What is the best budgeting software? Before we discuss this, let’s explain what a budget is. A business budget is a plan that helps to keep companies on track with their financial goals.

When business owners don’t use a budget, they’ll struggle when cash flow problems occur. Cash flow shortfalls will make it difficult for businesses to operate in a normal manner. Budgeting is the basis for all business success. The tech world has responded to this by releasing a lot of financial tools to lend a hand.

What is a Budgeting Software?
Budgeting software is a specific program that small businesses use to manage, track, and forecast their business budget. It should have strong reporting capabilities that allow users generate and manage financial statements like cash flow reports and profit and loss statements.

An online business budgeting software is a must-have for many businesses, freelancers, and accounting professionals looking to automate their business financial tasks. From tracking expenses to running reports, the right budgeting software can increase your business’s efficiency and streamline your workflows. The small business budgeting software differs from the personal budgeting software. This is because the former comes with different features for business needs.

The best budgeting software also comes with additional features such as payroll processing or payroll services. With so many different solutions to choose from, SMEs in Africa and beyond can find the budgeting tool that best fits their business needs.

Top 5 Budgeting Software for Africa’s SMEs
To help you decide on the best budgeting software, we’ve put together the top 5 on the market today. They include:

FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a popular budgeting software for SMEs because it allows you to control your budgets efficiently with their expense tracking system. With FreshBooks, you can create and view estimates during budgeting to curate a purchasing process that suits the needs of your business. You can also organize supplier lists with all the necessary details, design your own budgets, plan project spend, keep track of your inventory and customize your own reports.

There are four versions of FreshBooks: Lite, Plus, Premium, and Select. On the one hand, the Premium and Select versions are for complex budgeting processes and designed for larger businesses. The Lite and Plus versions on the other hand are geared toward self-employed and small to midsize businesses.

The Lite version is the cheapest option and it costs $15 per month. It provides unlimited expense entries, unlimited custom invoices, custom functionality, and much more.

QuickBooks
As far as best budgeting software for businesses goes, QuickBooks has garnered a loyal fan base for all the right reasons. It is one of the earliest accounting packages to emerge and continues to be a strong player. The company updates its product offerings frequently and budgeting is part of that list.

The budgeting module in QuickBooks allows you to create several reports. They include overview reports and comparisons. The comparison reports are further broken down by periods, depending on how you want to view the data. You can also view graphical representations of your budgets.

When preparing your budget, you can enter data manually or use amounts from previous years. As if this is not enough, QuickBooks Online also offers its users a budget wizard, which simplifies the process of creating your budgets. You can align the budget with your company’s fiscal years and view the data by year, quarter, or month.

If you need help to create a budget with QuickBooks, the company has a useful article on the topic. It describes the steps you can take to create your budget properly.

FreeAgent
FreeAgent is an excellent online accounting tool that allows you to keep track of your finances seamlessly. It brings everything together in one place, from invoice and expense management to sales tax and project management.

FreeAgent allows its users to set up recurring invoices which are automatically sent to clients as reminders to make payments. Users can also track expenses by uploading a photo of an expense receipt with the FreeAgent mobile app. Additionally, it offers SMEs a built-in stopwatch feature to manage timesheets and track employee hours.

It offers the functionality to create budgets monthly, quarterly, or yearly. It also provides the option to prefill the data automatically from the current or the previous year in the budget so created. In addition to this, you can even split the budget by class, customer, or location and then specify what class, customer, or location to add to the budget.

The user dashboard provides an overview of key business metrics from a single screen. Business owners can track invoices, estimates, timelines, and project status. Tax timeline features also provide updates and reminders about deadlines and tax dues. You can import expenses by taking pictures of your receipt, or send a professional estimate easily. You can also generate sales tax reports for purchases and sales because this budgeting software is a very user-friendly interface.

Its subscription is priced from $10 per month but you can try out the software for free for 30 days.

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