FP&A teams are the central nervous system of a business. They provide analysis and insights that help management make better decisions, supporting the rest of the company through budgeting, planning and forecasting.
But to drive the invaluable data-driven decision making that fuels today’s businesses, you need an Financial Analysis & Planning Software that will centralize all your data sources in one place, help you easily collaborate with team members and model data with complete flexibility.
Searching for such an integral solution can be daunting, though. What exactly should you be looking for in an FP&A solution? What’s going to be critical in facilitating your business growth? And how do the current FP&A solutions on the market measure up?
If that seems like a lot to figure out, don’t worry—we’ve got a place to start. Keep reading for answers to all these questions—and to see how 15 of the best FP&A software solutions out there measure up.
What Does FP&A Software Do?
FP&A platforms provide the backbone for many finance teams’ planning activities today. In fact, FP&A software is a key tool, according to Gartner, “that enables organizations to manage their enterprise-wide financial planning, forecasting and budgeting process."
These solutions empower businesses to "plan and analyze business financial strategy for the organization across all three financial statements (profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow)." And in doing so, these tools allow you to better understand your business’s overall financial health, look ahead to make better decisions for the future and collaborate on budgeting and planning.
The best FP&A software solutions can give your team a leg up, as they can support you in analyzing your business performance and driving your growth goals. For example, FP&A platforms can help you:
FP&A tools can help you centralize your data and integrate the source systems you rely on—such as your ERP, CRM, HRIS, data lakes and warehouses—so that the information you need is always available. With your data living in one place, instead of across disparate systems and static spreadsheets, your business can more readily act on it to support decision making. With a “single source of truth”, you can trust that you have the most up-to-date data.
By centralizing data, rooting out errors and automating certain tasks, FP&A tools can save your team time by taking repetitive, manual work like data entry and updating reports off your plate. This lets you do more with less and spend more time on the strategic work that will support business growth.
Having up-to-date data always available means you’re better equipped to make the data-driven decisions that are going to help your business thrive. Through better access to data—as well as tools that empower scenario planning, rolling forecasts, financial modeling and more—you can stay agile to changes in the market and better set your business up for success. Reporting and dashboarding tools can further help you share that analysis with other stakeholders, to enable better decision making at every level. By giving other departments self-serve access to the data they need, your FP&A saves precious time as they won’t have to field as many requests for information.
So, with those benefits in mind, how do you choose the best FP&A software for your business needs?
To empower your FP&A processes, you need a platform that will drive confident and connected decision making and ensure business-wide accountability. One that offers data analytics, guides business intelligence, lets you share actionable and scalable insights across your organization and drives strategic business planning and up-to-the-minute analysis.
To achieve all of this, the best FP&A software for your business should have:
Real-time analytics give your team the answers you need, when you need them, helping you easily spot trends and form insights. Look for tools with strong integration capabilities that will allow you to better understand your organizational performance by pulling from a variety of sources and make decisions with agility and speed.
Your FP&A platform isn’t going to get you the results you need if nobody’s using it. To ensure your team incorporates your FP&A tool into their daily processes, seek out a solution that’s easy for them to use, intuitive to learn, familiar and flexible. For instance, since a majority of finance professionals are fluent in Microsoft Excel, you may want to consider a tool with a native-Excel interface.
When your FP&A solution incorporates cloud-based business intelligence (BI) functionality with visual dashboarding capabilities, you benefit from advanced, easily shareable insights anytime you need them, to help you reach your goals faster. And today, many tools also incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), for deeper analysis and faster insights. For ultimate value, look for these capabilities in your FP&A platform.
From performance management tools that help you maintain a view of company performance, to financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting solutions that allow you to stay on top of business growth and spending, you want to make sure the FP&A platform you choose has a full list of functionality on hand to help your business thrive. But don’t stop there. Task management tools let you manage your processes across your team and other departments, assuring everyone understands who owns which tasks, and driving accountability with due dates. Audit trails can also allow you to understand the changes that have been made to your data and when.
Finally, you want to look for an FP&A platform that will support your business’s unique planning needs. For instance, flexible modelling capabilities make it possible to easily add planning use cases as your business grows. And multidimensional modelling helps support complex processes like incentive compensation planning that require multiple types of data across areas like headcount and sales. Meanwhile, scenario analysis lets you explore different scenarios, to better understand your future needs. All are key for FP&A teams today looking for a full view of company health and performance.
To help in your search for the best FP&A software for your business, here’s a list of some of the most sought-after FP&A platforms available today.
Take a look at the features and integrations they offer, and some of the pros and cons according to the customers that use them.
Vena’s Excel-native FP&A software helps automate the process of compiling, updating and distributing financial and operational reporting so that your team can spend less time aggregating data and more time analyzing it. It brings all the data from source systems such as your ERP into a centralized database and automatically refreshes your templates with the latest data.
With extensible APIs, native integrations with Excel, PowerPoint and Power BI, along with multidimensional modeling and embedded AI capabilities, Vena helps you accelerate analysis, so you can find creative solutions to complex business problems. Vena works with partners around the globe—with offices in Canada, India and the UK—and customers worldwide, including the Kansas City Chiefs, WWF-Canada, Sprout Social and Liberty Bank.
The end-user interface is intuitive and easy to use, as it directly uses Excel, which is familiar to most finance team members and external collaborators
Has two AI tools: Vena Copilot, a complete planning AI assistant, and Vena Insights, an intelligent reporting and analytics solution
Offers flexible reporting capabilities across financial and operational planning, supporting not only typical FP&A processes like budgeting and forecasting, but workforce planning, demand planning, sales forecasting and more
There can be a learning curve when first getting started and setting up data models
Large and complex files may be slower to load
Has a robust implementation process which requires a solid upfront plan
Vena integrations include:
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage
ERP: SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Oracle NetSuite
CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot
HR and Payroll: ADP, Workday, BambooHR
Data Storage: Snowflake, OneDrive, Dropbox
Other: Excel, Power Point, Power BI
Vena is suitable for companies that work heavily in Excel and would like to have the choice of leveraging pre-built reporting templates or want the flexibility to create more complex customized reports.
In the BARC 2024 Planning Survey—a survey of 1,272 respondents who evaluated software on criteria from business benefits to customer satisfaction—Vena received top ranks across categories such as project length and product satisfaction.
Intuitive, Excel-native interface
Support across both financial planning and analysis and financial close management
Centralized database
AI-powered analysis and assistance
Collaboration and workflow planning tools
Built-in audit trails and cloud-based security
Anaplan is a web-based, enterprise-level business modeling and planning platform. It serves multiple areas across the business, including finance, marketing, sales, supply chain and workforce management. Anaplan offers forecasting and scenario modeling capabilities, with real-time access to data and collaboration capabilities.
Anaplan can be scaled across the organization
Supports complex calculations
Is highly customizable to accommodate multiple use cases
Some customers find their pricing model confusing
Integrations are limited
Modeling can be complex and difficult to use and maintain
Anaplan integrations include:
Data Visualization: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI
CRM: Salesforce
ERP: Microsoft Dynamics 365
Reporting: Workiva
Other: Adobe, DocuSign
Anaplan is best for larger enterprises with multiple use cases and an extensive IT team to help support implementation. The platform is a fit for organizations looking to support a variety of business reporting processes, such as finance, sales, forecasting, supply chain and operations.
Hyperblock calculation engine and in-memory datastore
Real-time data access
AI-powered predictive insights
No-code forecasting
SSO support and data encryption
Used to streamline business-wide planning, consolidation, reporting and visual analytics, Planful lets you see performance data at scale, automate, improve reporting and align planning processes. Their financial performance management software is meant largely for bigger FP&A teams and CFOs looking to streamline their planning efforts.
Planful is easy for non-financial users to use
Adheres to common security and compliance requirements
Provides consistent, customizable and easy-to-use financial reporting
Challenging to maintain, requiring significant IT and technical support
Separated into two modules—structured planning and dynamic planning—which can create bottlenecks and added complexities in how data models and processes work together
Has a limited Excel add-in, with no way to easily export live reports into Excel
Planful integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage Intacct
CRM: Salesforce
ERP: NetSuite
Integrations: Boomi
HR and Payroll: ADP, Workday, Paylocity
Reporting: Workiva
Other: Google Drive
Planful is an option for companies looking to streamline planning and budgeting cycles, improve analytics and reporting, and gain better insights into their financial performance. The platform is a good fit for larger companies with FP&A teams that want to work more collaboratively within their business.
Pre-built planning, budgeting and forecasting templates
AI and machine learning tools
Real-time data
Driver-based forecasting
Self-service reporting
Prophix's corporate performance management (CPM) software is designed to improve profitability and minimize risk by automating budgeting, forecasting, reporting and consolidation-to-close processes for better decision making. Prophix is available in the cloud or on premise.
Prophix is scalable and supports multiple use cases
Easy to build and customize reports
Has 20+ years of category and industry experience
Limited Microsoft Excel integration
Weak business intelligence and machine learning integrations or tools
Can be slow to load data
Prophix integrations include:
ERP: Acumatica, Deltek, QAD, Syspro, Totvs, Microsoft Dynamics 365
Accounting: Sage, Viewpoint
Sales and Marketing: Zendesk Sell
Prophix is ideal for teams looking to mostly move away from Excel, especially mid-size and smaller companies with users that aren’t highly tech-savvy.
Dynamic modeling
Collaboration tools
Cross-functional planning
Integrated data sources
Predictive forecasting
Workday Adaptive Planning is an enterprise planning and analysis solution designed to empower collaboration, insights and agility. It offers modeling and analytics functionality for organizations of all sizes, with customizable offerings for different use cases.
Has brand recognition and a large customer base, as a provider of a broader suite of platforms
Is flexible and customizable to certain use cases, including workforce planning, sales planning and financial planning
The drag-and-drop dashboard functionality is easy to use, even for non-technical users
No native Microsoft Excel integration, but instead uses proprietary modeling and formula language
Has a steep learning curve, with users reporting weak support and implementation services
Setup and customization can be challenging and take time
Workday Adaptive Planning offers the following integrations:
ERP: SAP, NetSuite, Oracle
CRM: Salesforce
Accounting: Sage Intacct
Workday Adaptive Planning is ideal for businesses that are already using Workday HCM and looking for reporting capabilities that help with quickly identifying changing conditions and prioritizing tasks to maximize efficiency and collaboration.
AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities like anomaly detection, outlier reporting and intelligent forecasting
Elastic Hypercube Technology, for added memory and computing power
Self-service reports and interactive dashboards
System-wide data security
Real-time reporting
A relative newcomer to the FP&A technology market, Cube is an FP&A platform that provides real-time access to financial and operational data. It enables strategic planning, automates financial reporting and supports multidimensional planning within a spreadsheet environment, with flexible use cases across functions.
Cube lets you get started fairly quickly
It provides customizability and flexibility
Integrates with both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets
Report formatting doesn’t save, meaning users need to reformat reports manually each time
The product is relatively new, and the technology still immature, with a limited feature set and functionality that's still evolving
There are modeling limitations, including a limited number of dimensions your organization can include
Cube integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel
ERP: NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics Suite
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce
Accounting: Sage Intacct
HR and Payroll: ADP, BambooHR, Workday
Data Visualization: Tableau
Data Storage: Snowflake
Cube is a good fit for businesses that already use Google Sheets or Excel and want to add to its functionality. The platform is best suited for lean finance teams taking their first steps in FP&A automation.
Drag-and-drop reports and report templates
New AI-powered forecasting
Collaboration tools
Consolidated data with configurable data mapping
Automated audit trails
The Mosaic platform empowers FP&A across expense planning, revenue planning and headcount planning, enabling processes like financial reporting, financial modeling, what-if analysis and forecasting. It helps automate monthly and quarterly reports, empowers collaborative budgeting and uses AI to surface insights faster.
Customers call the platform user friendly
Their customer support gets good reviews
The financial modeling tools are easy to use
The platform is still developing and some features and integrations are still in early stages
Reviewers of the software say there’s a learning curve for new users
Version controls can be confusing
Mosaic’s integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
ERP: NetSuite
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Zoho
HR and Payroll: BambooHR, Workday, Paylocity, Gusto
Data Storage: Snowflake
Mosaic is ideal for small to mid-sized businesses that want to move away from Excel and need an alternative platform that’s still relatively user friendly, but aren’t looking for an extensive feature set.
Financial and management reporting with pre-built templates
Scenario planning and what-if analysis
Shareable real-time dashboards
AI-powered analysis
Collaboration tools
Jirav is a budgeting, planning and forecasting solution that automates reporting and visualizes results through dashboarding functionality. It helps enable FP&A decision making through scenario analysis, rolling forecasts and driver-based financial modeling—connecting data sources and ensuring data visibility and accuracy.
The platform is easy to use and customizable to users’ needs
The customer service team gets good reviews
It offers efficient forecasting, budgeting and reporting functionality
There is a learning curve involved when getting the platform up and running
Some of the integrations can be difficult to work with
Caps on reports and custom tables can be limiting
Jirav integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel
ERP: NetSuite
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage Intacct
HR and Payroll: BambooHR
Data Visualization: Tableau
Data Storage: Snowflake
Payment Processing: Stripe
Customer Service: Zendesk
Jirav is designed for small and mid-sized businesses, as well as accounting and CFO advisory firms. It’s ideal for businesses with a dedicated person working in-house who can own the platform.
Pre-designed templates
Custom reporting
Real-time data access
AI-driven analysis
Budgeting and forecasting automations
The Centage FP&A platform offers an alternative user experience to Excel, with a formula-free, drag-and-drop interface that empowers processes like budgeting, workforce planning, forecasting and scenario planning. It has reporting functionality, collaboration tools and workflow planning solutions.
The platform allows for easy customization to meet a variety of business needs
The rollup feature makes it easy to plan for multiple companies or divisions
Its customer support gets good reviews
Setting up and learning the tool can be time consuming
The interface can be less intuitive than an Excel-native experience
Data processing can be slow
Centage integrations include:
ERP: Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, SAP, Syspro, Acumatica
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage, Abila
Centage is a good option for FP&A teams that don’t want to work in Excel, preferring a formula-free solution instead.
Drag-and-drop interface
Collaborative functionality
Consolidated data
Workflow planning tools
Role-based access controls
OneStream sells itself as an xP&A (extended planning and analysis) platform, with support for FP&A as well as sales, marketing, people planning and supply chain departments. The cloud-based solution offers strategic planning, modeling, predictive analytics, scenario planning, forecasting and budgeting tools.
OneStream is easily customizable across a range of use cases
It’s easy to integrate source systems
It’s flexible across a variety of use cases
The user experience can be overwhelming and unintuitive for new users
Forecasting can be overly complex
Saving off-line copies can be time-consuming
OneStream integrations include:
ERP: SAP, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle
HR and Payroll: Oracle HCM, PeopleSoft
OneStream is a good fit for enterprise businesses with a lot of customization needs, looking to extend across a variety of use cases outside of FP&A.
Embedded AI, machine learning and predictive analytics
Enterprise-level data security and privacy
Pre-built integration connectors
Audit trails
Guided workflows
An integrated business planning platform, Pigment offers tools that empower FP&A teams but also goes beyond, with solutions for sales and revenue teams, HR teams, supply chain teams and ESG as well. It offers automation, collaboration, reporting, visualization and AI capabilities—helping to empower and streamline planning; budgeting and forecasting; headcount planning; sales capacity planning and more.
Flexible to different business needs and use cases
The solution set is evolving, with new features added regularly
The collaboration features get good reviews
There can be a learning curve for new users
The software can lag at times, affecting the user experience
It’s still a relatively young solution, meaning many features are still in development
Pigment integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets
ERP: NetSuite, SAP
CRM: Salesforce
Accounting: Sage Intacct
HR and Payroll: Workday
Data Storage: Snowflake, Google Cloud Storage, AWS Redshift, Azure SQL
Business Intelligence: Looker
Pigment is a good fit for businesses looking for a relatively simple tool that can be used for FP&A and beyond, to empower use cases across other departments as well.
AI and machine learning capabilities
Dashboards and reporting
Built-in collaboration tools
Automated workflows
Enterprise-level data security
Jedox’s FP&A platform empowers planning, budgeting and forecasting, integrating real-time data to empower scenario modeling, streamline financial planning and enable ad hoc reporting. You can apply automations for added efficiencies and make use of AI and machine learning functionality for deeper insights. Customers can access web or mobile experiences, as well as an Excel-like experience through a Jedox add-in.
Can handle large datasets
The Excel add-in helps make the user experience more intuitive
The platform can handle complex modeling
Some users find the reporting functionality clunky
The solution isn’t always user friendly and support documentation can be overly complex
Can be slow processing data
Jedox integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel
ERP: Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, NetSuite
CRM: Salesforce
Data Visualization: Microsoft Power BI, QlikView, Tableau
Data Storage: Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server
Workflow Automation: Power Automate
Jedox is a good fit for businesses with large datasets and complex modeling needs, looking to make better use of their data while ensuring proper governance.
Multidimensional modeling, planning and reporting engine
AI-powered analysis
Standardized and integrated data models
Workflow planning and collaboration tools
Data governance and accessibility management
NetSuite Planning and Budgeting is part of Oracle’s NetSuite business management suite. The FP&A tool enables budgeting and forecasting, scenario modeling, reporting, predictive analytics, rolling forecasts and modeling—helping teams automate many manual FP&A processes to empower data-driven decision making. Synchronization with NetSuite ERP ensures data is available and up to date.
Offers customization options
NetSuite offers flexible options across use cases
Offers real-time data access
The implementation can be overly complicated without third-party assistance
The user experience can be overwhelming and takes time to learn
Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel
ERP: NetSuite
Other: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook
Oracle NetSuite Planning and Budgeting is a good fit for businesses already using Oracle NetSuite in other areas of the business, looking to expand their usage to new use cases.
AI-powered predictive planning and modeling
Dashboarding
Synchronized data
Automation
Multidimensional planning
Another FP&A platform by Oracle, Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) helps enable processes like planning, budgeting, forecasting, account reconciliation, financial close and reporting. It consolidates financial and operational data and offers embedded AI and machine learning to monitor plans, forecasts and variances. The platform also features dashboarding technology to help better visualize data.
Integrates well with other Oracle products
Custom models provide flexibility for different use cases
A trusted, well-established brand
Loading data for reports can be slow
Newest version may require more IT involvement than in the past
The user experience can be unintuitive and clunky
Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel
Other: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook
Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is a good fit for businesses already using Oracle in other areas and are familiar with the brand and its user experience.
Key Features
AI and ML-powered anomaly detection
Predictive planning
Task management
Process automation
Personalized navigation flows
Datarails is a financial planning and analysis platform that offers data visualization capabilities, enabling financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, scenario modeling and analysis. Finance teams can benefit from the familiar spreadsheet environment of Excel through the Flex add-in (although it doesn’t allow users to make use of Excel’s full features when it comes to sharing and modeling).
Easy to consolidate and customize reports
Makes it easy to work within an Excel interface
Offers a low-cost option that makes it a good starter solution
Datarails has been known to take part in fake reviews and questionable sales tactics
The product is in development and has performance issues, with key features and capabilities missing
The Excel add-in does not allow you to use Excel’s full features
Datarails integrations include:
Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel
ERP: NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce
Accounting: QuickBooks, Sage
HR and Payroll: BambooHR
Data Visualization: Power BI, Tableau
Data Storage: Snowflake
Ecommerce: Shopify
Datarails is best for small and mid-size businesses looking for a tool that can support basic financial reporting use cases, but FP&A teams should be careful to look out for suspicious sales tactics.
AI assistant
Automated data consolidation and collection
Central database
Collaboration tools
Real-time, shareable dashboards
Now that you have a place to start, there’s nothing stopping you from beginning your search for the best FP&A software for your business.
When it comes to implementing FP&A tools, we recommend starting by having conversations with your end users—your finance team, controllers, budget managers and other stakeholders. See what’s important to them, then review your business goals to see what processes are most important to your organization’s future success.
Use those insights to come up with a list of a few potential use cases you want to focus on early in your implementation process. Then ask these three questions:
Where can we get the most value?
What will be the easiest to do?
What’s going to get done the quickest?
From there, it’s all about carefully comparing the pros and cons of each vendor in your shortlist to make sure you end up with the solution that best meets your unique business needs. Because every business will need to plan differently—and will require a different solution to enable their goals.
See Vena in Action—Request a demo of Vena’s FP&A platform today.
Nicole Diceman is Director, Product Marketing at Vena. With a proven track record of driving product strategy and direction, she is heavily involved in driving new product ideas and development efforts and is closely aligned with customer needs and requirements. With her extensive knowledge and experience in product marketing, FP&A and the Vena platform itself, Nicole is a regular contributor to the Vena blog and often speaks at virtual and in-person events to share her ideas. A powerful advocate for product marketing innovation, Nicole is always on the lookout for creative new ways to bring additional value to Vena customers.
