Top 5 Financial Projection Software for 2023: Making Informed Business Decisions
One of the most challenging tasks every chief financial officer, controller, or financial analyst has to do is to make predictions about the business. It’s important as well because high-level decisions require some understanding of the events that may happen in the future.
Though financial monitoring can be done manually by using Excel sheets, the results will not be satisfactory. Therefore, almost every SaaS company is investing in financial projection software.
But, what must be present in your financial projection software? Which is the most suitable software program for your company? These are some of the questions we will answer in this post.
Financial Forecasting
It’s the art of projecting the future based on current events and situations. The problem with having insight into the future is that it’s skeptical. We are not wizards who have a crystal ball to look into the future. We can only make assumptions. A seasoned major can make better assumptions than many others, however, it’s not going to line up with reality.
Here scenario planning comes into play. Scenario planning is a method to eliminate by building multiple future visions and then modeling them. If done correctly, it will enable you to watch forecasts and compare predictions with actual events to check out which scenario was more factual.
lead generation projections are important for both startups and established companies for several reasons. They give a better understanding of a company’s financial stability and where it may find hurdles in its financial plan. They also provide crucial information for fundraising, showing where the company is and where it’s likely headed SaaS lead generation
Example
Let’s say your company’s MRR is rising steadily every month. You make a scenario that the MRR will continuously increase in the year to 5%. Then you assume a second scenario by taking a high MRR percentage. And then, you consider a more aggressive scenario with a 10% rise in monthly recurring revenue. As a result, you will have a plan to handle things if they don’t go as per your expectations.
Financial projection software can be handy in this situation. If you require 50 hours to build one model, you can do it in a week. However, when you have 5 major variables with 3 different options for each of them, then it will take you around 12,150 hours to finish all of your models. There is no need to mention that you cannot spend 6 years running your annual financial model.
As I mentioned earlier, the best models are accurate and timely. You don’t only need accurate information to make the right decisions, but timely information as well.
Financial Forecasting Software
Such software helps businesses to plan their resources for future activities. It helps in predicting the expenses and revenues of your company for the upcoming years. A good financial projection tool is one that can help every department of your SaaS company.
For example, a manager might use this software for departmental budgets and financial forecasting. On the other hand, HR officers can use it to design a hiring plan that doesn’t put a burden on your overall budget.
Apparently, this software may seem like a generic solution. Doesn’t every financial tool have a budgeting feature? Financial forecasting is one of the core functions of accountancy but is often neglected. Therefore, you need separate software to manage it.
Key Features to Consider When Choosing Financial Projection Software
What features must be present in your financial projection software depends upon various factors. Size of business, marketing strategies, complexities, etc. However, we have prepared a list of some features you want to see in your selected software.
- Seamless integration with other accounting software to get data from them
- Direct data input
- Both automatic and manual scenario projections for more accurate planning
- Transparent projection to better understand the data projection
- Avant-garde monitoring of expenses and revenue changes
- Hassle-free cash flow projections by using income statements and balance sheets
- Visualization of current trends
Essential Functions of Financial Projection Software
The following are some key functions that every robust finance projection software must be able to perform.
- Fine-tune business strategies
- Budget templates generation
- Efficient management of multiple budget versions
- Track budgets for future forecasting
- Comparison of projected expenses and revenues with actual values
- Consolidation of budget across departments for more efficient cash flow forecasting
- Plan various scenarios for adjusting budgets
- Monitoring and evaluating budgeting processes
Top Financial Projection Software Picks for 2023
The following are the top 5 financial projection software for 2023.
Flightpath by Baremetrics
Flightpath by Baremetrics is an all-in-one software solution for financial modeling. It is designed to forecast revenues and expenses seamlessly. It provides you with fully automated “autopilot” projections and customizable scheme creation. It can integrate with your accounting software and seamlessly load and interpret data. Apart from that, it offers a hiring plan projection as well. It helps you a lot in improving your primary projections.
Get started with Flightpath today. Its plan starts from $1000 per month.
Prophix
In today’s fast-paced world, business is evolving continuously. Your strategies should also evolve rapidly to keep your business growing. Prophix can help you in achieving company goals, improve benefits, and minimize risks. It does so by automating numerous functions such as budgeting, planning, consolidating, and reporting. In both onsite and cloud-based versions, this software supports you with a flexible platform that scales with you.
The pricing model of this software is not transparent. It has an overall rating of 4.5/5 across 67 reviews on Capterra. The positive thing about this software is that it’s upgrading constantly. These upgrades are a roadmap to new upcoming features. The negative about this finance software is that it is pretty difficult for non-finance people to understand it.
Jirav
It offers a full-service budget, forecasts, and reports solution. It is easy and quick to implement Jirav in your company and it can meet the needs of any size of company with up to 500 employees. It can integrate with other accounting solutions such as QuickBooks Online, Xero, balance sheets, or NetSuite.
Jitav starts at $250/month. However, to get its advanced and best features, you have to opt for at least a $850/month plan.
On Capterra, it has a rating of 4.8/5 across 12 reviews. Their customer support is often praised, however, the data visualization is insufficient.
Adaptive Planning
This software solution can take your cash flow statements, budgets, plans, financial reports, and models to an extremely new level. It offers a familiar feel, which can assist you in streamlining different processes. It offers strategic insights to shareholders as well. You can rely on Adaptive Planning for customized calculations and specific requirements. It also evolves along with your needs.
The pricing is not transparent for this software. However, Capterra reports that it starts from $15000/user. Adaptive Planning has a rating of 4.5/5 across 170+ reviews. Its powerful interface and continuous evolving ability ate the key positive points. However, some users claimed that it’s difficult to set it up initially and import data.
Vena
Wouldn’t it be nice if you can connect your departments, previous systems, and programs, all while using data to plan finance with instant sight into your current and upcoming cash flow? With Vena, it will be possible. This financial projection software has integrating and planning ability with a familiar, excel-like interface. It combines different departments to work on the company’s goals on a single platform with no learning curves. It’s flexible, easy to operate, and scalable.
It doesn’t have transparent pricing, and has a rating of 4.3/5 on Capterra across 13 reviews. Many users mentioned that it’s easy to use this software which is a positive point. However, they also reported that it’s slow, especially when it comes to creating templates.
How Flightpath by Baremetrics Can Help
Flightpath by Baremetrics can provide you with all the features and everything else a growing SaaS company needs.
It can help you with cash flow monitoring, revenue recognition, scenario planning, and many other tasks. Sign up for a demo of this software.