Best Financial Reporting Software in 2025

Generating statutory filings and fulfilling financial reporting requirements were considered straightforward and easy tasks in the past. However, today, internal and external reports include data from multiple online programs, locations, and stakeholders–and often need detailed notations and descriptions. A good financial reporting software can make the task of preparing reports easy for your business. This buyer’s guide aims to give you useful tips to help you make informed comparisons to sort out the best Financial Reporting software platforms for enterprises from the average ones.

A good course of action is to sign up for at least a few free trials or demos and basic unpaid plans from popular financial reporting software providers. With that method, you will have the opportunity to test the important elements and you will get a good comparison of the capabilities of each app. The best thing to do is to try software tools that currently have the highest rankings in the SmartScore and Customer Satisfaction Rating in our financial reporting software reviews and choose the best Financial Reporting software for your company: FreshBooks reviews, Intacct, Xero, NetSuite ERP, Zoho Books, AccountEdge, Float, and KashFlow.

Financial reporting software is a basic component of accounting and financial analytics, which eliminates the difficulty of generating coherent reports that become more and more confusing as the business grows. This doesn’t mean, however, that large businesses are the only ones that can benefit from it:

• Financial Reporting Software for Small Business. Even startups and small businesses could benefit from automated financial reporting, ideally using a cloud-based, single-purpose accounting package rather than complex ERP suites.
• Financial Reporting Software for Medium Businesses. Due the fact that they are developing fast, mid-sized businesses ought to start with a simple solution, which can cope with their growth and accept bigger information-load in the future. The perfect solution is to consider their assets and financial regulations they have to comply with and to choose a program accordingly.
• Financial Reporting Software for Large Businesses. This is probably where financial reporting software is most needed, in particular, one that is industry-specific, rather than a one-size-fits-all. Large enterprises need to consider prominent vendors that promise to minimize accounting errors and reduce the number of hours spent on optimization, processing, and making important fiscal decisions.

• FreshBooks: One of the best cloud solutions for small companies that streamline tracking and invoicing. It allows you to collect payment online and is packed with advanced analytic features.
• Intacct: Another highly-efficient cloud solution for small and medium businesses that provides statistics and key figures to help companies make smarter decisions.
• QuickBooks: Simple and very popular software for small businesses that are just beginning to manage accounts receivable. It checks invoices and purchase orders and eases business transactions.
• Xero: An online accounting app for businesses of all scales and industries, but also individual accountants and bookkeepers. It focuses on collaboration and keeps teams connected wherever they are.
• NetSuite ERP: A scalable and complete ERP solution that automates both front- and back-end processes, and offers customizable views with key performance indicators.

One of the things that makes choosing financial reporting tools so difficult is the variety of programs that can be used for the purpose. They range all the way from basic tool suites to ultra costly and accurate programs. The list of features can also be categorization criteria, as certain programs do nothing but calculate payroll requirements, while others are more robust and they allow users to prepare taxes and forecast future accounting difficulties and even do some custom branding. The basic division criterion is deployment, depending on which you can choose between:

• On-premise financial reporting systems. These are covered with a single license, and hosted on the client’s local server. They qualify as the most expensive ones, due to the fact that they require complex setup and occasionally some hardware installation.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) financial reporting systems. These are usually paid per month, and hosted on the vendor’s server. The business owner is not responsible for installation, updating, and maintenance.
• Cloud-hosted financial reporting systems. Most of these offer free basic plans and qualify as the most affordable ones due to their universal access and the fact that the client doesn’t need to update them or pay for maintenance.

Most financial reporting tools include the following essential features:

• Basic accounting tasks – Small businesses can easily take care of their accounting needs with software that offers basic features like invoicing (both by snail mail and email), client and vendor management, financial report generation, and income and expense tracking.
• Automation – The software should enable you to automate processes like recurring payments, automatic billing, and past-due notifications to save you time.
• Estimate and quote creation – You can use customized templates to create estimates and quotes for clients; these can be automatically converted into invoices.
• Tax preparation – Financial reporting software can also help with your taxes by including features, such as tax reporting and multiple tax rates, and automatic tax calculations. You should be able to easily email all necessary files to your accountant.
• Multiuser access – Most financial reporting software can be used by multiple users. This will help you to give access to your accountant and financial consultants, too.
• Purchase orders – There are also financial reporting solutions that include the capability to generate purchase orders. This feature allows users to transform estimates and quotes within the platform automatically. Thus, you can avoid double entries and related errors.

• Simplified financial processes. In some companies, reports are created by employees who do not have a background in finance. It can be time-consuming to provide these employees with end-user training on new software. Therefore, consider products that use Microsoft Word and Excel to collect data for narrative contributions, as they are easier to use.
• Real-time updates. The availability of a real-time updates feature can reduce overall reporting time as well as time spent on revisions. For further efficiency, the updates should be automatically made to all linked documents and reports.
• Scalability. Solutions that charge by contributor or report, and those that limit the number of contributors are not ideal applications. Shun these types of solutions and focus on selecting a simple financial reporting solution that makes it easy to produce virtually any type of report, including customized presentations and reports that usually take time to prepare.
• Workflow management. The software should be able to automate the reporting process, including tasks such as setting and managing deadlines for contributions, delegating responsibilities, managing reviews and sign-offs, sending alerts when required, tracking edits and sources, and showing the latest report status when needed.
• Easier number handling. The financial reporting software should make it easy for users to handle numbers accurately by providing features like currency conversion, rounding, and number formatting. This can eliminate employee frustration and save them time while preparing financial reports.
• Expense management. With a financial reporting solution, you can see where your money goes. You can then determine whether those expenses are essential or not. Thereon, you can decide which expenditures to keep, to ensure the smooth operation of your business.

The cost of financial reporting software varies depending on the type or the deployment of the solution. For example, if you select an on-premise platform, you need to pay upfront hundreds or even thousands of dollars. That is because you will be acquiring a lifetime license for that software. If you intend to use it on several computers, then it will be costlier.

Meanwhile, if you select a cloud-based or SaaS solution, then you can cut down costs marginally. Because the vendor hosts the software, you do not need to perform maintenance or patch updates on your end. Plus, you can adjust your subscription according to the number of users per month. However, if you already have a fixed number of seats, then you can opt to pay for the software yearly, which can avail you of a discount if the vendor offers it.

• SMEs move to the cloud. Small and medium enterprises are leaning more towards cloud-based accounting and financial reporting tools. Indeed, according to a market report, over 50% of businesses are predicted to choose SaaS offerings. One of the main reasons for this is the faster deployment of the solution.
• Consolidated systems. While a financial reporting software sounds like it is dedicated only to creating financial reports, it does have accounting features. As a result, there are businesses that opt to acquire this kind of solution rather than a standalone accounting platform. This way, they can consolidate multiple systems and reduce costs in the process.
• Visual reporting. A driver of change in the financial reporting niche is the need of business owners and executives to have visual reporting. Instead of a long list of numbers and rambling paragraphs, they prefer graphs and charts. That is why vendors are also working to include visual reporting tools in their platforms.