Business budgeting software with an AI CFO

Business budgeting software builds and tracks a company's plan for revenue, costs and cash, month by month. Good tools pull actuals from your accounting system, compare them with the budget, forecast cash and runway, and let you test what if scenarios, so the plan stays current instead of being rebuilt every month in a spreadsheet.

A budget is the plan you commit to at the start of the year, usually approved by the board. A forecast is your best current estimate of how the year will actually end, updated as actuals come in. You keep the budget fixed to measure against and roll the forecast forward every month.

Runway is the number of months until cash runs out at the forecast burn rate. Simple runway divides cash in bank by average monthly net burn. Budgeter.ai calculates it month by month instead, including revenue growth, planned hires, annual payments and collection timing, which is more accurate when burn changes over time.

An AI CFO is software that does part of a finance lead's analytical work: it explains budget variances, answers what if questions and drafts scenarios from your own numbers. In Budgeter.ai it shows the assumptions and accounts behind every answer. It supports your decisions and your advisors, it does not replace professional financial advice.

No, it can't change anything. Every connection is read-only: we read your chart of accounts, actuals, invoices, bills, balances and payroll totals, and we never post entries, move money or edit records in the source system. Your data and the integration tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with TLS 1.2 or newer. Access inside your workspace follows roles, so a department head can see their own budget without seeing payroll by person. Your data is never used to train public AI models, and you can export everything or delete it whenever you like. If you disconnect a source, syncing stops right away.

The forecast itself isn't generated by a language model. It comes from a driver-based engine that works from your actuals: growth trends, seasonality, payroll, contract timing and the assumptions you set. The AI layer does two jobs on top of that: it explains the numbers in plain English and it turns your what if questions into assumptions you can see and edit. Every answer lists the accounts, months and drivers it used, so you can check it against the source. Like any forecast, it is an estimate based on your data and assumptions, not financial, investment, tax or accounting advice, and it gets better as more months of actuals come in.

No. Budgeter.ai is built for companies that don't have a planning analyst, or have one who is already overloaded. You create an account, connect QuickBooks Online or Xero, and the first budget draft is built from your actuals the same day. Adding a bank feed, payroll, CRM or your Stripe account fills in cash, headcount and revenue detail. There is no onboarding call to book and no consultant to hire. If something in your chart of accounts maps oddly, you fix it with one click and the budget, forecast and variance all update together.

You don't have to throw the spreadsheet away. Import your assumptions and drivers from Google Sheets, and export budgets, forecasts and variance back to a sheet whenever someone wants to play with the numbers. What changes is that you stop rebuilding the file every month: actuals arrive on their own, the forecast rolls forward after each close, and nobody has to ask which version is the real one. Spreadsheets are great for one-off analysis. They are a poor system of record for a budget that five people edit and a board relies on.

Those are capable FP&A platforms aimed at companies with a finance team, and each of them asks you to book a sales demo before you see a price. Budgeter.ai is self-serve: the prices are on this page, you can run a runway forecast in the hero before you even sign up, and the AI CFO answers questions in plain English instead of requiring an analyst to build the model first. If you need deep custom modeling for a large FP&A team, a big suite may fit. If you want a working budget, cash forecast and budget vs actual this month, without a sales cycle, that is our focus.

No, and it isn't meant to. Your accountant still keeps the books, closes the month and handles tax. Your CFO, fractional CFO or board advisors still make the judgment calls. Budgeter.ai takes over the modeling work in between: building the budget from actuals, keeping the forecast current, explaining variances and answering what if questions in numbers. Fractional CFOs can use it too: the Scale plan includes workspaces for up to 5 client companies, which leaves more of their paid time for advice instead of spreadsheet maintenance.

Each plan includes a monthly number of AI CFO questions and saved scenarios, shown on a usage meter inside the app. At 80 percent you get a heads-up, and at 100 percent new questions pause until the next billing period or until you upgrade. Usage counts per billing period, so deleting a chat doesn't return questions. You can move to a higher plan any time, and the difference is charged immediately so the new limits apply right away. Cancel in the billing portal whenever you want; your plan stays active until the end of the period you paid for.

Yes, on the Scale and Enterprise plans. Scale consolidates up to 5 legal entities with different currencies into one budget and forecast, with department budgets, owners and approval workflows. Enterprise goes up to 25 entities and adds SSO, SCIM provisioning and custom roles. Small Business and Growth cover one entity, which suits most companies until they open a second subsidiary. Each entity keeps its own chart of accounts and currency, and the consolidated view converts to your base currency for the board pack.