What’s the big deal about financial analysis software?

Gartner’s research found that 47% of CMOs still apply basic budgeting techniques. Marketing teams that use advanced budgeting tools and approaches tend to have stronger financial and profit and loss statements.

GetApp survey got such conclusions:

• 56% of small and midsize companies change their annual budgets throughout the year
• 45% don’t apply zero-based budgeting
• 45% use ad hoc budgeting only as needs appear
• 43% apply software running to handle annual budgets
• 33% chance in annual budgets according to activity performance

A value of business budgeting software

Business budgeting software gives insights and knowledge to exclude wasteful expenses and get to profitability quicker. A well-planned budget has such benefits:

• Visibility of required sales to cover costs
• Knowledge about how much money you may reinvest in the business
• Insight when you may afford to hire additional staff

A good budget helps to stop guessing and dive deeper to explore the real numbers. For companies, running operations demands business owners to review finances and their approaches.

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Many companies still use manual accounting tools to track, recognize and analyze data, and create financial reports. These tools may involve everything from budgeting, financial statements, forecasts, etc. However, manual accounting is a very time-consuming process, that’s why many companies switch their attention to budgeting and forecasting tools.

The main reason why software solutions are so attractive for business owners is that manual budgeting has a risk of human error. Besides, the employees develop reports much slower and lower quality. It is challenging for them to process bigger transactions, and easy for the advanced budgeting and forecasting tools.

When you use budgeting software, you save your accounting data in one place. The software systems may quickly solve mathematical functions to speed up processes. Advanced backup systems make sure that your data is totally safe and secure.

Let’s consider the key functions of financial statement analysis software and any possible budgeting software.

1. To manage finances

Nowadays, the workflow is very fast, and managers are overwhelmed by the huge amount of data. The sophisticated software brings more control over the company’s operations and financial issues. Permanent finance reviews and budgeting keep an organization’s funds in check and ensure everything runs smoothly.

Even the most experienced business owners can’t predict when revenues change from the early forecasts. Budgeting software allows noticing the budget state at some point to align the process accordingly.

2. For good planning

Usually, organizations compare existing and previous budgets to identify whether results are refining based on financial activities connecting equity, expenses, and assets. Financial analysis software for accountants will simplify their work and automate the entire budgeting process. It allows for making quicker planned inputs involving outputs, expenses, and sales revenues.

3. To manage static budgets

Some companies distribute static budgets to specific operations to manage expenses. For instance, a construction organization may have a fixed budget for the storage annually according to the number of sales it gets.

4. To assess the performance

A budget helps to see achieved results and evaluate performance. Usually, businessmen use it to evaluate expenses and match them to the entire expenditures. It helps to find and solve any problems and eliminate mistakes.

Budget software for small businesses helps to save costs and exclude the need to hire a team. This is an affordable way to handle their finances and pay attention to the most important issues.

5. To limit expenditures

For companies of any size, it is important to ensure that they do not spend more than they can afford now. But manual accounting brings many mistakes, so budget software for small businesses or any accounting software brings great accuracy to the process. It may quickly compose records of previous transactions to limit expenses.

6. To handle the cash flow

Companies usually apply budgeting software tools to handle their cash flow wisely or to identify whether they have enough funds to keep working.  For instance, a small firm may use budgeting software to identify if it can start boosting more deals while previous deals are in progress.

7. To set net worth

Most software systems for accounting involve functions that may determine a business’s net worth. This is the amount or value of each asset you possess without the debt. It is the entire assets that stay after your account for all compulsory expenses.

Net worth is the most valuable measure of your company’s wealth. The data it involves is essential if you want your business to grow. It is also applied as a record of your business’s financial health and may be presented to potential stockholders.

Accounting tools bring a 360-degree view of your accounts. For instance, it can show your business net worth on one page and show you how it is going on in real-time. It helps to make adjustments and refine results.

Types of financial analysis software for accountants

Each business plan is different and has various budgeting requirements. Some can demand software to control purchased equipment, while others can require it to track payroll or sales. Selecting the right type of accounting software that fits your business needs is essential. There can be a few reasons for this. Based on your processes, you may apply a customized budgeting tool to handle your funds in ways that ensure the most value or simplify it to use wisely.

Let’s explore possible types of financial analysis software.

Enterprise budgeting software

Accounting software doesn’t only allow small companies to decrease costs; it may also help large businesses bring finances to an enterprise level. Bigger companies are spread out in various departments, and planning and distributing budgets for all of them is challenging. The web enterprise accounting app is made to handle and simplify this complexity. To take advantage of the tool, companies often order additional services like workflow management, business intelligence, and project planning. Most enterprise software delivers cheap accounts, but they are only for small companies that have a limited amount of employees. If you want to have more features, you need to order paid packages.

Commercial budgeting software

If you prefer graphical visualization of expenses, commercial budgeting software will greatly serve you. It involves reports and graphs in which you may summarize key business information simply and gain insight into a business’s health. This software needs to include these features:

• Ability to analyze, report, and dashboard
• Excel and web integration (it gives users a chance to use them for forecast data collection and creation of a basic budget)
• Free additional modules
• Cube-based technology. It means that developing calculations are easy, aggregations appear automatically, dice and slice reporting data are permanent, and it’s simpler to apply and secure.
• Self-sufficient

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheet programs are one of the most popular software for budgeting. They are usually applied to recount costs and meet key accounting needs and even with progressive functionalities.

Customized accounting software

It helps your company to develop its own accounting software to hold various departments. The main goal is solving specific accounting problems.

Customized software is one of the most popular nowadays because of the need for personalized solutions to specific business needs. With this software, managers can handle their budgets in a meaningful way. Moreover, it helps to free up personnel to successfully monitor growth and plan expenses.

Financial forecasting software reviews

Financial forecasting software helps to manage financial predictions and patterns to foresee likely revenue patterns and possible future finances. Such software brings accuracy to the prediction and allows feeling more confident in business planning. Financial forecasting software strengthens data and shows any market changes. Check out forecasting software reviews below.

• Centage is a user-friendly automated budgeting tool with synchronized P&L, Cash Flow reporting, and Balance Sheet. It helps your finance team to create business predictions, enabling them to make quicker, data-driven decisions.
• Vena Solutions fits medium and large-sized organizations. Vena brings companies cloud solutions that mix Excel with reporting & analytics, a centralized database, and workflow.
• Adaptive Insights. This is a web-based system for forecasting, budgeting, and reporting. It is delivered in a SaaS model without buying new hardware. The system is similar to Excel and easy to use. It fits manufacturing, healthcare companies and nonprofit organizations, and even IT enterprises. Adaptive Insights has a wide network of value-added resellers in various countries.
• BudgetPak. It is a cloud-based solution that can be customized to business needs, and a self-service reporting system frees up managers. It brings real-time, bi-directional relations with Excel to share data. Dashboards may be changed by applying pre-defined graphs and charts.
• IBM Planning Analytics. It allows companies to automate spreadsheet-based, manual operations and connect financial plans to business strategy. It shows a customizable workspace that may be implemented for business managers and cost center owners. IBM Planning Analytics boosts practices such as rolling forecasts and driver-based planning. Users may perform difficult dimensional calculations to dissect customer profitability, price/volume variance, and sales mix. This tool helps to explore insights automatically and make decision-making with advanced predictive capabilities. It also involves dashboards and scorecards to track KPIs.
• PlanGuru. It fits nonprofits and small businesses. The tool helps accountants to develop financial forecasts, create budget analyses and face business challenges. This software system develops and handles balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. With more than 20 forecasting methods, companies may forecast and analyze their financial requirements. PlanGuru is a cloud-based reporting tool and finance dashboard. This is an entirely customizable interface that helps financial advisors and accountants track the main financial KPIs. Users may develop private or public dashboards and use advanced Excel features to create reports. Users may watch tutorial videos in order to understand the product better.
• deFacto. deFacto helps users to view the entire financial health of their organization in real-time, based on various perspectives throughout all functional areas involving tax, finance, sales, supply chain, etc. deFacto Planning may be integrated into the cloud, on-premise, or in a hybrid environment. Also, companies have the ability to switch from one to another version of the software. Built on Microsoft technology, it offers Office 365, Excel, and SQL Server with Analysis Services. It matches companies of any size. So, the advanced software makes it easy to manage finances, predict expenses and eliminate risks. With the right technology, you may reach a new level of accuracy and make only a data-driven decision.

Financial analysis software helps to exclude manual work and automate operations, freeing up your personnel. Many innovative tools can be customized to your business needs and aligned with your strategy. Moreover, it helps to plan the company’s financial direction and prepare in-depth reports for the shareholders.