Top 10 Business Budgeting Software (Paid & Free)2025 Review

Business budgeting software is a system that helps you plan, track, and forecast company finances in one place. These tools are here to automate the project financial management process.

They typically cover:

Most tools also include dashboards and customizable reports so finance and operations can see key metrics at a glance, like run-rate revenue, gross margin, utilization, and cash flow.

Productive is one of the best budgeting software for professional services firms. It offers a variety of features that support client project management, while delivering in-depth insights on business financial performance.

By using Productive, you’ll be able to switch from using different CRM, HRM, time trackers, billing, and task tracking tools to a centralized platform for budgeting.

Learn more about how Clear Launch got more predictability and consistency with Productive.

Some of Productive’s key features for business budgeting include:

Let’s explore these features in more detail:

With Productive’s Budgeting feature you can easily up fixed‑fee, hourly, retainer, or mixed budgets in minutes. Either create your templates or use ours reusable templates so project setup is consistent across finance teams.

Once rates and scope are set, Productive tracks burn and margin in real time and alerts you before you overshoot (so PMs aren’t waiting on month‑end spreadsheets to spot issues).

Productive also includes overhead management, expenses tracking, and revenue recognition for more accurate insights into business finances.

Productive’s overhead calculator spreads overhead costs per hour, which means that you can understand your true profit margin across clients and make better financial decisions.

Expense tracking also includes Purchase Orders. Expenses can be managed through the platform, added to your budgeting, and even forecasted.

Productive’s financial management doesn’t stop at real-time financial reports; you can also forecast your metrics to predict your future budgeting performance.

Turn your schedule into a forecast. As you assign people to projects, Productive projects revenue, costs, margin, and utilization weeks and months ahead.

Forecasts update when plans change, so you can compare projected burn to approved budgets and spot shortfalls early. If a budget is heading off course, adjust allocations or timing and see the impact before it hits your margin.

Another metric that can be forecasted is utilization, which provides useful insights into your workforce planning.

Utilization forecasting helps with workforce planning, showing where service teams are over or under capacity so you can rebalance work or plan hiring.

In the short video below, we explain how Productive helps with scenario planning and data visualization.

Invoice directly from approved budgets. Pull uninvoiced time on hourly work or the remaining amount on fixed-price projects. For more context, head over to Productive’s billing.

Automations can create invoice drafts when budget conditions are met, for example when a budget is created or updated.

Productive’s AI speeds up expense entry: upload an invoice or receipt and the details are autofilled.

You also get tax rate management, multi-currency invoicing, and reports for overdue, left to invoice, and already invoiced amounts.

Once you’re ready to deliver a budget, you can create an invoice by pulling information from your budget – whether uninvoiced time entries on hourly projects or the remaining amount of the budget on fixed-price projects.

Reporting gives finance and operations a live view of budgets and performance.

Productive brings budgets, time, expenses, and billing into real-time financial reporting so you can track budget burn, profitability by client or project, invoicing amounts and status, and forecasted revenue and margin.

Choose from 50+ professional services templates, customize them, and add them to custom dashboards for the metrics you watch every week.

Schedule reports to send automatically to email or Slack so stakeholders stay informed without manual exports.

Productive’s Resource Planning feature lets managers create comprehensive resource plans while taking into account the full picture of team availability and capacity.

With time entries and integrated leave management in the same place, managers can spot over or under utilization and rebalance work.

Schedule changes update forecasts right away, so revenue and margin projections stay current.

Another one of Productive’s features that supports the budgeting process is Reporting. 

Productive can become the single source of truth for all your business operations.

All your activities on the platform power up real-time reports, such as budgets and profitability per client, invoicing amounts and status, forecasted profitability and revenue, overall project progress, and much more.

Productive includes over 50 professional services report templates that can be customized with business specific information, and added to custom dashboards.

These reports can also be sent automatically (at specific intervals) to Slack or email addresses to effortlessly keep clients and teams in the loop.

Productive’s Project Management helps you manage tasks and time in the same place as your budgets.

Create a collaborative workspace to track tasks, dependencies, and progress.

Switch views as needed: Kanban, Gantt, Workload, and more.
With built-in time tracking, teammates can run a timer, duplicate previous entries, or enter time retroactively.

Accurate time powers budget and resource planning by tracking costs per service, plus billable and non-billable hours for utilization.

Some of Productive’s additional features include:

Productive offers seamless integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting and invoicing; BambooHR, Breathe, Humaans.io for HRM; Memtime for time tracking; and more.

Try out Productive with a 14-day free trial today.

Workday is a cloud-based accounting software that offers strategic planning and money management support to a wide range of industries, from healthcare, consumer, professional and business services, to technology and media.

Workday provides a suite of solutions with Workday Adaptive Planning, Workday Financial Management, Workday HCM, and more.

Key Features:

Workday Verdict:

As Workday doesn’t offer transparent pricing on its website, this means that engagement with the vendor is necessary prior to getting all essential information. Additionally, the choice between multiple modules can complicate your decision-making.

When it comes to customer reviews, Workday Adaptive Planning is the best-rated out of Workday’s offerings, with a 4.3 score on G2 and a 4.5 score on Capterra.

Overall, Workday is a good choice for businesses that are able to invest some time and money into making the best decision. For a simpler process, you might want to consider an all-in-one ERP for service providers instead.

Sage Intacct is a cloud accounting and financial management solution from the leading provider of ERP solutions, Sage Group. Sage Intacct supports a wide range of industries and businesses of all sizes with their financial processes and accounting tasks.

Key Features:

Sage Intacct Verdict:

The most frequently underlined downside of Sage Intacct is the complexity: users report that it takes some time getting used to the platform, and even more time to master it.

Others have noted that the pricing makes the tool geared more towards larger companies. For businesses on a limited budget or dynamic schedule, considering a streamlined, comprehensive solution that combines project management with finances might be a good idea.

We also covered Sage Intacct in our list of the top BigTime alternatives.

Xero is a budgeting software tailored to small businesses. As for the pros of Xero, reviewers on Capterra describe the budgeting software as “very intuitive” and “easy to use”, and praise it for improving their efficiency and financial analysis capabilities.

Key Features:

Xero Verdict:

As for the cons, some users note that the reports could be more detailed and that they are somewhat restrictive when it comes to pulling the information you need.

Overall, Xero is a fine specialized solution to consider for cash management if you’re running a small business, especially as an integration to a more comprehensive agency management tool with robust budgeting and financial planning features.

What Xero doesn’t have is an integration of project management and advanced budgeting features. For this, you’ll want an all-in-one time and billing software solution.

QuickBooks is an online small business budgeting and accounting software solution.

Reviewers on G2 state that QuickBooks Online is “easy to learn” and requires no previous accounting experience, with other users underlining that it helps them keep track of their financial performance in one place.

Key Features:

Quickbooks Verdict:

Although QuickBooks Online has plenty of good reviews praising its simplicity and user-friendly interface, there’s a notable amount of negative reviews that mostly comment on issues with customer support.

Even some positive or neutral reviews comment that it takes some time for requests or problems to be resolved.

Overall, like Xero, QuickBooks Online can complement your more robust project management tools with its accounting capabilities. Keep in mind that time tracking is a separate feature available in QuickBooks Time.

Check out some alternatives, such as our list of the top strategic workforce planning software or Time Doctor competitors.

Planful is corporate budgeting software for FP&A and finance teams that need rolling budgets and fast what-if modeling. It centralizes plans, forecasts, and reporting to shorten cycles and react to change.

Key Features:

Planful Verdict:

As stated by users on G2; Planful is a solid pick for teams moving off large spreadsheet workbooks who want faster consolidation and cloud access, with reporting that’s easy to work with.

Expect some unintuitive workflows and extra steps to sync changes across modules, and support responses can take time.

Mosaic is business budget management software that connects ERP, CRM, and HRIS so department owners can plan headcount and expenses while finance keeps control. Real-time dashboards and what-ifs help finance teams align plans to runway and board metrics.

Key Features:

Mosaic Verdict:

Users on G2 state that Mosaic is easy to get around with clear visuals and helpful notifications, and it works across web and mobile.

It’s useful for pulling projects into one place and improving visibility, though reviews note clumsy sync, occasional slow loading, and limits when trying to see all notes on one screen.

Budgyt is a mid to small business budgeting software designed to replace large spreadsheets with controlled multi-department input. It supports rolling forecasts, granular variance checks, and simple approvals at a price point that suits nonprofits and smaller finance teams.

Key Features:

Budgyt Verdict:

According to Capterra reviews Budgyt has a good value for smaller teams that need multi-department budgeting with lots of users at a low cost.

Reviewers like the ease of building budgets and access control, but call out lighter reporting and some friction with QuickBooks imports or API stability.

Float is business budget tracking software focused on cash flow. It syncs with Xero and QuickBooks to build daily, weekly, or monthly forecasts and lets you test scenarios for upcoming spend or revenue changes.

Key Features:

Float Verdict:

According to G2 reviews, Float is helpful for capacity planning and visibility into upcoming work, with simple forecasting that supports weekly team reviews.

Reviewers like easy reallocations, calendar sync, and color-coded work types, but note slow performance at times, time-consuming setup for recurring tasks, and that deeper project management is outside Float.

Wave is free accounting for small businesses that need invoicing, expense tracking, and core reports with minimal setup. Teams can start on the Starter plan and add payments or Pro features as they grow.

Key Features:

Wave Verdict:

A useful free starter for solo or very small businesses that need basic invoicing and bookkeeping, with handy receipt uploads and manual bank statement import. Capterra reviews point to clunky navigation, bank connections that don’t always work, and some features moving behind paid tiers over time.

Business budgeting software is for the financial department within a company, including the accounting team and CFO, but it’s also a useful tool for business analysts, project managers, and heads of various departments. 

The best business budgeting software tool provides comprehensive support for all levels of agency project management. Ideally, it should have an intuitive interface so that it can be understood by non-finance professional, but also robust enough to cover all business accounting needs.

Budgeting software is important because it reduces mistakes, speeds up updates, and gives you a reliable picture of money in and out.

Google sheets are powerful, but they’re easy to break. Common slip-ups include typos, broken links, hidden rows, copy-paste errors, and omissions that are hard to spot. One wrong cell can send a forecast off course.

You don’t need to drop Excel (or Google Sheets). Keep it for ad hoc analysis, and use budgeting software as the system of record. When actuals, budgets, and forecasts live in one place, your numbers stay consistent.

Change is constant. Projects shift, scope evolves, and new costs appear. Updating that in a sheet is slow and error-prone. Budgeting software applies the change everywhere and refreshes reports right away.

The main types of of budget management software are on-premise and cloud-based. Since they’re both very different, below we’ll expand with more decision making context.

Lives on your own servers. You control infrastructure and data residency, which can help with strict compliance. Trade-offs are higher upfront costs, longer setup, and less flexible upgrades.

Best fit if you have strict regulatory requirements, tight data residency rules, or legacy systems that your own IT team needs to maintain closely.

Hosted by the vendor and accessed online with secure logins. You get faster implementation, automatic updates, and flexible pricing. The trade-off is relying on a third party for uptime and security, so vendor due diligence matters.

Best fit for distributed finance teams that want quick rollout, frequent improvements, and easy integrations with other cloud tools.

You can also group tools by capability:

Find out more in our review of the best time billing software.

The key features of the best business budgeting software are budget planning with continuous reforecasting, forecasting for revenue and margin, real-time collaboration and transparency, flexibility for finance and delivery teams, and integrations with your core systems.

Together, these help you plan, check progress, and adjust work with confidence.

Budgets move when scope shifts or rates change, so the business budgeting software should move with them. The right budget planning software lets you set fixed, time and materials, or retainer budgets, then reforecast from actuals as time and expenses land.

You see plan vs actual in the same view, update the remaining budget, and adjust hiring plans or phases before overrun turns into write-offs.

Forecasts should answer “what happens if we change the plan” with numbers. Strong budget forecasting software projects revenue, cost, margin, and burn from the current schedule and pipeline, then lets you try scenarios like shifting dates, swapping roles, or adjusting rates.

You immediately see the effect on utilization, invoice timing, and gross margin so you can choose the least risky path.

When budget management software updates budgets, time, expenses, and invoices in one place, everyone works from the same version of the truth. Audit trails show who changed what and when, and stakeholders can self-serve current figures without waiting on a manual rollup.

The result is faster approvals and fewer corrections later.

Finance needs drill-downs. Project leads need a clear runway. Top business budgeting tools support dashboard and reporting capabilities with department, project, and client views, multi-entity structures, and role-based access.

Finance can manage recognition rules and accounts, while PMs track remaining budget, burn rate, and next steps without digging.

Data should flow, not be copied. Look for budgeting software for business that connects to accounting, HR, calendar, and collaboration tools so actuals, rates, and staffing stay in sync.

That shortens close, keeps forecasts current, and gives leadership a single picture instead of stitched reports.

The core benefits of business budgeting software are higher accuracy, faster decisions, clearer collaboration, time savings through automation, and better forecasting.

In short, implementing the right end-to-end project management software with financial reporting and forecasting tools can:

Real examples speak real volumes. As Born Social’s Head of Operations, Kate Higham stated:

Learn how Productive helps businesses make informed decisions backed up by real-time data.

Here’s the point. The best choice is the tool that keeps budgets, actuals, and forecasts in one place and ties them to the work your team actually does.

If your budget management lives across spreadsheets and point tools, you will spend more time reconciling numbers than improving margin.

For most agencies, an all-in-one approach is the smart investment. You get budget planning, resource planning, time and expenses, invoicing, and reporting working from the same data. That means cleaner month-end close, faster reforecasting, and fewer surprises on profit.

Productive is built for that use case. It is business budgeting tools that connects project budgets with schedules, rates, time, expenses, invoicing, and real-time reporting. And yes, there’s also a mobile app.

You can model fixed fee, time and materials, and retainers, see plan vs actual in one view, and forecast revenue and margin from your schedule.

If you want to see how this looks with your clients and projects, book a demo with Productive.