6 Best Financial Statement Software (2024)

Depending on where you operate and how you structure the legal identity of your business, you will have different reporting requirements to fulfill. Depending on whether you operate a public or private company, a charity, a partnership, or an unincorporated sole trader business, the documents that you are legally forced to provide are different.

No matter whether or not you are required by legislation to produce financial statements, you will probably need to generate these documents to prove financial viability. This is a requirement placed by banks before they will grant a loan. Vendors and customers might also require this proof before entering into contracts with a business.

Financial statements need to have authority. It isn’t enough to just guess the numbers in a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement (P&L) because interested parties that demand to see these financial statements would also expect them to be audited by a reputable accounting firm.

The authenticity of the numbers in financial statements might also be demanded by tax authorities. Being under investigation for possible tax avoidance can create a stigma that might damage the reputation of your business and could lose your business. Therefore, it is always a good idea to ensure that you can generate authentic and verifiable financial statements on demand.

Here is our list of the six best financial statement software:

1. Redwood Finance Automation: The best financial statement software overall. This SaaS platform interacts with third-party software and extracts transaction data, transforming it, and inserting it into accounting systems as journal entries.
2. SAP S/4HANA: The best financial statement software for large organizations. A SaaS ERP that can process large amounts of data and cater to multinationals, providing both business process systems and an accounting package.
3. Oracle NetSuite: The best financial statement software for medium-sized businesses. A cloud-based ERP system that is suitable for centralizing the data of multi-site and multinational businesses.
4. Intuit QuickBooks: The best financial statement software for small businesses. This online service can be accessed from mobile apps and compiles accounts, providing up-to-the-minute reporting.
5. BlackLine: The best financial statement software for orchestration. A SaaS platform that implements orchestration to centralize data collection and generate accounting journal entries.
6. FloQast: The best financial statement software for close management. A data orchestration platform that is delivered from the cloud and offers exceptional close management services.

Accounting packages

Using a reputable accounting package to compile your accounts is the best route to ensuring that there are no mistakes in these records. Well-known accounting packages also provide credibility. Closed-loop ERP packages provide guarantees that the accounts are valid and properly reflect the viability of the business.

Even if you don’t need financial statements to meet a requirement for proof of income, you are advised to use an accounting software package to keep track of the activities of your business throughout the year. You can’t make correct decisions over the capacity of your enterprise to adapt to new opportunities if you don’t know your financial position. You also need to keep track of financial performance so that you can spot loss-making practices and operations quickly and reduce the risk of those losses ruining the business.

The best financial statement software

Accurate financial statements are not just needed at the end of the year for mandatory reporting, they are also useful management analysis tools. Financial statements summarize the activities of the business and so they result from detecting all activity and transferring them into the accounts. Therefore, the best way to prepare financial statements is to have constantly automatically updated accounts. This means that the best financial statement software operates constantly and transfers business process data into the accounts as soon as it is entered into the system.

Businesses that operate multiple sites need to centralize data collection to get an up-to-the-minute picture of the company’s financial position. Multinationals have more issues to deal with. However, thanks to the internet, there is no reason why financial management systems shouldn’t be able to present consolidated reports from all branches.

What do we look for in the best financial statement software?

When looking for the best financial statement software, we prioritized the following factors:

• SaaS platforms – Cloufdpbased systems are easier to manage and easier to account for. You don’t need to run a server to host those types of services and you also get storage space for data included. Better yet, you don’t need to treat these services as assets on the books and so they don’t need to be depreciated.
• Cross-platform integrations – You need a package that can extract data from other software systems to compile accounts. The service needs to be able to access business process data either from within the same package or through interfacing by orchestration or integrations.
• Reporting clarity – To verify your financial statements, you or your auditors should be able to identify where the figures in the accounts came from, so being able to trace them back to business transactions is important.
• Security – Although your finalized financial statements should be in a stature that can be made public, the individual transactions that contributed to those summaries are commercially sensitive and should be protected from disclosure.

You can read more about each of our recommendations in the following sections.

1. Redwood Finance Automation

The best financial statement software overall

Redwood is a SaaS platform that implements orchestration. This means that it can run other software packages to process data and extract it. The system can string together a process flow by operating several software systems in series. Finance Automation is a product of Redwood that implements this process flows to transfer operational data into the accounts.

The key to getting financial statements, either for performance analysis or for year-end reporting is to automate the creation of journal entries and the process of account reconciliation. This keeps data in the books right up to the minute.

Year-end reporting is only possible once the books have been closed. This means that accounts for the year are fixed and cannot be changed further. To get to the point where the books can be closed, you need to be sure that all transactions have been accounted for. That includes transactions that are not completed on the closing date, such as invoices that have yet to be paid.

The Redwood Finance Automation system can check back through the operations software packages and verify all of the entries in each account. The system that sums up all incomplete transactions and generates journal entries. This enables accountants to be sure that the accounts are in a complete state. With this assurance, the books can be closed and financial statements can be run off.

BEST FINANCIAL STATEMENT SOFTWARE Redwood Finance Automation is our top choice because it efficiently derives accounting data from operations systems and doesn’t require you to replace your corporate IT system to get data flows from business process software through to the accounting package. Run frequently, this system provides live analysis reports and makes yar and close and financial reporting easier.

2. SAP S/4HANA Asset Accounting

The best financial statement software for large organizations

SAP is a cloud-based ERP system and it is suitable for the support of very large organizations. For example, the US Army uses SAP for its operations management. The tool includes data entry systems for purchases, inventory, payment automation, sales orders, invoicing, and cash allocation. The package can track fixed assets, subscriptions, and matters such as prepayments.

This is a very comprehensive service that can simultaneously serve multiple branches and divisions. It can also operate for all overseas divisions, working for them in local currencies and working to different national accounting and tax standards. Operating the entire business within the same SAP S/4HANA account makes parent company account consolidation a lot easier.

All of the actions of the business result in data entered into the SAP system, which generates documents, such as POs and invoices. These transactions are recorded in a central database and the SAP service automatically transfers each of these into the accounts as journal entries. So, operating data is always available in the books for querying, enabling financial reports and performance analysis to be implemented at any time.

The secret to a smooth year-end lies in keeping an exact and up-to-date record of all activities in the books. SAP doesn’t take long to sweep all transaction tables and find incomplete transitions to complete the books and perform account reconciliation. After this, the books can be closed and the financial statements can then be generated.

3. Oracle NetSuite

The best financial statement software for medium-sized businesses

Oracle NetSuite is another SaaS ERP system that is less complicated than SAP S/4HANA. Despite not being known as a good system for very large organizations, it can still cope with a fair amount of capacity, so it is suitable for medium-sized businesses and that includes multinationals.

The NetSuite system is the data entry service for all of the business’s activities and it manages all necessary documentation. The tool includes an inventory module that links together with supplier management, purchasing, and accounts payable. All transactions stored in the system’s central database get transferred into the company’s accounts.

The centralization of all data for business activities links together the information stored by different departments to verify documents, such as three-way matching for invoice payments. The service can also monitor bank accounts and mark sales invoices when they are paid.

Again, all the completion actions, such as payments are recorded in the accounts. So, closing, and therefore, financial statement creation is automated. The fact that all data from the business is available in one location also makes performance analysis easy.

The Oracle NetSuite system can be adapted for local regulations in many countries and can operate books for different divisions separately in different currencies. The system will convert these currencies for parent company account consolidation.

4. Intuit QuickBooks

The best financial statement software for small businesses

Intuit QuickBooks is a mini ERP that is designed to cater to small businesses. It is particularly useful for sole traders, such as contractors and consultants who are always out on site. This is because the entire package can be accessed through mobile apps, so you can run your entire business through it without needing premises or office equipment.

The user enters business transaction data into the app and this helps business administration to be automated. The service uses this information to create account journal entries. This means that the system instantly compiles accounts, making live performance analysis possible.

The service is very simple, so it is easy to reconcile accounts and perform the closing. The tool will also provide a formatted balance sheet and profit and loss financial statements.

The QuickBooks system is offered in four plans with increasing capabilities, so more complex features, such as inventory management, could be avoided by those small businesses that don’t handle stock. This enables users to choose the most economical package possible. You can get a 30-day free trial of the system.

5. BlackLine

Best financial statement software for orchestration

BlackLine is a cloud platform that intervenes with your ERP system and extracts relevant data to generate journal entries automatically. This is a good solution for businesses that have a high volume of sales transactions because it is much stronger on AR than on AP. The tool uses AI methods to match payments to invoices.

The BlackLine system includes a team management system that allocates tasks to team members with deadlines. This is because there will also be some anomalies that can’t be dealt with automatically. Those exceptions need to be looked at by an authoritative user because they might be indicators of fraud.

If you decide to implement SAP S/4HANA, you might also want to subscribe to BlackLine because it has a specialist module for managing accounts in an SAP environment.

The package makes accounting data available in graphical format for analysis reports. It is also able to perform account reconciliation and implement a closing schedule. This system can verify our accounts for regulations such as SOX and it will also compile your financial statements.

6. FloQast

Best financial statement software for close management

FloQast is specifically designed to speed up the closing. The company was started up by a CPA who was sick of all of the stress that arises at year-end closing and realized that year-round automated processing did a better job at producing clean and verifiable books than humans.

This package extracts data from operations software and scans through journal entries to make sure the two systems match. It then alters the journals if there are differences. This account reconciliation process operates from the cloud, so it can scan any system anywhere, not joust on one site. That makes it a good tool for unifying the accounts of multiple sites and it can also function for international operations.

Given a known close date, the FloQast system chains back a schedule of tasks that need to complete, allocating a deadline for each. Knowing the dates for each stage helps the team complete tasks in time. Accounts are reconciled automatically and manual checks and authorizations then approve the books for closing.

The system monitors accounting team activities and produces performance reports. It will produce financial statements once the books are closed.