their financial projections to reflect changes in their business environment, future demand, competition, and other economic factors.
If your budgeting and forecasting process works this way, you’ll need software that supports driver-based budgeting and rolling forecasts so you can update budgets and forecasts as needed.
With this software, you can avoid the stress of updating data across multiple plans. It automates calculations, data updates, and financial analysis.
Some forecasting and budgeting software includes enterprise tools like CRM, ERP, accounting, and business intelligence software. However, these tools may not be robust enough for all your financial needs.
Look for budgeting and forecasting software that integrates seamlessly with other business tools. This is especially important for Excel and Google Sheets, where you might build financial models, scenarios, and budgets.
Seamless integration eliminates the need for manual data input. It also ensures real-time sync between all platforms where you store financial data.
A financial reporting analysis tool in your budgeting and forecasting software gives you visibility into key financial metrics like revenue, cost, and cash flow.
This tool can generate custom reports based on specific metrics, analyze the outcome of your budgets and forecasts, and help you track progress toward periodic goals.
Financial KPI dashboards give you a clear view of your daily, monthly, and yearly financial performance at a glance.
KPI dashboards help you access, filter, and visualize data quickly. You can understand how your business is doing compared to the benchmarks set during budgeting and forecasting.
You can drill down into data to see more specific information. You can also compare performance across time periods or departments to identify patterns in performance.
To make the best business decisions, your budgeting and forecasting software should handle all types of financial planning. This way, you can see the full picture of your financial health and make informed, strategic choices about where to go next.
When evaluating software, consider tools that support the following types of financial plans:
Look for tools that allow you to create detailed representations of your business’s financial performance. This will help you analyze past data, project future outcomes, and test different scenarios to understand how potential decisions might affect growth or profitability.
With the right platforms, you can explore “what-if” scenarios—like hiring new staff or adjusting prices—and see the potential impact before taking action.
Benefits of budgeting and forecasting software
Budgeting and forecasting is a complex process, especially in big businesses with a lot of data and teams involved.
Businesses can easily lose track of their overall outcomes and incur unnecessary costs during this process. Investing in budgeting and forecasting software is important to avoid these pitfalls.
This software gives your teams a more structured approach, making processes more effective. Here’s how:
According to Asana, employees spend 60% of their work hours on repetitive manual tasks, leaving them with 40% of their time to choose forward-looking strategies and complete value-adding tasks. Not to mention repetitive tasks tend to increase the risk of human error and reduce productivity.
Budgeting and forecasting software can automate tedious manual processes like data entry, cleansing, and verification, financial data reconciliation, and financial statement consolidation.
This saves time and allows anyone creating budgets or forecasts to focus on more productive processes like financial planning, scenario modeling, and strategic decision-making.
Research shows employees working on digital collaborative platforms complete tasks more effectively. Collaboration makes sharing information easy, supports joint problem-solving, and increases transparency throughout workflows.
The best forecasting and budgeting software provides a single centralized platform. All teams involved can work together and track their progress in real time, helping everyone stay aligned on the overall business goal.
Budgeting and forecasting require input from key teams in your organization. Providing them with a platform to share information, stay aligned, and take responsibility for their inputs enhances your team’s budgeting process.
Budgeting and forecasting software have inbuilt tools that help you create customizable financial reports and interactive dashboards quickly.
You don’t have to scramble through multiple documents to create reports. The software allows you to present your business's financial progress and health in an easy-to-read manner to investors, board members, or partners.
This software also streamlines your auditing process. It helps you comply with regulatory standards and gives auditors access to accurate, real-time financial information throughout the year.
Cube is the world’s first spreadsheet-native, AI-powered forecasting tool for businesses of all sizes—but it does much more than forecasting.
The cloud-based software empowers finance teams to work anywhere. It natively integrates with Excel and Google Sheets, allowing FP&A teams to plan, analyze, and collaborate across departments.
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NetSuite Planning and Budgeting helps finance teams automate financial processes and create accurate, accessible reports. Users can collaborate using customizable templates and workflows. NetSuite automates manual planning and budgeting processes and centralizes company financial and operational data, allowing you to perform forecasting and budgeting from a single point.
The platform’s data synchronization capabilities reduce manual processes and offer a more unified and transparent approach to financial processes.
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Pricing: Annual licensing fees vary depending on users and add-ons, but exact pricing isn’t available on their site. Other sites report steadily increased pricing.
Anaplan is a planning, forecasting, and financial management platform for finance and FP&A teams. It's an expensive enterprise solution for large companies. Anaplan lets users connect people, data, and plans to intelligently budget and forecast business outcomes for the entire organization.
Anaplan helps businesses move faster and make complex decisions with input and visibility for all stakeholders. But without a native Excel integration, it can be challenging to adopt.
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Pricing: Pricing for the Anaplan platform is available by contacting the company.
Also read: Anaplan vs. Adaptive vs. Planful vs. Vena vs. Datarails vs. Cube
Workday Adaptive Planning offers budgeting and forecasting software that covers financial, workforce, operational, and sales planning.
The platform provides scalable and flexible financial planning for any size organization. It enables budgeting and forecasting teams to consolidate financial plans in real-time.
Customers praise the platform’s user-friendliness and customization options but lament the lack of training and support resources.
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Pricing: Pricing is not available on their website.
Planful is budgeting and forecasting software that helps companies minimize costs and save time. It allows users to see real-time data, identify issues, and take action to improve financial performance and employee productivity.
Some customers express satisfaction with the company’s responsive customer support and regular improvements. However, others feel frustrated with the slow analysis of large data volumes and report data inaccuracies.
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Pricing: Planful doesn’t list pricing on their website, but users report the platform to be more expensive than others.
IBM Planning Analytics helps businesses collect and analyze thousands of financial data points to support forecasting and budgeting needs. It provides built-in AI capabilities and what-if planning functionality so that teams can create budgets faster and forecast business outcomes with more accuracy.
The AI-powered software bridges department silos to help organizations manage their finances. Users can also connect with dedicated IBM experts to strategize financial goals.
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Oracle Essbase allows users to optimize Excel spreadsheet data in the cloud, which makes complex hierarchies easier to manage.
The platform enables users to analyze multi-dimensional data using data visualization tools and what-if analysis. Essbase operates via a web browser interface or Microsoft Office.
Oracle Essbase is not a complete finance solution. It complements the tools FP&A teams use and supports the development of complex analytic applications.
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Pricing: Pricing details are unavailable online.
Oracle Hyperion Planning offers dedicated budgeting and forecasting software with a Microsoft Office-based interface. It's part of Oracle’s broader solution for Enterprise Business Planning.
The platform supports enterprise-wide budgeting and forecasting, allowing teams to align budgets and forecasts across all departments for cost-effective planning.
Oracle Hyperion Planning works on desktop, mobile, and Microsoft Office interfaces. It features robust integrations and workflow capabilities. However, some users report dissatisfaction with Hyperion’s templates.
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Pricing: Not listed or advertised on many sites.
Board helps organizations gather financial intelligence and predictive analysis to streamline and transform a business’s financial operations. The company takes pride in unifying departments and adapting to various industries.
The platform provides integrated financial planning functionality, which enables finance teams to manage all business data from multiple sources on a single platform for better visibility over budgets and forecasts.
Teams can unify cross-functional teams during planning and leverage predictive analysis to build agile plans.
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Pricing: Pricing is not listed online, but plans depend on business size, number of user licenses, and customizations.
PlanGuru helps organizations improve financial decision-making with easy general ledger importing to create quick analytics. The budgeting flexibility allows businesses of all sizes—SMBs, startups, or corporations—to optimize various processes. Its flexible structure allows users to create consolidated multi-department or simple small budgets.
Planful lets users gain insights into specific areas of their business but while the company offers many features, some users report glitches.
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Centage Planning Maestro offers budgeting and forecasting software that automates tasks prone to human error. This formula-free FP&A software includes built-in business logic and accounting rules.
The platform uses driver-based budgets and forecasts and also offers workforce planning. Users can automate data integration and consolidation in real-time.
Centage Planning Maestro also has a workflow tool that helps teams collaborate on budgets and forecasts using permission-based workflows.
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Pricing: There are three pricing tiers: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Prices aren’t listed, but sources say plans start at $10,000 annually.
Xero offers simple accounting software that connects with banks for AI reconciliation. It provides cloud accounting, allowing businesses to centralize their finances and maintain paperless records.
Users can manage their accounting needs from one central, easy-to-use platform, saving time on tedious everyday tasks. Xero works best for small businesses that can’t afford expensive FP&A platforms and for large businesses seeking collaborative budgeting and forecasting.
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Prophix is a cloud-based financial software solution that automates standard business processes like data importing, pre-built functionality, and reporting analytics. It allows users to keep all their processes and insights on one platform and use centralized capabilities like user management, workflow, and data integration.
The platform’s AI-powered virtual financial analyst detects human error and unfamiliar transactions. It also enables teams to arrange disconnected data and have a single source of truth for making strategic decisions.
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Pricing: Users report reasonable pricing, but specific pricing isn’t listed online.
Vena Solutions is an FP&A tool that helps with business budgeting and financial forecasting by automatically generating forecasts and insights from data. The software loads automatic data into a single source of truth.
Vena provides variance analysis, identifies discrepancies, and builds ad-hoc reports for your business. It analyzes your company’s financial health by slicing and dicing data across different entities.
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Pricing: Vena doesn’t list the price on its website, but customers cite its high price as an issue.
Jirav offers cloud-based financial planning and analysis, helping accounting and finance teams budget and forecast without spreadsheets. You can customize it to track, forecast, and share data.
Jirav works best for smaller businesses and organizations without international clients due to its lack of multi-currency capabilities.
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Datarails uses automated consolidation and reporting to help organizations improve financial decision-making. It integrates with ERPs and CRMS so users can consolidate their financial data.
The platform offers data consolidation, financial reporting, scenario analysis, financial reporting, and ERP-Excel connectivity. It provides automatic consolidation and reporting, letting users focus on the insights that can help their business.
For companies using Excel to build budgets and forecasts, Datarails allows them to keep their Excel financial models and automate processes within Excel.
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Pricing: Not listed or discussed widely on the company site or across other websites.
Solver is a cloud-based corporate performance management software with automated budgeting and forecasting features. Users can forecast financial outcomes weekly, monthly, or annually, accessing critical insights in minutes.
The design allows businesses to analyze large data sets and create enterprise-wide budgets and forecasts, enabling faster decision-making.
It also provides a template marketplace where users can access prebuilt templates for reports, planning, and dashboards.
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Pricing: While pricing is not available on their website, reports note it starts at almost $7,000 a year.
Budgyt is a cloud-based software tool that offers a solution to replace spreadsheets. It’s a financial budgeting tool that delivers solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, non-profits, or larger enterprises with complex needs like cost allocation.
The platform enables finance teams to automate manual processes and replace them with real-time consolidation and user-friendly dashboard navigation.
It enables users to reduce their formulas when managing cashflow forecasts and P&L budgets, and also automate the auditing of business formulas.
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Pricing: Pricing is not available online
Mosaic is a strategic finance platform that provides real-time analytics, prebuilt templates, advanced assumptions, and flexible drivers to help businesses create budgets and forecasts. It allows finance teams to combine accounting, financial, operational, and workforce data to forecast multiple business scenarios and potential outcomes based on custom inputs.
It’s designed for small to medium companies and allows them to connect their existing tech stack. However, the platform is SaaS-focused, and non-SaaS companies might need an alternative platform.
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Pricing: Mosaic offers three pricing plans: Analytics, Foundational, and Growth, but pricing details are not available online.
Sage Intacct is a cloud financial software that lets you build dashboards in minutes. Its general ledger includes eight dimensions, contextualizing transactions, budgets, and operations.
The platform gives users real-time visibility into the data they use for budgeting and forecasting and provides multi-entity functionality for planning across business departments.
Sage Intacct gives users access to their API to build custom solutions for their businesses and also integrate with native business tools.
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Pricing: Sage Intacct advertises “tailored” pricing and invites you to reach out for a quote. Users report expensive plans compared to competitors.
It takes more than just comparing features to choose the best budgeting and forecasting software for your business. As you go through the decision-making process, consider:
The future of budgeting and forecasting software is getting better, faster, more accurate, and easier to use. Here’s what we’re seeing in the industry:
The best forecasting and budgeting software makes life easier for your finance teams. It helps you grow and optimize your processes, not replace them entirely.
You can automate repetitive tasks that distract your finance teams and give them more time to focus on crafting strategies and growing your business performance.
The software will provide them with a central platform to collaborate with other teams, key stakeholders, and decision makers to get a holistic view of everything happening in your organization.
Integrating forecasting and budgeting software into your processes is not just about giving your finance team another tech solution to work with. It’s about helping them streamline workflows and make better data-driven solutions to grow your business.
Book a free demo to see how Cube can help you achieve that.