21 Best Business Budgeting Software for CFOs (in 2024)

Do your budgeting and planning processes take too long?

Are you primarily doing your business budgeting in spreadsheets?

Is business growth or changing market dynamics adding complexity to your business budgeting, making it harder to manage?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you’ve come to the right place. It might be time to consider business budgeting software.

What is business budgeting software?

Business budgeting software, also known as budgeting and planning software, is a financial management tool for budget creation, tracking, and reporting.

In corporate finance, the ability to effectively plan, manage, and optimize budgets is paramount to success. In an era where data-driven decisions are key, budgeting software empowers organizations to make informed choices, enhance financial transparency, and achieve their strategic objectives with precision.

What is business budgeting?

A business budget outlines the spending for your business based on income and expenses. Budgeting allows organizations to estimate their revenue and expenses over a specific period and determine how to allocate the money.

Why is business budgeting essential?

A business budget helps finance leaders determine if there is enough money available to fund the business operations, expand and scale, and generate revenue. Without a business budget, you run the risk of over-spending.

What are the types of business budgeting?

There are several types of business budgeting, including:

1. Zero-based budgeting
2. Activity-based budgeting
3. Incremental budgeting
4. Value-based budgeting
5. Capital budgeting
6. Top-down budgeting
7. Bottom-up budgeting

Let’s take a quick look at each type of business budgeting and what it means for you.

1. Zero-based budgeting

Zero-based budgeting requires you to start each fiscal year with a zero-base, or a blank slate, instead of bringing in data from your previous budget. Zero-based budgeting is known for superior accuracy with budgets likely within +/- 5%.

2. Activity-based budgeting

Activity-based budgeting is a top-down approach to budgeting. Activity-based budgeting calculates the financing needed to support a strategic target or goal. Activity-based budgeting aligns your budget with your strategic initiatives and supports growth by prioritizing your goals.

3. Incremental budgeting

Incremental budgeting accounts for the actual figures from the previous year and calculates your current year budget by adding or subtracting the percentage from the plan. Incremental budgeting provides a strategic approach to extra funds.

4. Value-proposition budgeting

Value-proposition budgeting justifies every cost in the budget against the value add for the company. This approach to budgeting eliminates unnecessary expenditure and can increase your return on investment.

5. Capital budgeting

Capital budgeting evaluates potential major projects or investments. Part of the capital budgeting process involves assessing a project’s lifetime cash inflows and outflows to determine if the return on investment will meet your goal.

6. Top-down budgeting

Top-down budgeting is when senior leadership defines the budget for the entire organization and each departmental leader implements it accordingly.

7. Bottom-up budgeting

Bottom-up budgeting is when departmental leaders identify their unique goals and the associated costs and incorporates that into a budget. The budget then gets shared with senior leadership.

Benefits of business budgeting software platforms

The business budgeting software market is a diverse and competitive landscape with multiple vendors and a wide range of solutions—each with its own pros and cons.

The number of options is a testament to the growing demand for business budgeting software. To help define your scope, let’s look at the benefits of business budgeting software and how you can align the right one to your goals.

Save time

At the heart of budgeting software is the advanced budgeting and forecasting capabilities. Budgeting software integrates with your CRM, ERP, and data systems so you can tap into the wealth of historical financial data, trends, and predictive analytics. This data empowers you to craft precise and reliable financial projections, anticipate challenges, and see opportunities.

The capabilities within budgeting software give you an advantage to fine-tune your strategies, update models, spot trends and anomalies, and make data-driven decisions.

And importantly, budgeting software offers a range of features that eliminate manual, time-consuming work, rewarding you with increased accuracy and flexibility to adjust in real-time.

Automated workflows and customized reports

Budgeting software offers reporting, data visualization, and analytics. The ability to generate customizable reports and dashboards offers you an intuitive and comprehensive view of your financial data.

This means you can course-correct in near real-time.

When you streamline with automation, you can enhance your efficiency and accuracy, all while speeding up the cadence of your reporting, so everyone can make important business decisions with confidence.

Reduce human error

Budgeting software offers robust data integrity and seamless integration with your data systems. This ensures accuracy and reliability of your data, and gives you the power to make informed decisions, mitigating the risk of costly errors or misjudgments.

Integrated systems give real-time access to critical data across the business for better forecasting and resource allocation. Additionally, this helps to reduce forecast variance so you can align your budgets more closely with actual results.

The combination of data integrity and integration in your budgeting software gives you improved financial planning, streamlined operations, and overall enhanced business performance.

Collaboration

One significant benefit of budgeting software is that it facilitates collaboration within organizations. In a world of remote work and geographically dispersed teams, a centralized budgeting platform ensures all stakeholders have access to the most up-to-date financial data. This means you don’t have to collect spreadsheets from various budget holders. You can collaborate in your budgeting software while also saving time and reducing data errors.

So now that we’re in agreement that you need a budgeting software vendor, let’s take a look at the 22 best budgeting software tools for 2024.

21 best business budgeting software tools for 2024.

1: Prophix

Ambitious finance leaders use Prophix to drive progress. By improving the speed and accuracy of decision making, Prophix’s Financial Performance Platform elevates the talents of finance teams to do their best work. Crush complexity, reduce uncertainty, and illuminate insights with access to best-in-class AI insights and planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and consolidation functionalities.

Best for: Prophix is a Financial Performance Platform for the Office of the CFO. The buyer of the Prophix platform is typically the CFO, Head of Finance, VP of Finance, or Director of Finance. The entire finance team uses Prophix, from the CFO to the analyst.

Features:

• Automate workflows for budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, consolidation, and close to eliminate time-consuming, manual tasks and human error 
• Increase efficiency with data collection and validation by automating your data integrations
• Use intelligent, AI-powered insights and automation so you can spot trends faster, shrink reporting windows, and improve collaboration and alignment
• Reduce financial risk and fraud with anomaly detection for greater accuracy – and confidence

Pros:

• SOC2, ISAE3402, CSA level 1, ISO 27001:1013 security certified; TRUSTe Enterprise Certification,
• Ease of use—easily build customized dashboards and reports
• Highly regarded customer support, including the Continuous Success Package

Integrations:

• Pre-built connectors for your CRM, ERP, and HRIS systems
• APIs to connect to almost any business system
  

Pricing: Pricing varies depending on the number of users, applications, and integrations. Learn more about pricing here.
Chat with a Prophix expert to learn more.

2: Anaplan

Anaplan is a web-based, enterprise-level modeling and planning platform. It’s proprietary Hyperblock™ technology lets you contextualize real-time performance and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions.

Best for: Enterprise customers with large, complex calculations.

Features:

• Hyperblock™ in-memory calculations engine allows for complex use cases and can be scaled across multiple departments
• Highly customizable and can accommodate multiple use cases
• Self-serve solution with limited training required to use

Pros:

• Security includes Bring Your Own Key, SSO support with SAML 2.0, Central Identity Management and data encryption at rest and in transit.

Cons:

• Limited slice-and-dice capabilities for analysis
• Slower implementation
  

Integrations:

• Use Anaplan Connect to run integration scripts for imports and exports
• ELT and ESB tools to integrate with systems of record
• Prebuilt integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Adobe, or Salesforce
• Custom integrations using REST APIs or transactional APIs

Pricing: Offers 3 options depending on your needs: basic, professional, and enterprise.

Anaplan vs. Prophix

Anaplan is priced by storage space, for example, how much data is entered by a user measured by each cell. Prophix is priced by number of users, with no limitation on storage space.

3: Planful

The Planful platform, which helps businesses drive peak financial performance, is used around the globe to streamline business-wide planning, budgeting, consolidations, reporting, and analytics. Planful empowers finance, accounting, and business users to plan confidently, close faster, and report accurately.

Best for: Mid-large organizations with large FP&A teams and teams looking to expand their scope beyond finance.

Features:

• Consolidation, reporting, and standard planning on a single platform.
• Use cases include finance, accounting, marketing, HR, sales, IT, and operations.

Pros:

• Collaboration and sharing tools with intuitive web-based user interface.
• Adheres to common security and compliance requirements.

Cons:

• Dynamic planning is built on a separate technology and database.
• No free trial to ‘try before you buy’.
  
  

Integrations:

• Data source agonistic and integrates with most of your existing data sources but requires additional licensing.

Pricing: Planful doesn’t disclose its pricing. 3^rd party review sites indicate that Planful offers competitive pricing for its value.

Planful vs. Prophix
Take a look at how Planful compares to Prophix.

4: Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning helps people gain insights, collaborate, and make smarter decisions, faster. Workday’s planning cloud application enables organizations of all sizes to adapt to a changing world and shifting business conditions with confidence and agility.

Best for: Large enterprise teams with complex planning requirements.

Features:

• Customizable to certain use cases, including workforce planning, sales planning, and operational planning
• Easy to use interfaces
• Industry-specific planning templates
  
  

Pros:

• Workday Adaptive Planning is in the same ecosystem as Workday ERP and other Workday solutions.
  
  

Cons:

• Workday substantially increases pricing after the first year and renewals can sometimes be up to 10x the original cost
• Workday Adaptive Planning requires ‘OfficeConnect’ to support ad-hoc analysis
  
  

Integrations:

• The purpose-built integration framework allows you to integrate with any cloud-based, on-premise, or file-based data source application.

Pricing: Pricing isn’t publicly available, but they do offer a free trial.

Workday vs. Prophix

Workday acquired Adaptive Insights (now called Adaptive Planning) and Adaptive Planning is optimized to only work with the Workday ERP. Prophix was designed to support open integrations with almost all available ERPs.

5: Vena Solutions

Vena leverages the familiarity and flexibility of an Excel interface within the Vena Growth Engine, the SaaS platform and methodology that powers your plans and guides your journey to growth. Additionally, Vena works with over 100 partners.

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses who use Excel for financial planning and analysis.

Features:

• Excel-native platform and familiar user interface, built for Microsoft 365 with Power BI embedded
• Pre-built templates
• Self-serve access to data analytics and AI-powered insights

Pros:

• Uses Excel on the front-end, which helps new users learn the solution quickly
• Clear version control
• Empowers cross-departmental collaboration

Cons:

• Customers need to hire analysts who can work with complex macros/VBA codes
• Resells Fluence Technologies’ solution for consolidation (no longer an exclusive partnership)

Integrations:

• Integrates with cloud-based, on-premise, or local source systems like Excel and CSV files.

Pricing: Vena offers two pricing tiers: Professional and Complete. The Professional tier is their most popular which includes the Vena Platform, a customer success manager, standard support, and access to the customer portal. Full pricing is available by speaking to a Vena specialist.

Vena vs Prophix

Take a look at how Vena compares to Prophix.

6: Cube

Cube is an FP&A platform that pairs the flexibility and familiarity of your spreadsheet with the control and scale of performance software. Cube helps you save time, reduce errors, and improve insights, so you can tell the story behind the numbers faster than ever.

Best for: Cube is built for small businesses and startups.

Features:

• Report customization and flexibility
• Straight-forward, intuitive user interface design
• Automated workflows
• Report templates

Pros:

• Top-rated customer service and support
• User management and permissions, admin console, and audit trails and controls for enhanced security and data integrity

Cons:

• Data syncing issues with ERP systems, especially NetSuite
• Leverages Excel-based templates, so additional work is required to verify formulas/links when creating ad-hoc reports

Integrations:

• Out of the box integrations for your CRM, ERP, HRIS or BI systems
• Custom connectors
• Self-serve flat files

Pricing: Cube offers three tiers of pricing: Essentials, Premium, and Enterprise. The Essentials tier starts at $1250/month, Premium—their most popular—at $2450/month, and Enterprise pricing requires a conversation with a Cube specialist.

7: Workiva

Workiva offers regulatory, financial, and ESG reporting solutions to meet stakeholder demands for action, transparency, and disclosure of financial and non-financial data. Their cloud-based platform simplifies the most complex reporting and disclosure challenges by streamlining processes, connecting data and teams, and ensuring consistency.

Best for: Large enterprise companies; Workiva’s customer base includes 85% of the Fortune 500 companies.

Features:

• Connect to your data with 60+ pre-built connectors, APIs and proprietary systems
• Use drag-and-drop capabilities to explore and build data sets
• Automate updates, tasks, and approvals for reporting

Pros:

• Helps to mitigate risk and improve productivity
• Great collaboration capabilities
• Highly rated customer support

Cons:

• Not a full-suite CPM solution as it only offers reporting and regulatory compliance capabilities

Integrations:

• File storage like Google Drive or Dropbox
• CRM, ERP, HRIS, Performance Management and Finance and Accounting systems
• BI and reporting systems
• Relational databases

Pricing: Workiva doesn’t provide their pricing publicly on their website, but you can request a demo.

Workiva vs Prophix

Workiva only has capabilities for financial reporting and regulatory compliance within the software. Prophix is a full-suite Financial Performance Platform that offers solutions for every process in the Office of the CFO.

8: Solver

Solver is a Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution that harnesses the cloud to consolidate data from your ERP and other key sources. Whether you manage data in spreadsheets or pull it from diverse sources, Solver brings it all together in an easy-to-use platform that offers a single source of truth.

Best for: Finance leaders and executives in growth-oriented organizations.

Features:

• Flexible reporting, planning, and dashboards for financial and operational data analysis
• Anytime, anywhere accessibility if you have a browser and an internet connection
• Data warehousing to store financial and operational data

Pros:

• Flexibility with report-building based on integration with Excel
• Provides scenario planning and forecasting templates

Cons:

• Depends on Power BI connector to build professional dashboards
• Slow processing and reporting times

Integrations:

• ERPs like Microsoft Dynamics, Sage Intacct, Acumatica
• NetSuite, Salesforce, QuickBooks Online
• Private host data sources like SQL servers or CSV files

Pricing: Solver pricing starts at $100/month when purchased annually (in the US only). They offer a price calculator on their website so you can ballpark your costs, but final pricing is contingent on implementation needs.

Solver vs Prophix

Solver is designed for SMBs that primarily use Microsoft Dynamics 365 as their ERP. Prophix is built for the mid-market and supports open integrations with almost all ERP platforms.

9: SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

The SAP BPC software delivers planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidation capabilities in a single application. Easily adjust plans and forecasts, speed up budget and closing cycles, and ensure compliance with financial reporting standards.

Best for: SAP Business Planning and Consolidation is best for business executives in mid-to-large size companies.

Features:

• On-premise or cloud deployment
• Integrates with SAP and non-SAP data
• Option to extend SAP BPC with additional visualizations, planning, and predictive capabilities with SAP Analytics Cloud

Pros:

• Accessible from any web browser with an internet connection

Cons:

• Built on the old OutlookSoft technology which impacts user experience
  
  

Integrations:

• SAP and non-SAP data systems

Pricing: There is no pricing available on their website, but you can request a demo or contact their sales team for more information.

SAP BPC vs Prophix

SAP is primarily focused on its enterprise resource planning (ERP) business, Prophix offers a Financial Performance Management Platform that has been built by finance leaders for finance leaders.

10: Pigment

Pigment is a business planning platform. By bringing together people, data and processes into an intuitive, adaptable, integrated platform, teams can quickly build trusted strategic and operational business plans to drive growth, react to change and future-proof their business.

Best for: Decision-makers across finance, sales and revenue, and HR teams looking to do integrated business planning.

Features:

• Flexible modeling of finance, revenue, and workforce plans
• Interactive, real-time reporting
• Cross-functional collaboration in a single system of record

Pros:

• Enterprise-level security, SOC 2 compliance, and granular access control
• Fast implementation timeline
• Calculation power and speed with large data sets

Cons:

• Not a full-suite CPM solution as it only offers financial planning capabilities

Integrations:

• ERP and accounting systems like NetSuite, SAP, or QuickBooks
• Salesforce CRM
• HRIS and ATS systems like Workday, BambooHR or Lever
• Data lakes like Snowflake or Google BigQuery
• BI solutions like Looker
• Spreadsheets and file storage systems

Pricing: Pigment offers three pricing tiers: Essential, Professional, and Enterprise. Specific pricing is available via a quote, but they do offer a features breakdown in detail so you can better understand the offerings in each tier.

Pigment vs Prophix

Pigment is a new player in the financial performance management space. By comparison, Prophix has been in the Financial Performance Management space for over 35 years.

11: Jirav

Jirav is a dynamic, all-in-one forecasting, budgeting, reporting, and dashboarding solution that simplifies FP&A and delivers insights.

Best for: From startups to large companies, Jirav is best for companies who are focused on growth.

Features:

• Pre-built reports, industry-specific 80% plans, pre-configured integrations, and features with the ability for customization
• Dynamic, driver-based planning to support accelerated growth

Pros:

• Intuitive user interface with self-learning introduction courses, logs, and live presentations that help shorten the learning curve
• Good for preparing board reports, financial reviews, and basic dashboards
  
  

Cons:

• Users can only export a snapshot of the database and not a functional Excel model
• Forecasts are only available for the next three years
  
  

Integrations:

• Spreadsheets
• Accounting and finance systems like QuickBooks, Xero, or Stripe
• Workforce and HRIS planning systems
• HubSpot and Salesforce CRM
• Project management, BI tools, and data warehouses

Pricing: Jirav offers three pricing tiers: Starter, Pro, and Enterprise. Starter offers a 14-day free trial and pricing starts at $10,000 per year. Pro starts at $15,000 per year and Enterprise level pricing requires a custom quote. Jirav provides a feature comparison table on the pricing page to better understand what is offered in each tier.

12: Causal

Causal is a modern planning platform that allows you to build and automate your forecasts, financial models, business plans, and board reports.

Best for: Financial modelers, business teams, and executives at companies of all sizes.

Features:

• Dynamic financial modeling for revenue projections
• Easy data visualization and custom views and permissions for stakeholders
• Multi-currency, multi-entity consolidations

Pros:

• User-level admin controls and single sign-on (SSO)
• SOC 2 Type I and Type II certifications

Cons:

• Less intuitive user experience and has a steeper learning curve
• Users cannot export reports to Excel while retaining the native functions made in Causal
  
  

Integrations:

• Spreadsheets (Google and CSV files)
• Accounting and ERP systems
• Data warehouses or BI tools
• CRM and HRIS systems

Pricing: Causal offers three pricing tiers: Free, Launch, and Growth. The Free tier is ideal for personal use or individuals at early-stage companies. The Launch tier starts at $250 per month – but you can take advantage of the free trial. Growth tier pricing is available when you book a demo.

Causal vs Prophix

Causal has a steeper learning curve due to the nature of the software. Prophix has excellent post-implementation support through Prophix Academy and the Continuous Success Package program.

13: LiveFlow

LiveFlow turns your spreadsheets into a real-time FP&A platform by connecting your QuickBooks data to Google Sheets so you can create reports in your spreadsheet.

Best for: Startups and SMBs who do budgeting, consolidation, and reporting in QuickBooks and Google Sheets.

Features:

• Plug and play templates for easy duplication
• Automatic data refresh
• Discover variances and drill into transactions directly in your Google Sheet
• Live feed data into your models and write any formula on top of it

Pros:

• Accessible pricing model for early-stage startups and small businesses

Cons:

• Only compatible with QuickBooks and Google Sheets

Integrations:

• QuickBooks (Xero coming soon)

Pricing: LiveFlow offers four pricing tiers: Starter ($249/month), Professional ($481/month), Team ($1,100/month), and Organization ($2,000/month). Starter and Professional both offer free trials.

LiveFlow vs Prophix
LiveFlow connects QuickBooks with Google Sheets so you can do your budgeting in the same interface. Prophix pulls in your data from all data sources into a centralized platform so you can do your budgeting, planning, and reporting in one place.

14: Finmark

Finmark, a BILL financial planning and cash flow insights software, simplifies financial planning and insights for SMBs. The software brings together data from across the business into dashboards that provide visibility, insights, and control.

Best for: Founders and small companies, accounting firms, and mid-sized businesses.

Features:

• Automated hiring planning including custom triggers based on set data points
• Supports fundraising planning and scenarios with forecasts for revenue, burn rate, and runaway
• Collaboration and sharing in a centralized system

Pros:

• Built with startups in mind, making it easy for venture capitalists, accelerators, and financers to work with portfolio companies in the platform

Cons:

• Lacks deeper integrations with accounting systems such as QuickBooks
• There is a learning curve for new users
  
  

Integrations:

• Commonly used business systems (ERP, Payroll, CRM)

Pricing: Finmark offers a custom price calculator on their website. The price scales based on your annual revenue, but all plans include unlimited users, integrations, and scenarios. Finmark also offers a 30-day free trial.

Finmark vs Prophix

Finmark is designed for founders and startups with built in support for fundraising planning. Prophix caters to the Office of the CFO in the mid-market, supporting all finance processes from budgeting and planning to consolidations.

15: OnPlan

OnPlan is a financial forecasting platform that is built on Google Sheets. With OnPlan, you can build on traditional spreadsheet financial models with data integrations for your ERP and CRM software.

Best for: OnPlan is designed for decision-makers who are frustrated with their spreadsheets, but not ready to adopt a full forecasting tool.

Features:

• Automates manual spreadsheet maintenance: updating actuals, model structures, parallel updates to multiple scenarios, and formula roll overs each month
• Easy to give stakeholders their own views to input sheets, reports, and dashboards
• Dashboards and data visualizations for better insights

Pros:

• Runs on familiar spreadsheet logic
• Can change and modify your models in Google Sheets with automatic sync of your changes

Cons:

• Only does forecasting so there are limited opportunities to scale the software as your business grows
  
  

Integrations:

• Accounting systems like Microsoft Dynamics, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage Intacct
• Salesforce and HubSpot CRM
• BigQuery
• HRIS systems like Bamboo and ADP Workforce Now
• Spreadsheets and CSV files

Pricing: OnPlan offers three pricing tiers: Essential, Growth, and Growth+. The pricing for each plan isn’t listed on their website, but a clear comparison of features and functionality with each tier is available.

OnPlan vs Prophix

OnPlan only offers forecasting capabilities, so it isn’t designed to scale with your finance needs. Prophix offers a full suite of solutions, including budgeting and planning, reporting and analytics, consolidations, and intercompany management so you can manage all your finance processes in one platform.

16: Mosaic

Mosaic is a Strategic Finance Platform that offers a suite of tools for business leaders to make profitable decisions.

Best for: CFOs and finance leaders at early-stage companies to large, growing teams.

Features:

• Customizable metric configuration and calculation logic to meet unique business needs
• Metrics Catalog offers out-of-the-box insights
• Automated data aggregation, calculation, and visualizations

Pros:

• Live integrations with several databases and robust financial modeling, reporting, and forecasting capabilities

Cons:

• Users cannot export reports as PDF and models do not remain intact when exporting to Excel
  
  

Integrations:

• ERP, CRM and HRIS systems
• Billing systems like Zoho Subscriptions, Chargebee, and Stripe
• Snowflake data warehouse

Pricing: Mosaic offers two tiers of pricing: Foundation and Growth. Both tiers include Mosaic’s two foundational modules: Analytics and Planning. Pricing isn’t listed on the website, but they offer an extensive feature comparison for both tiers.

17: Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting

NetSuite Planning and Budgeting automates labor-intensive processes so finance teams can easily produce budgets and forecasts, model what-if scenarios, and generate reports within one platform.

Best for: Companies of any size, from pre-revenue startups to fast-growing companies.

Features:

• Synchronized data with NetSuite ERP for access to up-to-date financial and operational data
• Scenario modeling and multidimensional planning
• Integrated financial statements so income, balance sheet, and cash flow relate to logic from GAAP

Pros:

• Pre-built synchronization with NetSuite ERP

Cons:

• Analytics and reporting are a separate product
• Only integrates with the NetSuite ERP
  
  

Integrations:

• NetSuite ERP

Pricing: NetSuite has an annual license fee which includes three components: core platform, optional modules, and number of users. There is also a one-time implementation fee. For full pricing details, you have to reach out to a NetSuite sales rep.

NetSuite Planning and Budgeting vs Prophix

To do analytics and reporting in NetSuite, you have to purchase a separate product outside of Planning and Budgeting. Prophix is an all-in-one platform for budgeting and planning, reporting and analytics, consolidations, and intercompany management.

18: Centage Planning 

Centage’s Planning Maestro financial planning and analysis software is a cloud solution that manages budgeting, forecasting, and data analysis.

Best for: CFOs and FP&A teams across nonprofits, healthcare, finance and insurance, manufacturing, retail and hospitality, and software and technology.

Features:

• Simplified building and updating of driver-based budgets
• Test and predict impact of scenarios and evaluate actuals
• Build workforce plans and understand how departments and employees contribute to the bottom line

Pros:

• Flexible, easy to use software for long-term budgeting and forecasting
  
  

Cons:

• Limited data integrations – no CRM or HRIS integrations
  
  

Integrations:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Abila
• NetSuite
• Acumatica
• Sage
• QuickBooks
• Syspro

Pricing: Centage offers three tiers for pricing: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Standard starts at $750 per month, Professional at $1,000 per month, and Enterprise at $1,500 per month. There is no free trial offered, but the website does offer a comprehensive feature comparison for each pricing tier.

Centage vs Prophix

Centage only integrates with your ERP. Prophix integrates with your ERP, CRM, or HRIS to ensure you can track all of your data in one financial performance management solution.

19: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Planning

Oracle Enterprise Performance Management helps teams' model and plan across finance, HR, supply chain, and sales; streamline financial close; and drive better business decisions.

Best for: Primarily the CFO and their team, while functional areas like HR, sales, marketing, and IT can use it for operational planning, budgeting, and reporting.

Features:

• From scenario modeling to long-range planning, line of business planning, and budgeting built on best practices and technology
• Intelligent performance management with embedded AI and machine learning

Pros:

• Access all EPM business processes in a single homepage
• Personalized navigation flows to guide users

Cons:

• Requires more IT involvement than previous generation Oracle EPM offerings
• UI and UX could be improved

Integrations:

• Oracle ERP

Pricing: Pricing isn’t publicly posted, but more information is available through a live demo or by contacting sales.

Oracle EPM vs Prophix

Oracle EPM is designed for large enterprises and works best with Oracle’s Cloud ERP. Prophix was built by finance leaders for finance leaders in the mid-market and has open integrations with almost all ERP systems.

20: Budgyt

Budgyt is a dynamic platform that simplifies financial planning by empowering team-based budgeting, agile forecasting, and granular reporting.

Best for: CFOs, CEOs, marketing and IT leaders, and COOs. Customer industries include nonprofits, sports, manufacturing, medical, retail, financial, and higher education.

Features:

• Dashboards so you can view budgets by P&L, budget comparison, or custom reports
• Historical data instantly available through hyperlinking
• Multi P&L budgeting through consolidation within a hyperlinking environment

Pros:

• Ability to copy budgets and built-in structure makes it easy for growing companies to scale

Cons:

• Browsers outside of Chrome (Safari and Firefox) can be unreliable and present issues when accessing the platform
• Limited integration capabilities

Integrations:

• Currently supports QuickBooks, Xero, and ConnectWise through API connectors

Pricing: Budgyt offers three pricing tiers: Easy, Plus, and Pro for non-profit and for-profit companies. The pricing is structured around department count and feature requirements, but plans start at $199.

21: Board

Board is an all-in-one planning platform for business intelligence, performance management, and predictive analytics.

Best for: Board is suited for large enterprises and multinational corporations in search of an all-in-one platform for performance management and BI analytics.

Features:

• Multidimensional enterprise planning based on a shared data repository
• Simulation models for scenario planning
• Drag and drop reporting and integration with MS Office for distribution
• Self-serve analytics

Pros:

• Integrates with Microsoft Office so you can access your data models in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word
• Includes business intelligence reporting and analytics within the platform

Integrations:

• Integrates with SAP ERP, SAP Business Warehouse, and SAP HANA through a partner-built connector

Pricing: Board does not offer specific pricing online but does offer quotes based on your industry or use case. More information is available by speaking to a Board specialist.

How to choose the best business budgeting software for you

Here are four considerations when choosing the best business budgeting software for you:

1. Understand the problem you are solving. What bottlenecks or roadblocks are in your current budgeting process and what budgeting software offers the features and capabilities to solve them.
2. Look at your data sources. What systems do you need to integrate with your budgeting software to ensure all your data is automatically consolidated in one place?
3. Understand the level of flexibility and collaboration needed. Who will be using the budgeting software, how easy is it to share budgets and reports with stakeholders and collect input or feedback?
4. Look at a solution that can grow with you! Business budgeting might be your current need, but consider how you can incorporate consolidations, intercompany management, reporting and analytics, and forecasting in the future and invest in budgeting software that can grow with you.

FAQs about business budgeting software

Let’s look at a few FAQs around business budgeting software that might help you choose the right solution for you.

What’s the best business budgeting software?

Prophix is the best business budgeting software. With 20+ years as a budgeting software leader and recognition as Gartner Peer Insights Customers Choice for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions, Prophix’s Financial Performance Platform provides you with the tools you need to budget and plan with greater speed, accuracy, and agility. Additionally, Prophix grows with you to address your current budgeting needs and future goals for consolidation, reporting and analytics, or intercompany management.

What’s the best business budgeting software for scaling workflow automations?

Prophix is the best business budgeting software for scaling workflow automations. Process workflows automate your most time-consuming and complex processes like budgeting, planning and reporting. You can configure the dependencies, so the next step of your process automatically starts – with approvals and transparency already built-in.

What’s the difference between business budgeting software vs spend management software?

Business budgeting software is a financial management solution to help finance leaders create, track, and manage company budgets. Spend management software is a tool to manage employee expenses.

What’s the difference between business budgeting software vs planning software?

Business budgeting software is used to create, track, and manage the estimation of your revenue and expenses over a period of time. Planning software organizes projects and resources into phases or sprints and tasks over a period of time. While you can do annual planning, project planning, and portfolio planning in planning software, it’s not built for true financial planning at its core.

Choose the best business budgeting software

Budgeting software is a transformative tool that empowers businesses to thrive in a rapidly evolving financial landscape. It streamlines budgeting processes, fosters collaboration, enables advanced forecasting, provides powerful reporting and analytics, enhances risk management, ensures compliance, and prioritizes data security. Whether you're a startup looking to scale, an established corporation seeking to optimize operations, or a business navigating challenging economic head winds, budgeting software is your strategic ally in achieving financial success and sustainable growth.