FP&A software assists CFOs, finance leaders, and FP&A experts in ensuring the financial health of their organization by tracking and analyzing current outcomes and forecasting future performance. These cutting-edge tools aid teams in streamlining, automating, and improving the accuracy and efficacy of tactical and strategic initiatives.
With providers of all shapes and sizes offering FP&A software, selecting the right platform for your specific needs can be difficult. That's why we've put together this list of the best FP&A tools on the market, including what each one is, how it can benefit you, and where you can find it.
Contents
What is FP&A?
FP&A stands for "financial planning and analysis," and is the backbone of the modern finance department. It’s the budgeting, financial forecasting, financial analysis, and decision-making that support an organization's health and strategy. FP&A teams are responsible for a variety of activities, including periodic financial close and consolidations, strategic and annual planning, monthly forecasting, cash flow forecasting, financial reporting, financial modeling, and what-if scenario planning and analysis.
FP&A teams are responsible for transforming this knowledge into the groundwork for long-term financial growth, stability, and success for the organization. They apply context and narrative to what is happening in the organization and why it’s happening. Their complete financial lens enables them to identify new possibilities and predict unanticipated challenges in order to position the organization for success. As a result, business leaders across the organization look to them for crucial insights and suggestions on how to steer the organization ahead. This places them at the strategic core of the organization.
Why do you need FP&A?
Every business performs accounting as part of its standard operations. For companies that want to grow and scale exponentially, investing in strategic corporate finance is equally as important. Great FP&A professionals support and strengthen numerous aspects of the business, including:
Faster and smarter growth
Identifying new revenue sources and cost-saving opportunities
Assisting shareholders and management in choosing more shrewd investments
Improving the company's budget and resource allocation
Risk Management
Analyzing the effects of past and future financial activities and behavior in order to evaluate risk
Proactive budgeting with an expert understanding of company finances
Ensuring that the company's accounts and finances are audit-ready at closing
Strategic financial planning
Using sophisticated financial modeling to prepare and plan for various scenarios
Developing a strategic finance roadmap that supports rapid company growth
Setting the appropriate financial goals for the organization by analyzing projections and results
The Top 10 best FP&A Software Tools
Datarails
9.8 (Outstanding)
3 Key Pointers
Leader in FP&A software
Quick and easy implementation
Excel interface
Datarails is an FP&A solution made to help FP&A departments revolutionize their manual, excel-based processes, and provide driver-based insights into all aspects of the business. Their cloud-based solution allows you to automate the collection of information from all spreadsheets, platforms, and departments with fast and easy implementation. Datarails' solution wraps around your existing interface and integrates with any preexisting internal systems including your ERP, GL, CRM, and HR data.
With Datarails’ Excel integration, your team can perform analyses and comparisons for real-time financial insights all from the comfort of Excel. Easily database all versions of your work and with the click of your mouse conduct variance analysis, slice and dice data sets, perform drill-downs, FX conversions, and easily review version histories.
Datarails new and popular AI chatbot feature allows for even quicker and easier access to historical data and scenarios. With the popular FP&A software for Excel users, you can consolidate vital information from across the organization to perform advanced investigations and uncover actionable insights.
Board
9.4 (Excellent)
3 Key Pointers
Unified Module
Offers a holistic view of the company’s financial behavior
Promotes user self-sufficiency
The Board BI software consists of an integrated platform that streamlines business intelligence, performance management, and advanced analytics in an easy-to-use software deployment.
Board is used to help small businesses to large enterprises improve their decision-making processes by integrating data analysis and intelligence processes within a single platform. Companies and organizations can use Board to create forecasts, simulate outcomes, analyze all data sources, and plan for a better future.
Board includes a comprehensive set of BI software modules, features, and functionalities that companies and organizations can use for analytics, business intelligence, and performance management. Some of the core modules include predictive analytics, dashboards and reporting, data discovery, scorecards, and simulation tests.
Board integrates seamlessly with popular business software systems and platforms, such as SAP ERP and Microsoft Azure or SQL database tech. Their system also integrates with Office apps to make it easier to present data and insights.
Anaplan
9.2 (Very Good)
3 Key Pointers
Hyperblock calculation engine
App Hub
Ideal for complex financial budgets and plans
Anaplan is an FP&A platform ideal for large enterprises with a strong IT team capable of leading a large-scale transformation project. Their solution is designed to connect teams, systems, and insights, across your entire organization.
At the heart of the Anaplan software lies the Hyperblock calculation engine, which was designed to produce ultra-fast calculations at an unprecedented scale. Hyperblock combines a calculating engine and an in-memory datastore. The system's architecture allows it to determine which downstream blocks will be affected by a change and only update those cells. As a result, the platform can calculate changes almost immediately even for incredibly large data sets making planning, budgeting, and forecasting faster and more effective.
Anaplan additionally offers an App Hub, which is a growing library of plug-and-play applications for common use cases. Anaplanners can quickly find and create industry-specific solutions to handle their company's complex planning challenges. Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting, Sales Forecasting, Financial Consolidation, and Strategic Financial Planning are just a few of the planning apps available on the App Hub. This app catalog dramatically speeds up time to value for business users by eliminating hours of model building.
Workday Adaptive Planning
9.1 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Capabilities outside of Finance and FP&A such as HR
Built for large enterprises
Adapts to change
Workday Adaptive Planning is an enterprise planning software that helps businesses improve their planning, modeling, budgeting, and forecasting. Specifically in the field of finance, Workday offers major companies flexible, scalable financial planning and analytics; sophisticated modeling for any size business; easy-to-use, always-up-to-date reporting; and real-time financial consolidation that speeds up your financial close. The solution also covers FP&A solution needs for modeling, collaboration, analytics, management reporting, board reporting, scenario planning, and financial consolidation.
The Workday framework works seamlessly with cloud-based, on-premise, and file-based applications. It’s easy to get started, too, with a step-by-step guide that ensures even the newest user can get a handle on it. Users can make use of the easy-to-use interfaces, pre-configured connectors, and open APIs that offer a seamless data connection, thanks to pre-built integration choices.
As you plan across your organization, you need data from all your transactional and operational systems. Workday Adaptive Planning is system-agnostic, seamlessly integrating with ERP, CRM, HCM, and BI systems, so planners see key business metrics to understand how they got here and why and use past performance to drive plans and forecasts where they're going.
Planful
8.9 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Focused on continuous planning
Mid-large companies with big FP&A teams
Data source agnostic
Planful is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis software platform that focuses on continuous planning. Their solution covers structured and dynamic planning, consolidation, and reporting. For Finance, Planful highlights use cases for managing cash flow, workforce reporting, financial reporting, annual operating planning, monthly close and consolidation, and multi-dimensional analysis. Planful Predict, the new AI feature also helps process and predict future scenarios based on historic data and ML models.
Planful acts as a single source of truth by capturing financial results at a consolidated level for all entities of an organization and makes it simple for finance, accounting, and business teams to speed up financial planning and reporting. The built-in workflow, which is located in the consolidation control panel, provides a visual snapshot of what work is yet to be done, while fiscal year-end dates can also be customized based on how and when one wants to close the books.
Their solution also provides powerful, bi-directional data integration capabilities allowing access to data from ERP, HCM, or CRM systems; as well as data warehouses, spreadsheets, and many more, whether they are on-premises or cloud-based. Planful boasts seamless integration with Excel, letting you access reports created in Microsoft’s tool from anywhere you already access the platform.
Solver Global
8.3 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Corporate performance management solution
Data warehouse
Solver Academy training
Solver is a Microsoft cloud-based data warehousing and corporate performance management (CPM) system. Businesses can use it to gather and store transactional data in a centralized repository, track and manage different data sources, and create ad-hoc reports. The application provides a host of features such as data visualization, an activity dashboard, asset management, data import/export, and more. Solver is a unified platform that allows managers to allocate budgets, do what-if analysis, and analyze spending.
Their solution supports flexibility, scalability, and accessibility by deploying the most advanced reports, planning models, and dashboards that allow for analysis of both financial and operational large data sets at any time and place with a simple connection to a browser and internet. It also integrates with a variety of third-party software, including Microsoft Dynamics, Intacct, NetSuite, Salesforce, Acumatica, and others.
Vena
8.2 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Pre-configured templates
Clear version control
Customized and automated workflows
Vena is a comprehensive planning platform that connects people, processes, and systems. They provide pre-built solutions for automating time-consuming procedures, allowing you to spend less time checking and more time accomplishing. Specific capabilities include financial planning and analysis, integrated business planning, financial reporting, regulatory compliance reporting, and financial close management. Vena's platform is referred to as a "growth engine" because it focuses on assisting businesses of any size with overall growth.
Vena offers “pre-configured” FP&A software that provides a prescriptive approach to corporate performance management, but can be customized to meet specific business needs and industry requirements. This is ideal for companies that need the fixed process and planning guidance of pre-built FP&A solutions, or that have the resources to uniquely customize those pre-built solutions for their own needs.
Rather than sacrificing the ease of use and power of Excel for a controlled, secure environment, Vena’s software combines native Excel with the collaboration, workflow, security, and analytical capabilities of a traditional CPM solution. Vena integrates with applications such as Sage Intacct, NetSuite, FinancialForce ERP, QuickBooks Online, and Salesforce App Cloud.
Check out our full 2024 review of Vena Solutions.
Jedox
8.1 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Agile
Enterprise-wide collaboration and integrations
Excel Add-in
Jedox offers a SaaS-based solution for unifying corporate performance management and Business Intelligence (BI) within a single, seamlessly integrated software platform. The software solution delivers self-service budgeting, planning, and forecasting across finance, sales, HR, and other business functions. Companies of all sizes and industries use Jedox to automate planning processes and create a seamless data foundation for their Financial Planning & Analysis.
Deployable in the cloud, on-premise, or hybrid, the system combines its own dedicated database with popular data store connectors to blend operational data and centralize planning, analytics, and reporting capabilities.
What's more, Jedox utilizes an Excel Add-in to place data modeling, ad hoc / predictive analytics, KPI-based reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and planning directly inside the familiar spreadsheet environment. Similar Office Add-ins for Word and PowerPoint then make the presentation of Jedox analytics and report documents, which can be updated and shared among stakeholders more conveniently.
Since Jedox operates on the Microsoft Azure platform, their solution is highly compatible with Microsoft solutions such as Excel, Power BI, and Dynamics 365.
Jirav
8.1 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Pre-defined templates
Easy setup and integration across teams
Historical data tracking
Jirav is an all-in-one cloud-based financial planning and analysis tool for small and midsize businesses that helps them forecast revenue and obtain sales insights. Finance teams may connect to numerous data sources and visualize revenue statements, cash flow, and expenses using graphs thanks to the solution's dashboard.
Clients can also be informed about financial achievements and upcoming market developments by sharing dashboards and progress reports with organizations. Users may import and analyze sales data in real-time using third-party apps like QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Salesforce, Gusto, Microsoft Excel, and Google Sheets.
Jirav enables stakeholders to gather data from various business divisions and build and evaluate "what-if" scenarios in order to improve decision-making. Analysts can create revenue models by analyzing the business's quota attainment, bookings, up-selling prospects, and renewals. Managers can also match departmental goals with the organization's goals and priorities, and plan the workforce for available positions accordingly.
Mosaic Tech
8.0 (Good)
3 Key Pointers
Strategic finance platform
Ideal for project-based teams
Built for the entire business
Mosaic is a resource management solution that brings people, planning, and projects together in one place. Timesheets, planners, project scheduling, tracking, tasks, real-time budgeting, and comprehensive AI-powered reporting are all tools you need to unify your team and manage your business. Assess utilization, analyze workload, prioritize and distribute resources, and visualize how time is spent.
Mosaic enables teams to collaborate in a unified, cross-functional platform that serves as a single source of truth for the entire business by easily combining information from ERP, CRM, HRIS, and billing systems. Whether you are founders and CEOs, finance teams and CFOs, investors and the board, or business and operations it doesn't matter, Mosaic empowers the entire business to make better decisions that help drive your business forward.
Conclusion
So which FP&A software solution and vendor should you choose? That depends on your needs, size, and the software already deployed in your back office. With a growing number of products on the market, it is only a sample of what is available, but it represents the best of the best.