Finance Tools For Startups

No matter how small your startup, you need to be able to track and manage your finances.

But if you’re just starting out, it can be hard to figure out what you need and where to find it. There are so many different tools out there that it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options.

We’ve created this guide to help make things a bit easier for you. Here, we’ll take you through the most popular finance tools used in startups right now and show you how they work. We’ll also give you tips on which ones are best for your specific needs—and which ones aren’t worth your time or money!

Finance Tools For Startups

For a startup, focusing on the financial balance is imperative. It is important to know and record where the money is coming from, where is it going, how well is the performance, and how will the business perform in the coming months.

Investors love entrepreneurs who include calculated numbers in their pitch deck. 

But not everything can be done using a pen and paper. You need good financial tools to achieve everything you want, be it creating detailed investor returns, cash flows, or payrolls.

Here’s a list of best startup financial tools to help you succeed in your venture.

startup financial model

Startup Financial Model

Startup financial model is your one-stop-solution for creating detailed investor return summary, income statement, balance sheet, cash flows, pre-money & post-money valuation, customer lifetime value analysis, and other financial statements required for running a startup and raising funds.

Startup Financial Model is an upgrade to the traditional business plan. The model has a simple interface and lets you create a detailed multi-sheet business planning financial model within an hour that includes and connects everything from sales to staffing.

You get a 7 days free trial period before committing anything.Try Startup Financial Model

Xero

Cloud-based accounting platform is now a reality, thanks to platforms like Xero. Xero is an online accounting software which lets you get real-time access to your cashflow, create professional recurring invoices (and receive updates when they’re opened), import and categorize your latest banking, credit card and PayPal transactions, and create and send custom purchase orders seamlessly.

The platform comes with over 700 tools which helps you manage your core business financial transactions along with payroll management and inventory management.

You can try Xero free for 30 days and then choose the plan which fits to your needs better.Try Xero

Quickbooks

With over 4.3 customers worldwide, Quickbooks is one of the most trusted business financial toolkit available online.

The tools available on Quickbooks let you:

  • Track income & expenses
  • Maximize tax deductions
  • Invoice & accept payments
  • Run reports
  • Send estimates
  • Track sales & sales tax
  • Manage bills
  • Work together with your team
  • Clock employee time and billable hours
  • Track Inventory
  • Create and manage budgets
  • Pay employees with free direct deposit 

You can try Quickbooks free for 30 days and then choose the plan which fits to your needs better.Try Quickbooks

Freeagent

Freeagent is an accounting software designed with a focus on small businesses and freelancers. The online accounting software lets you manage your invoices, expenses, projects, and tax from one place.

What separates this software from others is its simple price structure. Get everything unlimited at just $10 per month (after a 30 days trial period).Try Freeagent

Freshbooks

According to the company, 97% of the customers recommend Freshbooks.

The software comes with a simple to use interface, an ability to automate invoicing, organising expenses, managing projects and payments and tracking time. Freshbooks is also available on Android and iOS platform so you can keep a tab on your business no matter where you are.

This accounting software offer 3 different plans starting at $15. You can try any of them by signing up for the free trial on the website.Try Freshbooks

Bill.com

Bill.com lets you automate your every financial transaction. It’s designed to work with quickbooks, xero, and many other accounting software and lets you automate the way you pay bills, send invoices and get paid (up to 3x faster).Try Bill.com

Gusto

Gusto solves one of the biggest challenges that businesses face by providing a comprehensive yet refreshingly easy to use platform to automate and simplify the payroll, benefits, and HR, all along with expert support.

Their one-of-a-kind payroll service enable startups and other businesses to set up and manage their payroll on the cloud in minutes. They also provide a bunch of free services to kickstart your HRM strategies.

You also get to try their every plan by signing up for the free trial.Try Gusto

Float

Float is an online cash management and (daily and monthly) forecasting tool that helps you manage your business and keep on top of your cash flow and budgeting strategies.

You can also create beautiful PDF reports of your forecast and use them to impress investors and board members. The tool also lets you model different scenarios and look at the impact of how various spending decisions, or potential new business will play out in the medium term.Try Float

expensify best finance app

Expensify

Expensify is the best expense reporting application which lets you (and your employees) scan receipts for reimbursement.

The application easily integrates with the organization’s policies and provides features to/for smartscan the  receipts, automatic reimbursements to employee accounts, duplicate expense detection, and credit card expense imports.Try Expensify

paypal financial toolkit

Paypal

Paypal should not be ignored if you’re planning to do business in this digital era. It is a powerhouse financial toolkit that allows you to:

  • Get the benefits of a digital wallet (and a prepaid wallet)
  • Transfer money to and from a bank account or Paypal account
  • Receive payments
  • Get credit
  • Get working capital loan

 Not just this, there’s a lot that can be done through/within Paypal.

startup forecasting tool

Few people like doing their accounting. It takes a very different mindset to go from the creativity and interpersonal nature of running a business to the more solitary, methodical task of dealing with figures and spreadsheets. Every successful entrepreneur also knows that, tedious as it is, diligent accounting and financial planning is vital to the success of a business.

For those of you who don’t even know how to get started with this task, here are five easy tools that can help you keep accurate financial records, plan ahead for future expenses, and maximize your profitability.

Wave: Bookkeeping

Wave is a group of apps that allows you to track your transactions, create estimates and invoices, generate receipts, and manage your payroll. Everything is free except for payroll, which varies based on the number of employees in your business. Wave is ad supported, so you will have to deal with commercials and display ads on the side, but most people would prefer that to having to pay for an app.

Wave also offers a variety of ancillary services that small businesses might find useful. The Wave Pro Network helps small businesses find professional accountants to help manage their books, and you can integrate payment options into your invoices that will allow customers to pay directly on your digital invoice.

There are other options besides Wave in this area. FreshBooks and Zoho apps offer similar functionality, minus the payroll option. Quickbooks is the largest and probably the most familiar small business accounting software. It’s not free like Wave, but it is better suited to businesses that plan to scale to hundreds of employees someday.

PlanGuru: Forecasting

Revenue and profit forecasting is a necessary task. It’s a huge part of how you sell investors on your business, and it impacts the way you plan your spending and liquidity requirements. It’s a difficult task though, and often can feel like more art than science.

PlanGuru’s tools not only help you to model revenues and expenses, they integrate those inputs into larger forecasts of the balance sheet and cash flow statement. It also automatically generates key financial ratios and break-even analyses.

Plan Guru’s upfront cost can be more than some entrepreneurs want to pay, especially if you want multiple users. However, its tools are unique, and it offers a great deal of customer service and resources to help you work out its functionality. You can take a free 30-day trial to figure out if it’s worth the cost.

CalcXML: Buy or Lease Calculator

It can be a difficult decision to figure out whether to make a big capital purchase; do you take on debt to buy the asset outright, or do you lease it? Sometimes you simply don’t have access to the funds to buy an asset, but in other cases you have to weigh the costs and benefits of either option.

This decision is influenced be several factors such as interest rates, taxes, and the residual value of the asset. Calculating the total cost manually can be a difficult process.

Luckily, there are several online calculators that allow entrepreneurs to plug in the key info and see the total cost of buying or leasing an asset. CalcXML has a great calculator on their website, just put in the data and it spits out a breakdown of the costs for each method and gives you a graph to visualize the total cost either way.

FileThis: Paperless Document Storage 

FileThis automatically collects and organizes bills, tax forms, receipts, and other financial documents that you need stored. Designed initially for personal use, FileThis also has premium plans that work for entrepreneurs. For $5/month, you can up to 10GB of cloud storage for documents from up to 30 different sources.

The ease of storing and locating documents can be hugely helpful when it comes to building financial statements, filing taxes, and keeping bill payments in order. Most of all, it’s just a big time saver, as it automates so many tasks you use to have to do manually.

One alternative to FileThis is, of course, paper documents, but those can easily get cluttered, and the cost of all that paper and ink can add up. Other options if you want to go the paperless route include Sohodox, Paperless, and DocStar. These services are more aimed at scanning and creating digital copies of paper documents, whereas FileThis allows you to go paperless entirely.

Conclusion

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