An integrated finance tech stack is crucial to drive efficiency and help your organization thrive. However, "finance" is a big category. From financial planning & analysis to accounting to ERP solutions, a modern finance tech stack consists of many financial software solutions. With so many options in so many categories, it's easy for companies to get confused about how to best align their tech investments to match their business goals and objectives.
What's changed dramatically in the past two years is how AI has become embedded in these tools. CFOs are now asking different questions: Which platforms can automate our monthly close? Where can we get instant answers to complex financial queries without building custom reports? How do we forecast with confidence when market conditions shift rapidly?
The finance teams getting ahead aren't just picking better software, they're choosing tools that eliminate manual work and deliver insights at the speed of business decisions.
In this guide, we lay out everything you need to know about financial management software tools: what they are, their benefits, different categories of financial solutions, the top players offering them, and key factors to consider while building your financial tech stack.
In this guide, we lay out everything you need to know about financial management software tools: what they are, their benefits, different categories of financial solutions, the top players offering them, and key factors to consider while building your financial tech stack.
Table of Contents
The 5 key benefits of financial software
The best finance management software helps you take control of your financial data and workflows and makes your and your teams’ life easier. Instead of manually filling out countless Excel spreadsheets, it automates the nitty gritty details and saves you and your team time.
Here are some of the biggest benefits that companies can expect to realize with a well-constructed modern finance management software stack.
1. More efficiency and fewer errors
Automation is at the core of financial software solutions. Automated data entry, reconciliation, and reporting boost efficiency and significantly reduce the risk of errors, which are common when teams work on spreadsheets.
Modern platforms use machine learning to handle complex reconciliations that previously required manual review. They can automatically categorize transactions, detect anomalies in expense patterns, and even predict cash flow gaps before they happen. Finance teams are cutting their monthly close by up to 50% because these tools eliminate the grunt work of data validation and error checking.
With less time spent chasing down different teams to validate their data, CFOs and their finance teams can allocate more time to strategic planning instead of doing technical or repetitive tasks.
2. Supports on-demand reports and analytics
Software for financial management gives department leaders and managers direct access to relevant data through user-friendly dashboards and interfaces. The breakthrough is conversational analytics, executives can ask questions in plain English like "What's driving our customer churn this quarter?" and get instant, detailed answers without waiting for custom reports.
This reduces dependency on finance teams for routine data requests, minimizing back-and-forth emails. Leaders can make data-driven decisions swiftly, promoting agility in day-to-day operations.
3. Better transparency into business finances
A modern financial software stack involves integrating different systems and creating a centralized data repository which acts as a single source of truth for everyone in the organization. When CFOs and finance teams can access unified, real-time data, they have better visibility into all aspects of the company's financial performance and can make better, informed decisions.
4. Easier collaboration in context
Modern finance management software provides a shared platform for data access and insights with integrated communication channels to help different teams collaborate with the same context. Whether it's budget planning, forecasting, reconciliation or performance analysis, teams across the organization can work with a shared understanding for more informed and cohesive decision-making.
5. Higher cost efficiency
As businesses grow, continuing to use spreadsheets as a panacea for the full spectrum of finance use cases affects growth due to large hidden costs. Investing in the right finance software tools, though it involves an upfront cost, provides ROI quickly to recover the initial investment by helping finance professionals be more agile, strategic and data-driven.
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Building the right financial tech stack
Business finance is tough to manage and gets even more challenging as you start scaling. As your startup grows, no single tool covers all your financial processes.
Most companies start out working with spreadsheets combined with a few different tools to meet their most basic needs. Before long, as needs become more complex, the tech stack begins to grow as additional financial software systems get added to it.
The key here is to make sure they all play nicely together. A well-integrated tech stack with high interoperability can streamline data, workflows, and collaboration while significantly improving the bottom line. What's changed is that integration now means intelligent workflows, when your revenue system detects a billing anomaly, it can automatically flag it in your FP&A platform and adjust forecasts accordingly.
The 15 different categories of financial software
When considering a financial solution, the term "financial software" is an umbrella concept for a large range of financial solutions. While there are many categories to consider, we've handpicked the 15 most important ones that every company needs to consider at some point in their growth journey to manage and optimize financial performance.
Selecting the best software in each category can be a pretty daunting task. There are many vendors in each category, and their suitability varies based on company size, product type, specific features offered, and other factors.
It can take considerable time to narrow all that down. We developed this guide to help you do that faster by diving deep into each category to identify top picks that excel in their respective domains.
| Finance Software Category | Description | Our Top Picks |
|---|---|---|
FP&A software (aka Strategic Finance Software) | Streamlines budgeting, forecasting, and financial performance analysis to enable strategic decision-making | Drivetrain |
| Core accounting software (or ERP) | Tracks financial transactions and helps manage the operational aspects of business finances | NetSuite (Enterprise) Xero & QuickBooks (SMB) |
| Billing / invoicing software | Automates and streamlines tasks like creating and sending invoices, tracking payments, and managing customer billing | Chargebee |
| Business intelligence (BI) & analytics tools | Simplifies data analysis by providing tools for visualizing and exploring business performance | Looker |
| Revenue recognition software | Streamlines revenue management to allocate, reconcile, monitor, and recognize revenue while staying compliant | Maxio |
| Cap table management software | Maintains and updates a company's ownership structure like share issuance, options granted, transfers, and equity transactions | Carta (MM/Enterprise) EquityList (SMBs) |
| Close management software | Supports general bookkeeping for monthly close and provides reconciliation, reporting, and workflow management tools | Floqast (MM/Ent) Numeric (SMBs) |
| Corporate credit card & expense management software | Tracks all the transactions made through corporate cards to help identify spending patterns and trends for better management | Ramp |
| SaaS procurement software (spend management software) | Provides visibility into SaaS subscriptions and their utilization to help control SaaS costs | Spendflo |
| Sales tax compliance software | Tracks state and local sales and use taxes to support reporting and audits for better tax compliance | Avalara Anrok |
| Accounts payable (AP) automation software | Connects businesses with their customers digitally to and streamline invoicing and payment | BILL (formerly known as Bill.com) |
| Data warehouse | A data management system that aggregates data from multiple sources into a single location to support querying and analysis for business intelligence activities such as analytics | Snowflake |
Other essential non-core finance software and tools
CRM, HRIS and sales compensation software are crucial tools of the overall finance tech stack. They help with customer and employee information
| Finance Software Category | Description | Our Top Picks |
|---|---|---|
| Incentive & commission management software | Automates calculating, tracking, and managing incentives, commissions, and bonuses for teams | Spiff |
| Customer relationship management (CRM) | Consolidates customer information into a single CRM database to track all communications and nurture relationships | Hubspot (SMB/MM) Salesforce (Enterprise) |
| Human resources information system (HRIS) | Collects, manages, stores, and processes an organization's employee information | Rippling |
Key considerations when choosing financial software tools to build into your tech stack
Selecting the right enterprise financial management software for your organization requires a strategic approach. Your financial software should, of course, automate tedious manual processes, but it can do so much more depending on your needs.
We'll assume at this point that you already have a good understanding of what your current needs are and that you've anticipated what your needs will be as you scale your business.
Next, you'll conduct a detailed assessment of the finance automation tools in each category that make sense for your business, considering their features, scalability, and integration capabilities. You'll also want to compare cost, implementation time, and expected ROI for all the solutions.
Here are some key criteria to consider before selecting financial software in any of the categories above.
1. Integrations & interoperability between tools
Your chosen financial software should be able to communicate and share data with other systems effortlessly. It needs to seamlessly integrate with other business applications such as accounting systems, CRM, and ERP software. When data flows freely, and different tools complement each other, your team can focus on strategic tasks and decision-making.
2. Scalability
Financial software does a lot of number crunching, often with data stored in multiple and databases distributed across business functions. Given this, your finance tool should not only be compatible with your current systems but also be flexible enough to provide seamless integration with any additional systems you might need to adopt as you scale your business. It should also offer easy expansion of storage and processing capabilities and to handle increasing volumes of data and transactions efficiently.
3. Communication and collaboration
While tracking and managing the financial performance of a company are typically the domain of CFOs and their finance teams, their work involves collaboration with different teams and departments within the organization. The financial tools you choose should support collaboration with financial dashboard software to facilitate regular updates and streamlined communication features such as in-app commenting or Slack notifications. These features help ensure everyone is on the same page and can understand the context of each decision.
4. Compelling, data-rich visualizations
More than 81% of finance pros, including CFOs, believe data storytelling is an essential skill. The best finance management software provides the tools to tell those stories, with versatile, built-in data visualization features and customizable reporting formats that allow you to look at your data in different dimensions and create engaging reports.
What saves time is when charts come with explanations. Instead of staring at a revenue dip, wondering what caused it, newer tools automatically identify the biggest contributing factors and highlight them in the visualization.
5. Easy to set up, learn, and use
To help teams get on board sooner, your ideal financial software must have an appealing user interface, and the dashboards it provides should be easy to navigate. Look for solutions with good support and that require minimal IT intervention and systems integrators (SIs), as these typically increase costs and implementation times.
Query capabilities have simplified dramatically. Many platforms now let users ask "What was our burn rate last quarter?" instead of hunting through menus to build reports. Less reliance on tech teams and ready support to address user challenges and other features that make your financial software easy to use will not only accelerate time to value but also increase the ROI on your investment.
6. Implementation, customer support and success
Every financial software needs regular upkeep and fixes to remain practical and functional. Reliable support and maintenance ensure smooth operations. This includes timely updates, bug fixes, and technical support to resolve any issues.
7. Robust security and compliance features
The consequences of a data breach can be enormous given the many different data protection laws in effect today. When evaluating software for financial management, it’s always a good idea to choose one that follows industry best practices for data encryption, authentication, and authorization and has consistently kept information safe and secure.
Top tools for each category of financial software
If you’re considering setting up a reliable and efficient financial management system for your startup or in the process of leveling up your current tech stack, take a look through the tools listed below.
We’ve identified and profiled several finance software companies across all 16 categories of advanced financial management to assist you in creating the ideal modern finance tech stack for your business.
FP&A Software
FP&A solutions form the backbone of business success. Drivetrain is a leading contender in the latest generation of strategic finance software and is designed specifically for growing B2B and SaaS businesses.
Drivetrain offers the full range of FP&A features, including multi-dimensional scenario planning, budgeting and forecasting, financial close management, headcount planning, financial automation and consolidation, business performance measurement, on-demand reporting, and more.
How does Drivetrain use AI? What sets Drivetrain apart is its Drive AI suite, which delivers autonomous FP&A capabilities that go beyond basic automation to autonomously build complex models, surface insights, and flag data inconsistencies.
Drive AI includes four core capabilities: AI Model Generation automatically builds baseline models from your ERP, CRM, and HRIS data in one click, whether it's 3-statement models, pipeline movement, or headcount planning. AI Transforms lets you transform datasets in seconds using simple English prompts like "Show me all customers with ACV > $100k from the North America region." AI Alerts monitors your data pipeline 24/7 and instantly notifies you via Slack, email, or product inbox when anomalies occur. AI Analyst serves as a universal conversational agent that instantly answers questions about your data, metrics, and platform functionality.
With 800+ integrations, Drivetrain integrates easily with your current (or future) finance stack to provide a quicker time to value. It also takes a programmatic approach to data imports and can ingest data from any system or application in any format without limitations.Drivetrain's modeling architecture is designed to be both intuitive and powerful. You can model at the speed and dimensionality that matches the needs of your business, thanks to plain English formulas, Excel functions, and a shallow learning curve. Users can ask questions like "What happens to our cash runway if we hire 10 more engineers?" and get instant scenario analyses without building complex models manually.
This combination of powerful computing and end-user control is how Drivetrain helps to improve financial planning and analysis at all levels of your business.
Accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software
Here, we describe three different vendors for financial management accounting software that you might want to evaluate depending on the stage of business growth you're in.
NetSuite is a cloud-based business accounting solution designed for large enterprises. It offers project accounting capabilities and simplifies the process of managing payables and receivables, collecting taxes, and closing the books.
How does NetSuite use AI? NetSuite’s AI capabilities include Bill Capture, which automatically scans and extracts data from vendor invoices, and Intelligent Performance Management that uses machine learning to analyze financial plans and identify patterns and anomalies in real-time.
Quickbooks is a simple and flexible accounting software popular among SMBs in the North American market. You can manage accounting and tax data, create and send invoices, determine tax liabilities, and generate return reports instantly from multiple devices.
How does QuickBooks use AI? QuickBooks has introduced Intuit Assist, featuring AI-drafted invoice reminders and outstanding invoice notifications. As companies become more complex operationally (multiple subsidiaries, multiple currencies, etc.), they typically upgrade to NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or Microsoft Dynamics.
Xero is another cloud-based accounting and P&L software for SMBs. Popular among accounting professionals in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia Pacific region, it automates bookkeeping with third-party integrations.
How does Xero use AI? Xero uses AI for receipt and invoice scanning to capture key data automatically, transaction categorization and reconciliation by suggesting matches between bank statements and ledger entries, and automated invoice reconciliation.
Billing and invoicing software
Chargebee, which serves SMBs, is particularly well-suited to SaaS as an effective cloud-based billing and subscription management software. You can create well-designed invoices, automate the billing process, and manage late payments. It integrates with popular payment platforms such as PayPal, Square, and more to facilitate direct payments, improve productivity by reducing manual data entry, and increase overall efficiency.
How does Chargebee use AI? Chargebee has integrated AI capabilities for revenue recognition automation, churn prediction analytics, and intelligent pricing optimization that analyzes customer behavior patterns to suggest optimal pricing strategies.
Business intelligence (BI) and analytics software
Looker is a popular business intelligence software ideal for SMBs. It helps companies explore, visualize, analyze, and share business analytics easily. It has comprehensive data sorting and analysis features and embedded analytics to help you analyze data in real time. One of the key features of Looker is that it is a no-code software, making it easy to use for all teams. Looker now includes conversational analytics, where users can ask questions in natural language and get instant visualizations and insights without building complex queries.
Revenue recognition software
Another crucial component of a finance management system software is revenue recognition. Maxio is a financial management software designed for B2B SaaS companies to automate complex revenue recognition scenarios per GAAP/IFRS standards. It not only streamlines revenue and expense recognition but also billing, subscription management, tracking SaaS metrics, and analytics.
Expense management software
Airbase is a popular expense management platform alongside Expensify and Ramp that helps mid-market companies streamline and manage spend approvals and xpense reporting.
How does Airbase use AI? Airbase leverages AI for automatic receipt scanning, intelligent expense categorization, and policy violation detection that flags unusual spending patterns in real-time.
Cap table management
Optimizing valuations is a critical process for all companies, and cap table management software helps in managing the equity and, in some cases, the valuation mechanism itself. Carta offers an easy-to-use interface for equity management and is the market leader in this space. It provides a comprehensive range of features that are ideal for startups at any stage to manage their equity requirements.
EquityList cap table management software is geared towards startups in India, Singapore, the US, MENA, and other regions. The platform helps companies manage cap tables, stock options (ESOP, SAR, RSU, etc), data rooms, board management, and related compliances.
Corporate credit card and spend management software
Ramp combines a corporate card offering with expense management, bill payments, vendor management, and accounting automation. It goes beyond a traditional business credit card and provides direct integrations with top business tools. The ability to set spend limits with custom-defined approval workflows to pay vendors and reimburse employees in a user-friendly interface sets it apart from the rest.
How does Ramp use AI? Ramp's AI engine automatically categorizes transactions, detects duplicate expenses, and provides intelligent spending insights that help finance teams identify cost-saving opportunities.
Close management software
FloQast is a close management software that can significantly streamline your process of reviewing and reconciling financial statements at the end of each accounting period and provides high-confidence reporting and approval processes. Ideal for mid-market and enterprise companies, FloQast offers robust integrations with other tools for financial management or accounting software to close books faster.
How does FloQast use AI? FloQast's AI Agents ingest data from your trusted sources and use natural language inputs to transform data into usable formats for task execution, then they apply relevant accounting assumptions and business rules using a no-code approach. These agents execute tasks and workflows automatically in future periods and supervise results to enable continuous accounting process improvement.
Numeric is a close management solution that's ideal for startups. It's one of the best financial tools for empowering accounting teams because it prioritizes speed, precision, and control to expedite the closing process while enhancing collaboration, visibility, and control across various departments.
How does Numeric use AI? Numeric uses AI to automatically detect reconciliation discrepancies and suggest corrections, significantly reducing the time spent on manual reviews.
SaaS procurement software
Spendflo helps businesses negotiate, buy, renew, and manage their SaaS tools. With the average department in an organization using about 87 SaaS applications, vendor spend is one of the biggest expense items. Spendflo automates and optimizes the process of requesting, onboarding, and managing SaaS tools. Spendflo works with you to fully understand your requirements and leverages pricing benchmarks to ensure you get the best deal possible on your SaaS investments and streamlines the procurement process.
How does Spendflo use AI? The platform uses AI to analyze usage patterns across your SaaS stack, predict renewal dates, and identify optimization opportunities to reduce overall software spend.
Sales tax automation software
Companies need to stay compliant in order to reduce the risk of errors and penalties. To do that, many turn to Avalara, a cloud-based tax compliance software designed to help businesses navigate the complex landscape of domestic and cross-border taxes, handle the various reporting requirements, and prepare tax filings.
Anrok tax compliance software provides end-to-end sales tax automation for SaaS businesses. It syncs with your billing, payment, and HR systems and calculates tax in real-time. Not only does it automate monitoring and calculation, but it also takes care of registration, filing, and payment for you.
How does Anrok use AI? Anrok uses machine learning to automatically determine tax nexus requirements and updates tax rates in real-time as regulations change.
Accounts payable (AP) automation software
Perfect for small teams with basic needs, BILL (formerly known as Bill.com) simplifies and enhances the entire accounts payable process, from invoice receipt to payment. BILL is a top finance software company that provides a centralized dashboard where businesses can manage their accounts payable and accounts receivable. It offers great visibility and control over your end-to-end financial management processes.
How does BILL use AI? BILL incorporates AI for automatic ivoice data extraction, duplicate detection, and intelligent approval routing based on predefined rules.
Data warehouse
Like all the rest of the data your company collects on a day-to-day basis, managing and storing financial data so that it's easily accessible for finance operations, including planning, modeling, forecasting, and reporting. Snowflake is a popular, cloud-based data warehouse that provides a centralized platform for data storage and secure sharing and consumption of data in real time.
Snowflake offers a range of features, including the separation of storage and compute, on-demand scalable compute, data sharing and cloning, and third-party tool support, which can address the demanding requirements of growing businesses.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software
Investing in a CRM is one of the most important things a business can do to build and maintain a healthy pipeline. Marrying your CRM and ERP data is a key requirement for sales capacity planning, computing compound metrics such as LTV:CAC ratio, CAC payback period, Burn Multiple, etc.
A pioneer in the CRM category, Salesforce is a powerful CRM, especially suited for large enterprise teams. It provides a wide array of tools for automating workflows and tracking analytics.
How does Salesforce use AI? Specific plans include an AI assistant that automatically handles tasks such as lead scoring, calculating deal health, and other functions.
HubSpot is the de facto CRM software for early-stage and mid-market companies alike looking for common CRM features like contact management and workflow automation. Many companies prefer HubSpot as it provides marketing automation and help desk features, which means they don't have to switch between multiple tools to manage all the activities necessary to nurture prospects through the pipeline and serve them well once they become customers.
How does HubSpot use AI? HubSpot's AI tools include predictive lead scoring, content optimization suggestions, and conversational chatbots that qualify leads automatically.
Human resources information system (HRIS) software
HRIS is a crucial part of the finance software stack as it houses all the crucial employee data, which is typically one of the largest expense line items to manage. Integrating your HRIS with your CRM and ERP systems is essential to do headcount planning and related analysis.
Rippling is an HRIS tool that caters to SMBs, helping them manage HR, finance, and IT processes under a unified platform. You can manage and automate every aspect of the employee lifecycle. This includes unifying all the workforce systems, such as payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. With Rippling, you get a comprehensive solution to manage their workforce and streamline administrative tasks.
Other popular HRIS solutions tools include Gusto and BambooHR.
Incentive and commission management software
Spiff stands out as a great tool offering a fresh approach to incentive and commission management that automates commission calculations. It integrates directly with popular CRMs and ERPs to pull in the data required in real-time to calculate commissions.
How Drivetrain speeds up financial management
Within the broad landscape of technology to support business finance, strategic FP&A solutions provide the backbone that supports all the financial functions your business needs to succeed.
Drivetrain is an AI-native business planning platform designed to streamline budgeting, reporting, and forecasting. It leverages autonomous FP&A to enhance financial decision-making through automation and generative AI.
Blackthorn is just one example of how companies are using Drivetrain to accelerate growth through better and more strategic financial management.
When Erik Meyer, Senior VP Finance, joined Blackthorn's Finance team, he inherited an FP&A solution with a nice UI and dashboard, but it suffered from key functional issues, including a lack of granularity, forcing the team to maintain detailed Excel models in parallel. The tool also couldn't integrate with Rillet, their core accounting solution, requiring time-consuming monthly data imports.
After evaluating multiple solutions, Meyer found Drivetrain offered the perfect balance of flexibility and ease of use he was looking for. With Drivetrain, Blackthorn was able to integrate seamlessly with Rillet and other data sources like Salesforce and Google Sheets. The onboarding process took just 4-6 weeks, and the finance team could now slice and dice data exactly how they wanted: by vendor, by department, by month, making it much easier to analyze spending patterns.
The platform's custom metrics feature provided Excel-like flexibility while eliminating the need for parallel spreadsheet maintenance. Scenario planning became more operational and actionable, with results that were easy to communicate and understand for non-finance executives. Role-based access control helped prepare better quarterly business reviews, with investors appreciating the depth of insights in monthly reports.
For the first time in my finance career, I've gotten rid of the Excel model. And, most importantly, I think our forecasts are actually more accurate.
— Erik Meyer, SVP Finance, Blackthorn
Key outcomes included deeper granular insights from financial models, more efficient scenario planning, elimination of dual Excel/FP&A system maintenance, and improved forecast accuracy.
Drivetrain's ability to consolidate data from various software tools into a single accessible platform benefits the finance team and different data owners, making FP&A easier and simplifying many aspects of the financial close process. The comprehensive suite of features, combined with ease of use, gave Blackthorn the flexibility and efficiency they needed; the FP&A software worked for them, instead of the other way around.
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FAQ
Which software is best for finance?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to choosing financial management software. Different tools for financial management are ideal for different use cases. For instance, Drivetrain is the best CFO software for financial planning and analysis, while Spendflo is best for SaaS procurement.
How does Drivetrain use AI in its financial modeling tool?
You can interact with Drive AI via a familiar conversational agent, the AI Analyst, that is available throughout the platform for easy access.
You can ask Drive AI questions about your data, metrics, and Drivetrain. With the AI Model Generation and Transforms tools, you can generate complex models and run data transformations. And you can rest easy, knowing that the AI Alerts system will let you know instantly of potential issues in your data pipeline.
Is Excel a finance software?
Excel is used extensively in finance functions, but it is not financial system software. It is designed to support personal finance and budgeting but falls short when dealing with extensive data for organizations.
Related financial management software guides
We have even more information on financial management related software and tools. Check them out.
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