Financial planning
Financial planning software for SMEs: 8 tools compared
“Financial planning”, “controlling”, “FP&A” — three words that are meant to say the same thing and describe three very different ones. Confuse them and you buy software that looks backwards when you wanted to plan forwards.
This comparison sorts the words out first and then puts eight tools side by side — with prices, strengths, and the size of company each one was built for.
The short verdict
- You want to know why last quarter's numbers looked the way they did? → helu.io, Finokapi or classic controlling software
- You mainly want to see whether the money will last? → finban, Tidely or Commitly
- You want to plan and test strategies, not only monitor them? → Foreqast
- You want profit, margin and stock forecast beside the cash? → Foreqast
Controlling, FP&A or financial planning — what is the difference?
The difference is not pedantry about words. It is a direction of view.
| Discipline | Direction | Core question | Typical users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Controlling | backwards | What happened, and where does it differ from the plan? | Bookkeeping, tax advisors, mid-market |
| FP&A | forwards | What happens next, and what if we change something? | Startups, SaaS, growing companies |
| Cash planning | forwards, but cash only | Will the money last? | everyone |
| Financial planning | umbrella term for all three | — | Owners, everyday speech |
Controlling compares actuals against a plan. It answers why the margin fell last quarter. Classic controlling software — Corporate Planner, Jedox, LucaNet, CoPlanner — is built for that and correspondingly good at it. It is also priced for it: several thousand euros a year, an implementation project, and usually a finance department to run it.
FP&A — financial planning and analysis — calculates forwards. Not “why did the margin fall”, but “what happens to it if we double the ad budget”. The term comes from the English-speaking world and is rarely used in the German mid-market, even though it is exactly what an owner means when they say: “I want to know beforehand whether I can afford this.”
Cash planning is the part of FP&A that deals only with payment flows. Most of the affordable tools for small companies — finban, Tidely, Commitly, Agicap — cover that part and call themselves financial planning anyway.
The rule of thumb
Controlling shows what was. FP&A calculates what comes. Cash planning calculates only the money, not the profit.
Most tools for small companies do the first or the third. The second is the gap.
Does a small company need FP&A without a finance department?
The usual answer is no — FP&A is for companies with a CFO. That was right for as long as FP&A meant building a model in Excel and maintaining it by hand every month.
The work was never in the analysis, it was in the data: pulling numbers out of accounting, the shop, the CRM and time tracking, keeping them consistent, updating assumptions. That was half a job. Once those sources sync by themselves the line moves — the owner makes the decisions anyway, they were only missing the arithmetic behind them.
So the question that matters is not company size:
Do you make decisions whose effect only becomes visible months later?
A hire pays off after six to nine months. A stock order ties up capital for two to four. A higher ad budget returns over the customer's lifetime, not in the same month. Anyone making decisions like that needs a model — whether they have twelve employees or two hundred.
Anyone whose feedback loops are short gets by on an overview and needs nothing beyond cash planning.
Four questions before you buy
- 01Backwards or forwards?Should the software explain what happened, or calculate what will? Almost every vendor claims both. The test: can I enter a decision and watch revenue, profit and the bank balance move — or do I have to type the result in myself?
- 02Where do the numbers come from?The bank account, the bookkeeping, or the systems your revenue is actually created in? Account-based tools are quick to set up but only ever see the latest signal your business sends.
- 03Cash or profit — or both?They are not the same thing and can point in opposite directions for months. Anyone with stock, prepayments or annual invoices needs both views side by side.
- 04How much upkeep does it cost?Transaction-based planning scales with the number of line items. Driver-based models scale with the number of assumptions — and that stays the same when your revenue doubles.
The 8 tools compared
| Tool | Type | Who it is for | Data it runs on | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreqast | FP&A | Shops, agencies, SaaS €0.3–10m | Accounting + revenue drivers | €39 |
| finban | Cash planning | Solo, small firms, associations | Banks | €26.25 |
| Tidely | Cash planning | SMEs with a bank focus | Banks | ~€45 |
| Commitly | Cash planning | Small SMEs | Banks | ~€46 |
| Agicap | Treasury | Mid-market, several entities | Banks + ERP | not published |
| Finokapi | Controlling / planning | DATEV, Lexware, Agenda users | Accounting | €99 |
| helu.io | Reporting / controlling | DATEV users | DATEV | not published |
| Corporate Planner, Jedox, LucaNet | Controlling, consolidation | Groups, finance department | ERP | not published |
These are entry prices from the vendors' own pages and public directories, checked on 24 August 2026. “not published” means the vendor publishes no price. Verify them yourself before deciding — the sources are listed at the end.
Disclosure: this is our own product.
Foreqast in detail
From €39The only forecast that does the arithmetic on your decision.
- Type
- FP&A for small and mid-sized companies
- Who it is for
- Shops, agencies and SaaS between €300k and €10m in revenue that want to plan rather than only monitor.
- How it works
Most tools on this page fall into one of two groups: they carry account movements forward, or they analyse the accounting data of the past. Foreqast starts at the drivers of your business and calculates forwards.
Money arrives at the end of a chain: deal in the CRM → order → invoice → open item → payment received → bank balance. The balance is the last link. By the time money lands there, the decision that caused it is months old.
Where each kind of tool plugs into the chain - Deal in the CRMdecision
- Ordercommitted
- Invoiceissued
- Open itemdue on
- Payment receivedbooked
- Bank balanceresult
Foreqast reads here. Accounting, open items and the drivers before them — where the decision can still be changed.
Agicap, Tidely and Commitly read here. Day-accurate and true to the cent — but the cause is months behind.
Foreqast connects your accounting (DATEV, lexoffice, sevDesk) to the sources your revenue comes out of — Shopify, HubSpot, Toggl, Google and Meta Ads — and builds a model of your business from them.
- Test strategies instead of typing in resultsEnter “+€5,000 ads” in a cash-based tool and you see €5,000 less in the bank. In Foreqast the model carries on: more clicks, more customers, more revenue — with a realistic delay until the money lands. The same mechanic for hires, cancellations, price changes and contract switches.
- Four quantities instead of oneCash, profit, margin and stock in one forecast. Your bank says yes and your margin says no — both at once, and anything that only carries payment flows forward cannot tell accruals, prepayments and cost of goods apart.
- Tipping points instead of balancesNot “this much will be in the account in October”, but “above a CAC of €34 this product runs at a loss from October”.
- What Foreqast cannot do
- No bank connection, no consolidation across entities, no payment execution. If you need this afternoon's balance, finban or Tidely is the better place; if you need treasury, Agicap is.
- Price
- from €39 a month, prices online, cancel monthly, first forecast in about 20 minutes. Free on every plan during early access, no card.
Finokapi
From €99- Type
- Controlling and rolling planning
- Who it is for
- Companies booking on DATEV, Lexware or Agenda that want KPI dashboards straight out of the bookkeeping.
- Stronger at
- Works on accounting data rather than only on account movements — closer to real controlling than the cash tools, with P&L, balance sheet and cash flow out of your own ledger and unlimited users on every plan.
- Where it stops
- Planning and reporting, not a model of the revenue side out of shop, CRM or project data. And the entry price is a multiple of the cash tools'.
- Price
- from €99 a month, unlimited users.
finban
From €26.25- Type
- Cash planning
- Who it is for
- Sole traders, small firms and associations that do their own bookkeeping and need a reliable overview.
- Stronger at
- The cheapest specialised entry in the field, very simple to operate, with bank connections and contract management included. Prices online, a trial without a card, hosting in Germany.
- Where it stops
- It plans payments, not the business behind them. Cash and profit cannot be told cleanly apart, and a price change is an assumption you type in rather than a change the model costs through.
- Price
- from €26.25 a month billed annually, about €36 monthly.
Tidely
From ~€45- Type
- Cash planning
- Who it is for
- SMEs that need day-accurate liquidity across several bank accounts, with accounting or ERP connected too.
- Stronger at
- The widest bank coverage in the field — the vendor names more than 5,000 institutions — with day, week and month views of the same curve and warnings when the plan drifts.
- Where it stops
- Account-based: the revenue side is carried forward, not modelled. The entry plan covers one bank account and one person.
- Price
- from about €45 a month, Business from about €189.
Commitly
From ~€46- Type
- Cash planning
- Who it is for
- Small companies and freelancers who want a trustworthy cash view this afternoon and no model to build.
- Stronger at
- Deliberately simple: bank data in, a clean cash view out, synced up to four times a day, with a 13-week operational view and a VAT forecast.
- Where it stops
- The forecast projects the account rather than modelling where revenue comes from. Fewer features is the point — costing a price change through to margin is not the job it took on.
- Price
- from about €46 a month plus VAT, 14-day trial.
Agicap
not published- Type
- Treasury
- Who it is for
- Mid-market groups with a finance function, several entities, several banks and several currencies.
- Stronger at
- Cash management well beyond forecasting: consolidated liquidity across entities, payment execution and dunning in one system, onboarding and support included.
- Where it stops
- No published price — you get a quote after a demo — and a scope that assumes someone whose job is maintaining the forecast.
- Price
- not published; directories quote roughly €49 to €149 a month, small-company reviews report over €3,000 a year.
helu.io
not published- Type
- Reporting and controlling
- Who it is for
- Companies on DATEV that want their existing numbers readable and current, shared with the accountant.
- Stronger at
- Turns bookkeeping into reports without an export ritual, with drill-down to the individual entry per cost centre — the thing spreadsheets never do well.
- Where it stops
- Its centre of gravity is what already happened; planning ahead is a different discipline. The price is on request.
- Price
- on request; directories name an entry from about €4,999 a year.
Corporate Planner, Jedox, LucaNet
not published- Type
- Controlling and consolidation
- Who it is for
- Groups with several subsidiaries and a consolidation duty, where a finance department runs the model.
- Stronger at
- Integrated planning of P&L, balance sheet and cash flow, statutory consolidation across dozens of entities, currency translation and statutory reporting. Nothing on this page comes close on depth.
- Where it stops
- Licence, implementation and upkeep assume a controlling function; industry write-ups put mid-market total cost of ownership in the high five- to six-figure range a year. An order of magnitude too big for one company with one set of books.
- Price
- not published, quoted per project.
Which software fits which company?
- Solo or a pair, an overview is enough → finban
- An SME with several bank accounts → Tidely or Commitly
- Mid-market with several entities → Agicap
- Bookkeeping in DATEV, reporting in front → helu.io or Finokapi
- A group with a finance department and consolidation → Corporate Planner, Jedox, LucaNet
- You want to plan and test strategies, not only monitor → Foreqast
- You want profit, margin and stock forecast beside the cash → Foreqast
Questions buyers ask
What is the difference between controlling and financial planning software?
Controlling looks backwards: it compares actuals against a plan and explains why a closed month turned out the way it did, usually by cost centre. Financial planning is the umbrella term, and in practice it means looking forwards — what the next twelve months hold and what changes if you decide something. Most tools do one well. Ask which direction the product actually points before you compare features.
What does FP&A mean?
Financial Planning & Analysis: planning forwards and analysing what would change if a decision were made differently. In large companies it is a department; in a small one it is the question an owner asks before a hire, a restock or a bigger ad budget. The discipline is the same, only the headcount behind it differs.
Do I need FP&A software without a finance department?
The question is not your size, it is your feedback loops. If your decisions show their effect months later — a hire, a stock order, an ad budget — you need a model, at twelve employees as much as at two hundred. If your loops are short, an overview is enough and cash planning covers it.
What does financial planning software cost for a small company?
Cash planning starts around €26 to €46 a month — finban, Tidely, Commitly and Foreqast all publish a price. Controlling on the bookkeeping starts higher: Finokapi from €99. Agicap, helu.io and the enterprise suites publish nothing and quote per case, with the suites reaching five to six figures a year.
Which financial planning software works with DATEV?
helu.io and Finokapi read DATEV directly and are built around it; Finokapi also covers Lexware, Agenda, BMD and others. Foreqast reads DATEV, lexoffice and sevDesk and plans forwards on top of them. The bank-first tools connect DATEV as a secondary source at best.
Which software plans profit and margin, not just cash?
Of the tools here, Foreqast forwards and the controlling tools backwards. helu.io and Finokapi analyse contribution margins on booked data; the cash tools forecast payment flows, where margin cannot appear at all because cost of goods and revenue are not in the same model. Only a driver model plans margin into the future.
Is Excel enough for financial planning?
For a stable business planning a few times a year, honestly yes — and it is free. The cost is upkeep: every actual is typed in, every formula is yours to maintain, and by the third scenario tab nobody knows which version counts. We publish free templates if that is the right answer for you.
What is the difference between cash-based and model-based planning?
A cash-based plan is a list of dated amounts: this invoice on that day, this salary every month. Change something and you edit the amounts yourself. A model-based plan holds the drivers underneath — orders times basket size, subscribers times price, hours times rate — so changing one input recalculates revenue, margin and cash together. The first is faster to set up; the second is the only one that answers “what if”.
Go deeper
Sources
Everything stated about another vendor was checked against these pages on 24 August 2026. Scope and pricing change — check them yourself before you decide.
- https://foreqast.app/pricing
- https://www.finban.io/
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/finban-io/pricing
- https://www.capterra.com.de/software/1045961/finban
- https://www.tidely.com/en
- https://www.tidely.com/en/pakete
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/tidely/pricing
- https://commitly.com/funktionen/ueberblick-liquiditat/
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/commitly
- https://agicap.com/
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/agicap/pricing
- https://www.capterra.com.de/software/196637/agicap
- https://www.finokapi.com/de/pricing
- https://www.finokapi.com/en/product/integrations
- https://omr.com/de/reviews/product/finokapi
- https://www.helu.io/
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/product/helu
- https://www.lucanet.com/
- https://erp-software.org/software/lucanet/
- https://www.controllingportal.de/Marktplatz/Software/Jedox.html
Disclosure: this page is published by Foreqast, one of the tools compared. We have tried to describe the others as their own customers would — including where they are the better buy.
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