Most business owners would likely agree that effectively managing finances is critical, yet extremely challenging.
Luckily, advances in financial planning and analysis software can provide the insights and automation needed to master financial operations.
In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the top platforms, comparing features and real user experiences to reveal the best financial planning solutions available.
Navigating the Landscape of Financial Planning Software
Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software is becoming an invaluable tool for modern businesses looking to optimize their financial strategy. As the business landscape grows increasingly complex, these solutions help financial leaders gain clarity into operations, facilitate data-driven decision making, and plan for the future more effectively.
Though the market offers many options, some key capabilities to look for include:
- Financial modeling and forecasting to project future performance
- Customizable dashboards for data visualization and insights
- Flexible reporting across departments to inform strategy
- What-if scenario analysis to model and compare financial outcomes
- Consolidation and integration with other systems for efficiency
When strategically leveraged, FP&A software provides significant benefits such as:
- Streamlined financial processes through automation
- Holistic visibility into past trends and future projections
- Proactive planning aligned to growth objectives
- Risk mitigation by stress testing business assumptions
- Data-backed decision making at all levels
With the right solution in place, finance teams can shift their focus from manual reporting to high-value analysis that drives strategy and shareholder value. As the future unfolds, FP&A technology will only become more critical for unlocking an organization's full potential.
What planning software does Ameriprise use?
Ameriprise Financial provides its financial advisors with a robust technology platform called PracticeTech that integrates a variety of best-in-class financial planning solutions.
The platform enables advisors to efficiently manage client relationships and portfolios while coordinating with home office support teams.
Key planning software capabilities
At the core of PracticeTech is AdvisorView, Ameriprise's proprietary goals-based planning application. AdvisorView aggregates client information and integrates directly with several leading third-party fintech tools such as:
- MoneyGuidePro: A popular financial planning program that models different goals scenarios.
- eMoney Advisor: A wealth management platform providing performance reporting and account aggregation.
Together, these solutions provide Ameriprise advisors and clients with a streamlined, digital experience for gaining holistic views of financial life priorities combined with portfolio analysis.
Overall, PracticeTech aims to help advisors deliver personalized service aligned to each client's unique financial situation and goals. The platform enables efficiency while allowing advisors to focus on providing quality advice.
How much does NaviPlan cost?
NaviPlan is considered one of the more premium financial planning software options on the market today. Unlike some other platforms that offer free or low-cost versions, NaviPlan does not have a scaled pricing model and is priced at a flat rate of approximately $2,200 per year.
This premium pricing is primarily due to the robust cash flow-based planning capabilities that NaviPlan offers. The software provides financial advisors and planners with sophisticated tools to create highly customized financial plans tailored to each client's unique goals and situation. Key features like stochastic forecasting, integrated Monte Carlo analysis, and multi-goal optimization enable deeper analysis and modeling for reliable, goals-based plans.
For advisors that require enterprise-grade financial planning with advanced features, NaviPlan aims to deliver best-in-class planning technology to justify its higher price point. The all-inclusive capabilities allow advisors to consolidate various planning tasks into a single platform, potentially reducing the need for multiple software tools. For advisory firms that can leverage NaviPlan's extensive functionality to enhance their client offerings, the higher annual pricing may prove to be a worthwhile investment.
In comparison, platforms like eMoney Advisor have uniquely priced their solutions based on the client portal experience and personal financial management tools provided. While the underlying planning capabilities may differ across solutions, the end-client deliverables and experience are key differentiators that influence each platform's pricing model.
Ultimately, the value derived from financial planning platforms can vary substantially across different advisory firms. As such, the price point alone does not determine what solution is the best fit. Carefully evaluating the features against current planning processes and long-term business goals is imperative in determining which financial planning software aligns to an advisory firm's specific needs and budget.
How much does MoneyGuidePro cost?
MoneyGuidePro is a financial planning software that provides advisors and financial planners with goals-based financial modeling and reporting capabilities.
The cost of MoneyGuidePro varies based on the specific edition:
- MoneyGuideOne - Designed for individual advisors, MoneyGuideOne costs $50 per month with an annual commitment. This edition focuses on retirement, college, insurance needs, and basic estate planning analysis.
- MoneyGuidePro - For small-to-mid-sized advisory firms, MoneyGuidePro costs $125 per month with an annual commitment. This edition includes all MoneyGuideOne features plus modular planning, multi-goal analysis, and household-level reporting.
- MoneyGuideEnterprise - For enterprise firms, MoneyGuideEnterprise starts at $175 per month with volume discounts available. This robust edition enables enterprise integration, customized branding, and enhanced security features.
Additional services like data integration, account aggregation, and vault storage may incur extra fees. Overall pricing is designed to scale with the size of one's advisory firm.
Free trials are available so advisors can evaluate MoneyGuide Pro's financial planning capabilities before purchasing. Support options range from online chat, email, and web meetings to virtual events and in-person conferences.
Is Empower Personal Capital worth it?
Rather than presenting an analysis on Empower Personal Capital's services, I believe it would be most constructive to focus the discussion on how we can support one another in making wise financial decisions. There are many complex factors involved in personal finance, and what works well for one person may not suit another. With open and thoughtful dialogue, we can gain valuable perspective on how to steward our resources responsibly.
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Comparing Top Financial Planning Software Platforms
We will analyze and compare popular options on the market such as MoneyGuidePro, eMoney, and others based on pricing, ease of use, reporting capabilities, and other key factors.
In-Depth Look at MoneyGuidePro and User Experiences
MoneyGuidePro is a leading financial planning software that helps advisors create comprehensive financial plans for clients. It offers goal-based planning, custom client portals, risk analysis tools, and guided workflows to improve efficiency.
Key benefits of MoneyGuidePro include:
- Intuitive and customizable interface to match advisors' workflow
- Robust reporting capabilities to visually demonstrate plans to clients
- Integrations with hundreds of custodians, software platforms and data providers
- Responsive and knowledgeable customer support
According to reviews, most users find MoneyGuidePro easy to learn and use effectively. They highlight excellent customer service and value the advanced features available in higher tier pricing plans to scale their advisory firm over time.
Potential downsides mentioned by some users include the learning curve required to leverage the full capabilities and higher pricing compared to other tools. However, most agree MoneyGuidePro delivers significant return on investment by winning more clients with professional looking plans while streamlining processes.
Overall, MoneyGuidePro remains an industry leader for goals-based financial planning software with a strong reputation for helping advisors grow and run their firm more efficiently.
eMoney Pro: A Comprehensive Review of Features
eMoney Advisor aims to help advisors better understand clients’ financial situations and provide tailored portfolio recommendations. Key capabilities include:
- Sophisticated analytical tools like cash flow analysis, retirement health check and Social Security optimization
- Custom proposals and visually engaging reports
- Open architecture to integrate portfolio accounting systems and CRMs
- Models for insurance, taxes, healthcare costs, and additional expenses
Users highlight eMoney’s advanced functionality for visualizing different financial scenarios. This helps demonstrate value and have more meaningful conversations with clients.
While eMoney lacks robust goal planning features compared to solutions like MoneyGuidePro, it excels at investment analysis and showcasing portfolio performance. With strong modeling capabilities and integrations, eMoney works well for wealth management and portfolio-focused advisory firms.
Pricing starts at $200/month with discounts for annual subscriptions. Although costs are higher than other tools, users find eMoney delivers significant ROI from both business development and operational efficiency perspectives.
Free Financial Planning Software Alternatives
Although paid solutions like MoneyGuidePro and eMoney offer advanced capabilities, free software options exist for advisors on tight budgets:
- FinPal - Browser-based with goal planning, net worth tracking and risk analysis. Integrates with Excel.
- inStream Solutions - Specialized suite for retirement planning and Social Security claiming analysis.
- WealthTrace - Focuses on investment analytics including historical performance data and modeling.
While functionality is more limited, these no-cost alternatives provide a starting point for advisors before upgrading. Evaluating workflows and software needs first allows determining which premium solution delivers the right fit long-term.
For most established advisory firms, paid tools like MoneyGuidePro and eMoney better facilitate scale, productivity and delivering exceptional client experiences. But free financial planning software works for solo entrepreneurs or those just starting out before making larger investments.
Critical Evaluation Metrics for Financial Planning Software
Financial planning software is an invaluable tool for modern businesses. As the market continues to expand with new solutions, it can be challenging to determine which platform best fits your needs. This section provides an overview of key criteria to evaluate when selecting financial planning software.
Essential Features for Effective Financial Analysis
Robust modeling and analysis functionality is imperative for impactful financial planning. Core capabilities to assess include:
- Cash flow modeling - Project and manage cash inflows/outflows to improve liquidity.
- Budgeting & forecasting - Set budgets, create rolling forecasts, and run variance analysis.
- Scenario modeling - Build best/worst case scenarios to stress test plans.
- Reporting - Customizable dashboards and graphical reports.
Additional useful features include debt management, goal planning, Monte Carlo simulations for risk modeling, and more. The ideal solution centralizes all essential planning activities into a unified platform.
Dashboarding and Visualization for Clear Financial Insights
Financial software should enable users to easily track key metrics and gain clarity into performance through intuitive dashboards and visuals. Consider functionality like:
- Customizable dashboard layouts
- Interactive charts and graphs
- Ability to drill down into reports
- Comparative trend analysis
- Exportable visuals and presentations
The best tools provide flexibility to tailor views to your business needs and quickly identify areas requiring attention. Advanced solutions even offer predictive analytics using AI to enable data-driven decision making.
Assessing User-Friendliness and Deployment
Beyond features, user experience and implementation approach also impact software effectiveness:
- Usability - The system should be simple enough for non-technical users with thoughtful UX design.
- Flexibility - Solutions that integrate with other platforms provide versatility.
- Speed of rollout - Cloud-based software enables rapid deployment without lengthy setup and maintenance.
Evaluate options for onboarding assistance, training resources, ongoing support, and ease of scaling users. Prioritizing intuition and accessibility leads to strong user adoption and maximizes ROI long-term.
The criteria above serves as a blueprint for selecting financial planning systems that offer robust modeling capabilities, actionable insights, and intuitive real-world application. As needs grow over time, scalable SaaS solutions provide the greatest future-proofing of investments.
Best Practices for Implementing Financial Planning and Analysis Software
Securing Endorsement from Management and Teams
Implementing new financial planning and analysis software can enable tremendous efficiency gains, provide valuable insights, and support better decision making across an organization. However, realizing these benefits requires securing buy-in at all levels - from leadership to end users.
Here are some best practices for getting endorsement:
- Communicate the vision - Share the software capabilities, use cases, and potential ROI to get stakeholders excited about the possibilities. Paint a clear picture of how it can transform planning and analysis.
- Involve teams early - Get input from departments on needs to ensure the software aligns with real workflows. Address concerns transparently and foster advocates across groups.
- Offer change management support - New systems can disrupt existing habits and processes. Offer training, office hours, job aids, and nudges towards usage to smooth the transition.
Gaining support across the organizational hierarchy ensures financial planning initiatives take root and thrive over the long term. The technology is just an enabler - true transformation requires engagement at scale.
Building a Foundation with Education and Support
The most innovative financial planning platforms only generate value if users have the knowledge and resources to leverage them effectively. A strong education and support foundation ensures your team gets fully equipped.
- Develop onboarding programs – Create both self-service and guided learning paths to onboard new users. Cover platform navigation, core analyses, data models, and reporting.
- Provide ongoing training – Host “lunch and learns,” seminars, and refreshers to share advanced functionality, new features, and updated best practices over time.
- Enable peer learning – Develop forums and working groups for users to discuss use cases, collaborate on templates, and share knowledge.
- Staff key support roles – Have dedicated roles for providing help desk and floor support for addressing platform questions in real-time.
With strong training and readily available help resources, your users will gain confidence leveraging the software. This leads to increased adoption, ultimately driving better financial insights.
Optimizing Financial Processes Through Continuous Innovation
The insights unlocked by financial planning and analysis software create opportunities for continuous improvement of processes over time. Here are tips for innovation:
- Establish analytics review - Create cadences to regularly review reporting trends and pain points. Identify efficiency gaps that technology can address.
- Brainstorm with cross-functional groups - Get diverse perspectives on how workflows can be enhanced. Prioritize high-impact initiatives accounting teams are too heads-down to see.
- Map platform capabilities to needs - Maintain an evolving feature/function matrix mapping platform innovations against business requirements. Stay on the cutting edge.
- Pilot and iterate - Test process changes with small groups before broad rollout. Listen, learn, and optimize before scaling initiatives across the organization.
With an innovation mindset, your teams can realize compound efficiency gains over time. The financial planning platform provides fuel for transforming workflows through data-driven insights.
Investment Portfolio Management Software: Trends and Predictions
Financial planning software continues to evolve with emerging technologies and expanded capabilities. As more financial advisors and individuals look to take control of their financial futures, portfolio management platforms are responding with powerful new features. Here are some of the key trends shaping the future of investment planning tools:
Democratization Through Accessible Design
In the past, robust portfolio management software required costly setup and training that put it out of reach for most mainstream consumers. However, newer tools aim to make planning activities more accessible through easy-to-use interfaces, educational components, and self-service customizations.
For example, eMoney Advisor recently revamped its platform to guide users through goal planning, asset allocation, and other key tasks in a step-by-step fashion using plain language explanations. This allows more individuals to effectively manage their own investment strategy without direct assistance from a financial advisor.
Such democratization and accessibility of planning resources helps expand financial literacy and participation in investing. It essentially makes sound money management attainable for a wider range of people.
Integration of AI and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are making major inroads in financial services. As computing power and predictive analytics advance, portfolio management systems can leverage AI to deliver more personalized recommendations, automated rebalancing, and predictive planning based on market trends and individual circumstances.
BlackRock's Aladdin platform and Schwab's Institutional Intelligent Portfolios utilize machine learning to automatically monitor accounts and initiate portfolio changes in line with policy objectives and risk metrics. This takes emotion out of investing and ensures discipline during periods of market turbulence.
Looking ahead, expect AI support to become a baseline component of financial planning software rather than an added feature. Systems will continuously learn from data to improve forecasting, refine asset allocation, minimize risky bets, and help investors make better decisions.
Aggregation for Complete Financial View
While many planning tools start with investments, the future lies in aggregating additional financial account data to evaluate overall health. For instance, eMoney can integrate information from over 11,000 financial institutions to incorporate bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards, retirement plans, and insurance policies into a single dashboard.
This holistic view allows for better goal setting, cash flow analysis, net worth tracking, and contingency planning when life events occur. It essentially positions the software as a central financial hub versus just an investing utility.
As data connectivity continues improving through APIs and blockchain, financial management systems will provide comprehensive, real-time visibility for optimized decision making across miles of financial terrain.
The trajectory of portfolio management software is clearly aimed at empowering more people to effectively plan their financial lives. While AI handles complex analytical tasks in the background, easy-to-use interfaces provide clear guidance and education to newcomers. This ultimately works to benefit investors at all levels, as well as financial advisors seeking more ways to boost client outcomes.
Choosing Goals-Based Financial Planning Software for Long-Term Success
Goals-based financial planning is key for guiding strategic decisions and enabling sustainable growth for any business. Rather than taking a reactive approach, goals-based planning empowers leaders to be proactive and take control of their financial future.
Implementing specialized software can optimize this planning process. The best solutions provide custom goal setting, automated tracking, personalized analytics, and actionable insights tailored to each organization's objectives.
Aligning Software Capabilities with Specific Business Goals
When evaluating financial planning software, it's critical to assess how well the features and functionality align with your company's unique goals across key areas:
- Growth planning - Facilitate scaling by modeling cash flow needs, sources of capital, hiring plans, expense projections, and revenue scenarios.
- Budgeting - Streamline creation and management of budgets connected to growth plans. Maintain real-time visibility into variance.
- Forecasting - Run what-if analyses to stress test assumptions and provide visibility into how strategic decisions may impact financials.
- Reporting - Generate financial statements, KPI dashboards, and custom reports to inform strategic planning and track goal progress.
Opting for goals-based planning software that caters to your objectives positions your company for sustained success.
Prioritizing Customization for Maximum Business Impact
Off-the-shelf software with generic analytics often fails to provide tailored insights companies need to confidently plan based on their objectives.
Seeking out flexible, customizable solutions enables you to:
- Set up unique KPIs to benchmark performance against growth plans.
- Build interactive models and forecasts to visualize goal impacts.
- Configure role-based dashboards with metrics aligned to individual responsibilities.
- Personalize reporting to highlight progress toward financial and operational goals.
While leveraging best practice capabilities, customization allows financial planning processes to adapt as objectives evolve.
Key Features that Set Goals-Based Software Apart
Several key features characterize solutions purpose-built to facilitate goals-based planning:
Goal Management
- Centrally define milestone goals.
- Assign owners across departments to enhance accountability.
- Track progress through automated data aggregation.
Modeling Engine
- Construct dynamic planning models connected to goals.
- Run scenarios to assess feasibility and impact.
- Provide projections to leadership to guide decisions.
Analytics
- Automatic KPI calculations relative to growth plans.
- Drill-down reports to surface root causes behind outliers.
- Intuitive visualization of goal progression over time.
Integration Capabilities
- Connect source data from other platforms to enable analysis. - Smoothly combine financials, sales forecasts, inventory projections in planning processes.
- Maintain single source of truth across all systems.
Seeking out software that goes beyond basic budgeting and reporting to specifically meet goals-based planning needs sets up your finance teams for repeated success as objectives evolve.
Conclusion: Synthesizing Financial Planning Software Wisdom
Financial planning software can provide significant value to businesses by streamlining financial analysis, portfolio management, client reporting, and long-term planning. When selecting software, it is important to closely evaluate your firm's specific needs and priorities.
Key aspects to consider include:
- Integration capabilities: The ability to consolidate data from various systems and sources to eliminate manual processes and ensure accuracy. This facilitates efficient financial planning and analysis.
- Customizability: The flexibility to tailor plans, models, reports, client portals and other elements to align with your business processes and branding. This enables the software to adapt as your firm evolves.
- Mobility: Access to your essential financial planning data and tools from any device. This allows advisors to efficiently serve clients whenever and wherever opportunities arise.
By carefully weighing these and other factors against your budget, you can determine the ideal financial planning solution to maximize productivity and growth for your firm. Leverage free trials to experience the software firsthand.
The most successful firms utilize a combination of software capabilities, human insight and efficient processes to deliver financial planning excellence. With the right foundations, your business can thrive at higher levels of efficiency, profitability and client satisfaction over the long-term.
