If you are like most nonprofits, associations, or for-profit businesses, your current budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes may look worn out.
You are having trouble dealing with seas of data, and traditional tools like spreadsheets can only handle so much.
Thankfully, modern budget forecasting tools can improve your financial management processes. This guide explores the best budgeting and forecasting systems, the key features to consider, and how to choose the right one for your needs.
Let's get to it.
TL;DR - Our Favorite Budget Forecasting Tools
Here are the top budget and forecasting software you can try in your organization or for-profit business:
- Martus
- Prophix
- Vena
- Anaplan
- IBM Planning Analytics
We'll discuss these further in a later section. Before we do, we recognize that choosing the best tool can be difficult. But you don't have to worry.
Martus stands out as a user-friendly, efficient, and cost-effective forecasting and budgeting software tailored for businesses, associations, and nonprofits.
With Martus, you can enjoy seamless interdepartmental collaboration, financial transparency, strategic focus, and data-driven decision-making.
Schedule a discovery call today to learn more about how Martus can make budgeting, forecasting, and reporting a breeze.
Why You Need Budget Forecasting Tools
Whether you are a nonprofit, association, faith-based organization, or small/medium-sized business, you need modern solutions that traditional tools cannot handle effectively.
Here's why you need modern, real-time forecasting solutions:
- Spreadsheets Aren't for Modern Financial Management: You've been using spreadsheets for years, but realize they are inefficient and hold you back. While you can use them for forecasting, they are prone to human error, lack real-time collaboration, and are difficult to maintain.
- Organizations and SMEs Have Become More Dynamic: As businesses and organizations keep changing, the “once-and-done" budgeting approach becomes unsustainable. Reforecasting becomes necessary to accommodate new strategies and funding sources or update your financial models and assumptions. You need to be adaptable and have a tool that lets you create more frequent forecasts without reinventing the whole wheel.
- The Need for Balanced Top-Down and Bottom-Up Collaboration: As organizations, businesses, and technology in the financial sector evolve, there is an increased need to make the planning process more meaningful through collaboration. You have to balance between the top-down approach, which is more aggressive in strategy, and the bottom-up approach, which is more conservative. With proper budget forecasting tools, you can discuss the goals and the assumptions behind the strategies and numbers. You are able to understand and work through each side's biases, leading to more accurate and creative plans.
- Stakeholders Want a Clearer Picture of the Future: Leadership teams, donors, boards, and investors want to see your overall and long-term financial health. A forecasting tool makes it easier to model yearly and multi-year projections, build trust through transparency, and anticipate risks.
- Financial Obligations and Restrictions Vary: As a business or organization, you typically receive finances with specific conditions, such as customer contracts, grant rules, restricted donations, or program budgets. Forecasting tools help you match your revenues or incomes with your expenses to ensure you allocate finances properly.
- Revenues or Incomes Are Typically Inconsistent: Financial cash flows are typically inconsistent. These can include dues for associations, payments for goods or services for a business, and grants for a nonprofit. A forecasting tool helps you plan for fluctuations to build a more resilient budget.
- Strategy and Growth Require Forward-Looking Data: Traditional financial management tools usually fail you when you have to make decisions. Modern forecasting tools rely on data and insights to help you make better-informed decisions.
Benefits of Using Budget Forecasting Tools
You can enjoy the following benefits when you use budget and forecasting software:
1. Holistic Approach Through Connectivity
Forecasting systems integrate with ERP and accounting software. These integrations provide room for a holistic approach as you can leverage data from multiple sources.
Integrating with accounting tools allows you to import real-time financial data automatically. Your forecasts will be based on accurate, up-to-date, and reliable financial information.
2. Significant Cost and Time Savings
You are well familiar with all the hours and human input you spend working with spreadsheets.
Automating manual, tedious activities with budgeting and forecasting software frees up valuable time. You'll be able to focus more on value-added strategic and analytical responsibilities.
3. Seamless Interdepartmental Collaboration
Integrated forecasting and budgeting tools unite data and workflows under a single system, making cross-functional collaboration easier.
You can enjoy shared visibility, silo-free workflows, and role-based protection for sensitive financial information.
Real-time collaboration leads to transparency, better alignment with your operational goals, increased efficiency, better stakeholder inclusivity, and financial accuracy.
4. Easier Financial Forecasting
Automation helps your team project accurate internal financial trends and gain real-time insights into your short-term and long-term financial management.
Automating repetitive tasks increases your efficiency.
You'll have accurate data, making planning, budgeting, and forecasting easier.
5. Ease of Adapting to Uncertainty
Forecasting software provides scenario planning capabilities that empower you to model best-case, worst-case, and average-case scenarios.
You'll be able to pivot fast when changes occur, such as a sharp decrease in revenue or funding that requires you to adjust your budgets and forecasts.
Key Features to Look for in Budget Forecasting Tools
You'll want a robust forecasting tool with innovative features like:
- Capability for Unlimited Budgets: Ensure the software allows you to make unlimited budgets, whether for program or personnel budgeting. For instance, our software allows unlimited budget lines, scenarios, and forecasts.
- Seamless Integrations: Connecting with existing systems helps streamline processes, improve accuracy, and speed up decision-making. For example, Martus, our cloud-based financial management software, integrates with over 25 API-based accounting and ERP systems and file-based platforms to support all your budgeting, forecasting, and reporting needs. These integrations allow you to extract data and consolidate all budget areas in real time. For example, you can import charts of accounts and existing budgets or export budget vs. actual reports.
- Tailored Solutions: Look for a tool tailored to your needs, whether you are a nonprofit, for-profit business, or faith-based organization. For example, a nonprofit needs a mission-focused tool with solutions such as goal-aligned collaborative budgeting.
- Ease of Use: Since forecasting can be overwhelming, you'll want a tool that's easy to use, simplifies financial management, and minimizes the need for extensive team training. For example, our tool has an intuitive, user-friendly interface for all skill levels and is suitable for both financial and non-financial stakeholders.
- Collaborative Capabilities: You should be able to experience the transformative power of collaborative budgeting. The tool should allow interdepartmental workflows, inclusivity for all relevant stakeholders, and real-time updates. With seamless collaboration, you can enjoy increased transparency, trust, efficiency, and accuracy.
- Automation and Advanced Reporting: Use a tool that automates tedious manual tasks to save time and money and boost accuracy. The tool should also support custom reporting for advanced real-time insights to make decisions easier and better.
Top Budget Forecasting Tools
Now that you know why you need a budget forecasting tool and what features to look for, let's check out the best one you can use:
1. Martus
Martus is a cloud-based budgeting and forecasting software ideal for nonprofits and SMBs seeking transparency, collaboration, and efficiency in budgeting, forecasting, and reporting.
Our software prioritizes seamless integrations with your existing ERP and accounting systems, providing real-time insights that help you make accurate, data-informed decisions.
Our tool integrates with over 25 accounting and ERP platforms, including Sage Intacct, Xero, Blackbaud, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, Acumatica, and Sage 100.
If your ERP or accounting system doesn't allow API integrations, you can still streamline your budgeting and reporting with file-based platforms.
Martus also supports integration with file-based platforms such as ACS Realm, Aplos, Fundez, Syspro, Traverse, MIP Server, and Sage 200.
Here's what to expect from our software:
- Collaborative approach that promotes accuracy and transparency.
- Seamless integrations that streamline data flow between different systems and tools.
- User-friendly interface that simplifies financial management and saves you money you would have otherwise spent on training your teams.
- Advanced reporting and forecasting that helps you plan ahead using real-time data-driven insights.
- Tailored solutions, such as nonprofit and mission-driven approaches, that help nonprofits and faith-based organizations align their financial strategy with their mission.
- Empowered teams freed from labor-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone spreadsheets.
- Scalability that lets you adjust as your data, team, or organization grows more complex.
- And so much more!
Check out Martus’s full features to understand how you can gain financial clarity and make smarter decisions through accurate forecasts.
2. Prophix
As a cloud-based financial performance management software, Prophix is ideal for mid-sized to large for-profit enterprises.
The software allows businesses to budget, forecast, report, and consolidate finances. It integrates with different ERPs to bring financial data into one place and simplify workflows for efficient interdepartmental planning.
You can take advantage of Prophix’s AI functionality to uncover issues, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance predictive capabilities.
3. Vena
Vena is a cloud-based complete planning platform that combines Excel's familiar interface with the capabilities of a centralized database, AI-driven insights, and workflow automation.
Designed to enhance functionality with Microsoft 365 Business Central and Power BI, Vena delivers advanced data analytics and AI-powered business insights embedded directly in the software.
The tool is best suited for Excel-reliant mid-sized to enterprise businesses and non-profits looking for more robust planning and reporting capabilities, financial control, and scalability.
You can use Vena to unify budgeting, forecasting, financial close, and scenario modeling within a single centralized system while still enjoying Excel’s familiar outlook.
4. Anaplan
A financial management, planning, and forecasting platform, Anaplan is a complex enterprise solution designed to do more than just financial planning. It unifies financial, supply chain, sales and marketing, operational planning, and HR.
The tool can help you budget and forecast business results or outcomes for your organization by connecting company-wide users, plans, and data.
Anaplan’s platform supports multi-dimensional modeling with complex scenario planning and real-time forecasting, AI-infused insights, and predictive analytics.
The platform is ideal for large enterprises and rapidly growing businesses or organizations with complex interdepartmental planning needs that require real-time collaboration and scalability.
5. IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics is a complex financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform that connects with Microsoft Excel to improve its budgeting, forecasting, and reporting capabilities.
With IBM Planning Analytics, you can gather and analyze multiple financial data points, perform advanced scenario modeling, and perform multidimensional analysis in real time.
The platform's web-based version is called Planning Analytics Workspace and has drag-and-drop functionality, while the Excel add-on, Planning Analytics for Excel, provides the familiar Excel interface with enhanced modeling capabilities.
IBM Planning Analytics is ideal for large enterprises, mid-sized businesses, and organizations seeking to improve their planning and analysis capabilities without ditching familiar tools.
How to Choose the Right Budget Forecasting Tool
Your financial success relies greatly on choosing the right tool that perfectly aligns with your unique needs.
Consider the factors below to choose correctly.
- Your Organization's Needs: Before evaluating any tools, map out your forecasting needs. What type of budgets do you need to predict and report? Do you need to project future finances? From the answers, create a checklist of must-have features and functionality you would need for daily operations.
- Security and Compliance: Check whether the tool has comprehensive security measures to protect sensitive information. Ask if it has passed the SOC 2 compliance audit and whether the audit is current. For instance, we recently passed our second SOC 2 Type 2 audit. Also, ensure there are granular or user-level permissions and restrictions such that other collaborators see and do only what you allow them to.
- How Much You Can Spend and Time-to-Value: Determine your budget for the software and its cost compared to what you get. In addition to subscription costs, you might have to make provisions for training expenses, implementation charges, and extra user-based fees. Compare pricing from different vendors to see what tools are within your budget.
- Ease of Use and Implementation: Not all stakeholders in your organization are conversant with financial processes. Ensure the tool is easy to learn and use for both financial and non-financial users. Check for a user-friendly interface, logical workflows, expert-level training, ongoing support, and a quick setup process. A tool that's easy to use and implement adds substance to the time-to-value aspect.
- Demos and Trials: Before deciding on a tool, ask for trials and demos from the providers you've shortlisted. Check how each tool addresses your unique needs. Your teams should also test the tool in real-world scenarios to understand its usability and performance.
Challenges with Budget Forecasting Software and How to Overcome Them
While highly beneficial, budget forecasting tools face challenges such as:
- Poor Version Control: Most tools usually lack built-in controls to prevent accidental or fraudulent activity, especially on final worksheets. To resolve this, Martus provides lock controls that prevent the end-user from making unintentional changes to completed and approved worksheets.
- Poor Security and Compliance: You must always protect your organization's data. Not every tool offers robust protection solutions. With Martus, we ensure extra security and compliance through Grade A+ Infrastructure Security, SOC 2 compliance software, and Grade A+ Martus App Security.
- Inaccurate or Inadequate Data: Using outdated or incorrect data leads to unrealistic forecasts. To resolve this, use a tool that integrates with ERP and accounting systems to pull reliable data in real time from multiple sources.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Let's close today's discussion with commonly asked questions about budget forecasting software.
What Is the Difference Between Budget Forecasting and Financial Planning Tools?
Budget forecasting tools are critical components of financial planning tools. They combine budgeting and forecasting capabilities, allowing users to predict changes in their budgets and adjust accordingly.
A financial planning tool without budgeting and forecasting capacity would be “incomplete".
Financial planning involves using budgets to allocate resources, while financial forecasting involves strategies for adjusting the budgets as needed.
Are Budget Forecasting Tools Suitable for Nonprofit Organizations?
Budget forecasting tools are suitable for nonprofit organizations. They can use them to predict budget changes, helping them advance strategies for reacting to or resolving such changes accordingly.
The tools help nonprofits manage their unique financial needs, assess past performance, and make wise decisions regarding future resource allocation.
How Do Budget Forecasting Tools Handle Data From Multiple Sources?
Most budget forecasting tools handle data from multiple sources through seamless integration with accounting tools and ERP systems.
As mentioned, our cloud-based software pulls real-time data from accounting tools such as Xero and QuickBooks. The tool can also pull data through file-based integrations with Aplos, Solomon, Sage 50, Syspro, and MIP Server.
Conclusion
Choosing the best budget forecasting tools doesn't have to be tricky. In today's guide, we've explored the top budgeting software for nonprofits, organizations, and for-profit businesses.
We've also considered the key features to look for in budgeting solutions and how to choose the right tool that perfectly suits your needs.
Martus Solutions provides an all-in-one, cloud-based financial management software that promotes collaborative effort, financial accuracy, efficiency, and transparency.
Schedule a free consultation today to learn more about streamlining your budgeting and forecasting process.