Agency controlling: project profitability without spreadsheet upkeep

The short answer

If you only read one section, read this one. The rest of the article shows the working.

• You need cost-centre reporting on DATEV your accountant can share → helu.io
• Project invoices and contracts are the whole picture for you → finban
• Tracked hours have to meet payroll, and a hire has to be costed first → Foreqast

None of those sentences is a ranking. These products answer different questions, and the wrong one bought well is still the wrong one.

How this comparison works

We are Foreqast, so read the last-but-one section first if you want to know where the bias would be. The rule we hold ourselves to here: every claim about another product comes from that vendor's own site or from public review directories, checked on 24 August 2026, and every tool gets a verdict saying when it beats us. Where a vendor does not publish a price, this article says so instead of guessing.

What we do not do is score these tools out of ten. A weighted table can be made to say anything, and the weights are always the author's. Instead each product gets a plain description of what it is for, what it does well, where it stops, and the kind of company it fits.

The tools at a glance

What separates these products is not the length of their feature lists. It is where the future numbers come from — because that decides which questions the tool can answer at all.

How these tools build a forecast

Almost every difference further down comes back to this. A tool can only tell you about the future in the language it builds the future in.

By hand

A spreadsheet does anything you can write down, costs nothing, and is the honest answer for a business whose plan changes twice a year. The price is upkeep: every actual is typed in, every formula is yours to maintain, and the model quietly rots the month nobody has time for it.

From payments and invoices

Every expected in- and outflow is a dated line: this invoice on that day, this contract every month, this supplier on those terms. It is precise where the future is already contracted, and it is the right model for a business that mostly bills projects and retainers. It gets laborious where the future is not a list of payments but a pattern — a shop's orders, a product's subscribers.

From the books, looking back

The accounting data is made readable: cost centres, contribution margins, month against month, budget against actual. This is reporting rather than forecasting, and it is genuinely the more valuable half for a company that does not yet know what its last quarter cost. It does not become a plan on its own.

From drivers

Revenue is a formula rather than a line: orders times basket size minus refunds, subscribers times price minus churn, booked hours times rate. Change one input and everything downstream — margin, cash, runway — recalculates. It takes more thought to set up than a bank connection, and it is the only one of the four that answers "what happens if" without a second spreadsheet.

The tools in detail

Each product on its own terms: what it is, what it is genuinely good at, where its scope ends, what it costs, and the company it suits best.

Excel / Google Sheets

A spreadsheet you build yourself: complete freedom over the model, and complete responsibility for keeping it current.

What it does well

• Free, and it can model anything you can express as a formula.
• Nobody has to approve an integration, and the file is yours forever.
• For a stable business planning once a quarter, it is genuinely enough.

Where it stops

• Actuals are typed in, so the plan is only as current as the last evening someone spent on it.
• Scenarios become tabs, and by the third one nobody knows which version counts.
• One person usually owns the file, which makes it a risk rather than a process.

Price: Free, apart from your time.

Best for: Stable businesses that plan a few times a year, and anyone who needs a model no product supports yet.

finban

Liquidity planning for project-driven businesses: bank and invoice data become a daily cash plan, with scenarios and an assistant that flags irregularities. (website)

What it does well

• Direct bank connections — the vendor names more than 3,000 institutions — so actuals arrive without exports.
• Contract management and scenarios sit in the same tool as the plan.
• Published pricing and a trial without a credit card, which is rare in this category.
• Hosted in Germany on ISO-certified servers, which matters to a lot of buyers here.

Where it stops

• The plan is built from payments and invoices; there is no driver model that turns orders or subscriptions into revenue.
• That means a price change or a bigger ad budget has to be entered as an assumption rather than costed through.

Price: Published; listings put the Starter plan at €26.25 a month billed annually (one bank account, one user) or about €36 billed monthly, with Business at €48.75 and Pro at €90. Free trial, no card required.

Best for: Agencies, SMEs and startups with project or invoice-driven revenue that want bank-accurate liquidity, contracts in the same place, and a price they can read on the website.

helu.io

Reporting and controlling on top of DATEV: live reports, cost-centre analysis down to the individual entry, and budget against actual. (website)

What it does well

• A DATEV interface that turns bookkeeping into readable reports without an export ritual.
• Drill-down to the individual entry per cost centre — the thing spreadsheets never do well.
• Budget against actual and dashboards a whole team can share with the accountant.

Where it stops

• Its centre of gravity is what already happened; planning ahead is not the same discipline as reporting on closed periods.
• Pricing is on request rather than on the website.

Price: On request; a free trial is offered.

Best for: Companies on DATEV that want their numbers readable and current — cost centres, budget against actual, one shared view with the accountant — rather than a forward model.

Foreqast

A forecast built from your accounting plus the drivers your revenue actually runs on — orders and basket size, subscriptions, tracked hours — with a simulator for testing a decision before you make it.

What it does well

• Revenue is a formula, not a trend line: change a driver and the forecast recalculates through to margin and cash.
• Cash and profit come out of one model, with margin in total and per unit beside them.
• Decisions sit next to the plan — a hire, an ad budget, a cancellation — and can be compared with and without.
• Shop, billing and time-tracking data feed the drivers, so the plan does not need weekly upkeep.

Where it stops

• It builds on your accounting rather than on bank connections, so it is not a treasury tool for many accounts and currencies.
• No consolidation across a group of companies today; multi-entity is the partner plan's territory.
• It is in early access, so the customer list is short and some things are still on the roadmap.

Price: €39, €149 and €399 a month, published; partner plans from €800 on request. Free on every plan during early access, no card.

Best for: Shops, agencies and small SaaS teams whose revenue moves with something countable — orders, subscriptions, booked hours — and who want to cost a decision before making it rather than watch a balance.

What to check before you buy

Questions worth asking any vendor on a demo call, including us. The answers separate these tools faster than any feature list.

Do the hours come from time tracking?

Toggl or something like it should connect. Hours somebody copies over are hours nobody maintains.

Are internal and billable hours separated?

Pitches and admin cost margin without ever appearing on an invoice. Without the split, every project looks too good.

Do projects sit on their payment dates?

A milestone in March is paid in April. The plan needs the date, not just the amount.

Can you test a hire?

The most common agency question is whether the next person pays for themselves — it belongs in the same model.

When Foreqast is the wrong tool

A comparison written by one of the products in it owes you this section, so here it is without hedging.

• You need resource planning with calendars and capacity boards — that is a PM tool.
• You work purely on fixed fees with no time tracking — the data basis is missing.
• You only want to send invoices — your accounting does that.

Sources

The vendor claims above were checked against these pages on 24 August 2026. Scope and pricing change — check them yourself before you decide.

• https://www.finban.io/
• https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/finban-io/pricing
• https://www.capterra.com.de/software/1045961/finban
• https://www.helu.io/
• https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/helu
• https://foreqast.app/pricing

Disclosure: this article is published by Foreqast, one of the tools compared. We have tried to describe the others as their own customers would.