Financial software: what are the best tools for management, planning, accounting, analysis and reporting

Paying wages or buying supplies is definitely critical for any company. Moreover, making sure you have enough finance to meet these needs is also crucial. That’s why companies of any size opt for financial software solutions that help them to plan financial resources and manage more effectively in order to support their financial activities.

In today’s digital environment, a great number of financial software solutions means that managing your finances is not a challenge anymore. Having that in mind, we will provide an overview of the best financial software and show their standout features so that you can get a better idea of which would work best for your business. Sounds impressive, right? So let’s keep reading!

What’s exactly financial software?

From its name, financial software is specifically designed to automate, assist and store financial - personal or business data that your company collects. Also, it handles the storage, analysis, management, and processing of a set of financial transactions, records and processes. Mostly, financial software provides numerous features such as the following:

• financial data management;
• transactions and management;
• budgeting;
• account management;
• financial assets management, etc.

In addition to that, financial software may offer accounting and/or bookkeeping solutions or can be integrated with other enterprise information systems.

Types of Financial Software Solutions

Here we have presented the most popular types of financial software. Keep reading to learn more:

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS): these systems are hosted on the vendor’s server, and the business owner doesn’t have control and authority over installation, updating, and maintenance.
• Cloud-hosted: a vendor offers the hardware, software, servers, storage, and networking resources, while a business owner can select a business plan and pay for it without thinking of updating and maintenance.
• On-premise: these systems are hosted on the client’s local server and require complex setup and some hardware installation. Also, they are covered with a license.

Key features of financial software

Here we have identified key features of the financial software that can directly benefit your company. Let’s take a closer look and find out more details below:

1. Accounting Procedures Automation and Management

Running a business successfully requires managing multiple tasks simultaneously. Out of those many tasks, accounting holds a significant position - it handles records, business reports, and many other financial interactions. That’s why with that feature, you can streamline and enhance all basic administrative financial processes from start to finish, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash flow management, purchasing, payroll, and general ledgers.

The key benefits of accounting procedures automation and management tools:

• Minimal human errors.
• Increased productivity.
• Easy access.
• Data security.
• Bookkeeping.

2. Financial Processes Support

With a financial management software package, companies have the tools and technologies they need – such as support for multiple currencies and conversions, languages, country-specific laws and guidelines, and multinational transactions – to better coordinate activities that span multiple departments and business units, and improve the execution and management of all financial tasks across all global locations.

How to streamline a finance business process

Below you can find out how to bring order to the finance process flow in your company. Let’s delve into details below:

• You should create a list of finance business processes and generate a process map that enhances understanding of how many tasks and people involved in the processes.
• While documented financial process mapping broadens a clear understanding of the financial processes, you can create workflows and automate them from start to finish.
• Only by automating finance workflows can you monitor progress in real time by making improvements in the process and enhancing its level of efficiency.
• Identifying lags and inefficiencies in the workflow is essential for greater process efficiency. Not only can you analyze them, but also you can remove irrelevant or redundant tasks or fix them to improve performance.
• Ensure that your financial process flow meets your objective and is on track.

3. Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting

Using financial management software solutions opens up a possibility to leverage historical data in order to predict future activities in finance – income, revenues, and expenses. In addition to that, it helps organizations to understand how market conditions, acquisitions can impact on the financial status of the organization and to make strategic planning more accurate and successful.

Key benefits of planning and forecasting:

• Budgeting expenses planning.
• Forecasting revenue planning.
• Scenario-based forecasting.
• Workforce and capital planning.
• Grouping of budgets in batches.
• Balancing budgets.

4. Cash Flow Management and Tracking

Cash flow management offers a possibility to know how much money's in the company by monitoring how funds are spent across various departments and business units. With that feature, you can get a real-time view of cash flow status as well as all related transactions that streamlines allocations, budgets, and other cash flow management tasks and activities across the entire organization.

Key benefits of cash flow management and tracking:

• Offer up-to-date information.
• Provide users with cash flow reports.
• Allow adding one-time or recurring items to cash flows.
• Avoid the risk of insufficient funding.

5. Advanced Reporting and Analytics

With advanced reporting and analysis features, you have the ability to generate detailed and highly accurate financial reports – balance sheets, profit/loss and сash flow statements, budget allocations, etc. That’s why it helps financial professionals to easily produce and deliver custom reports that satisfy their unique information requirements and boost decision making.

Key financial reporting tools include:

• Basic accounting tasks: invoicing, client and vendor management, financial report generation, and income and expense tracking.
• Automation: automate processes like recurring payments, automatic billing, and past-due notifications saving your time.
• Estimate and quote creation: you can use customized templates to create estimates and quotes for clients; these can be automatically converted into invoices.
• Tax preparation: includes tax reporting, multiple tax rates, and automatic tax calculations to easily email all necessary files to your accountant.
• Multiuser access: provides access to your accountant and financial consultants.

Top 20 financial management software solutions

Here we have provided the most popular financial management software that helps you to benefit your business. Let’s find out the examples:

Accounting Procedures Automation, Management and Financial Processes Support Software

• Intuit QuickBooks: synced with 400+ different apps, including Square, PayPal, and Shopify, it opens up a possibility to automate invoicing process - you can create templates and generate invoices according to a schedule. In addition to that, you can link the program with bank accounts and credit cards to automatically import transactions.
• AccountingSuite: a powerful tool that provides easy-to-use options to automate and manage financial day-to-day operations. It helps to produce highly customized reports and invoices, has accounts payable and receivable feature that makes it easy to receive and send payments, etc.
• BlackLine: helps to manage and control financial processes by automating accounting workflows and activities, and streamline financial reporting. This approach allows you to avoid non-value activities and facilitates continual monitoring for errors, fraud, and inefficiency.
• FinancialForce Accounting: fully featured and innovative financial solution that helps you to generate financial statements, automate revenue recognition and forecasting, provides real-time financial reporting and analysis so that you keep track of the numbers.

Financial Reporting Software

• FreshBooks: packed with advanced analytic features, it streamlines tracking and invoicing, allows you to collect payments online.
• Intacct: designed to provide multi-dimensional data analysis and key figures to help companies make smarter and data-driven decisions; can be integrated with other business applications like CRM, payroll or POS systems.
• Xero: built to focus on collaboration and keep teams connected; helps to create professional recurring invoices and receive updates, control your cash flow by scheduling payments and easily organizing expenses, allows you to view and share interactive reports and budgets in real time.
• NetSuite ERP: A scalable and complete ERP solution that automates both front-end and back-end processes, and offers customizable views with key performance indicators.

Financial Analysis Software

• Sisense: provides an agile solution for companies struggling with large and scattered data and allows you to do very complicated calculations on large amounts of disparate data in one click.
• Fathom: helps you to see how well your business is performing with the help of in-depth analysis options and metrics that allow you to assess profitability, cash flow, growth, etc.
• BusinessRadar: helps you to generate financial reports and forecasts for corporate management by producing comprehensive plans and accurate predictions based on actual data.
• Qvinci: designed to help you automatically sync and consolidate thousands of financial reports from popular software programs.

Cash flow Software

• Float: designed to reduce manual tasks and help you to plan more effectively by gathering information automatically that saves you more time.
• Pulse: helps you to monitor cash flow on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and keep track of cash flow in multiple currencies.
• Scoro: offers collaboration, work scheduling and tracking, project management, customer relations management, quoting and billing, advanced reporting and dashboards features. It allows managing and synchronizing a wide range of options in a single interface.
• CashAnalytics: highly customizable solution with great forecasting functions that provides great cash-flow management options.

Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Software

• Centage: designed to deliver comprehensive solutions such as budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, etc.
• Gide: you can combine budgeting, strategic planning, and financial forecasts as well as consolidating projects/companies/business departments within one comprehensive solution.
• Prophix: helps you to improve profitability and minimize risk when you automate repetitive tasks. You can budget, plan, consolidate and report automatically that helps you to grow your company.
• Planguru: provides a separate analytics tool that helps you to get a better overview of financials and make better decisions.

Here we have provided a comparison of the top financial software available for your business. Let’s delve into details below:

How to benefit from financial software?

As you see, financial software is a necessity to ensure that your business is able to effectively manage cash flow, plan budget and properly function daily as it needs to. Below we have defined the real benefits that you can gain by implementing financial software that allows you to accommodate the most complicated and diverse financial needs:

• tracking costs and revenues and determining the profitability;
• automating accounts payable workflows for payment processing;
• managing cash, bank accounts, and payment methods (check, credit card, ACH, etc.);
• generating financial reports and dashboards to track KPIs;
• maintaining budgeting history to produce forecasts;
• comparing revenues and expenses to predict possible changes in company budget;
• monitoring business performance.

How to choose the right financial software for your business?

Choosing any software isn’t so fast and easy. If you are thinking about investing in financial software, many arguments should be put forward both for and against. Not only should you review the current requirements of your business, but also you should keep in mind what your business will need in the future. One of the things that makes choosing financial software so difficult is the variety of tools available on the market: they range from basic tool suites to a variety of features. That’s why you can consider all the software solutions and decide which one can help your business to adapt to the changes and grow. What’s more, you can find a reliable tech partner who can develop and implement a custom solution based on your unique business needs and requirements.

Bottom line: Have you already derived benefits from financial software?

Planning, budgeting, forecasting, analysis and reporting are vital components for many companies. Not only do they contribute greatly to the overall business success, but they also open up golden opportunities to drive process efficiency and business insight in today’s digital environment with disruptive competitors. Having that in mind, you can opt for financial software that helps you embrace data analytics and reporting, budgeting and accounting, management and planning to make strategic decisions and accurate plans, reduce errors, improve collaboration and drive growth. We, at DDI Development, have vast tech experience and can turn any idea into an actionable and sophisticated digital solution.