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Shannon Toe

The 7 Best Project Accounting Software & Tools to Stop Crunching Numbers

Tired of doing your project accounting in spreadsheets? Try these project accounting tools and cut admin in half.

Project accounting software is specifically designed to help businesses monitor and report on the financials of individual projects. These tools enable project managers and project accountants to get visibility on a per project basis, which is particularly useful in businesses with many departments, or those with many different projects on at one time.

Tools for project-based accounting can include billing and invoicing, time tracking, project profitability insights and many other features of project financial management.

There is a wide range of project accounting tools on the market that can be used, all with their own strengths. These are seven of the best project management accounting software tools for today's needs to stop wasting time in spreadsheets.

1. Runn - The best free project accounting tool

Did you know? Runn helps you predict project spend.

Runn project accounting software has the best of both worlds - highly visible overviews of all projects with easy access to detailed reports on individual pieces of work and resources.

With Runn, whoever is managing project financials can get real time information of their performance against both budget and time. Quick view options give useful reports on revenue, people cost, profit and profit margin, and it's easy to test the impact of adjustments on the overall outcomes.

Runn also comes with billing charts for each day, analytics for the contribution of individuals and a customizable dashboard for useful data such as resource allocation, spend and monthly breakdowns. Reports are easily exported to CSV as needed.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of Runn's project accounting software is that it makes it easy to get the information you need, when you need it.

2. Forecast - Project accounting & task management in one

Forecast is a project management and accounting software that, just like Runn, unites projects, resources, and financials in one place. This allows agencies and other professional services businesses to reduce non-billable project administration by providing information and insights that allow for quick, informed decision making.

Forecast’s budget feature, project portfolio report, and powerful financial analytics package will keep you posted on the true cost, revenue, and profit of each project in real time and help plug any budget leaks. The tool can also facilitate your billing process by centralizing invoice management.

Planning and running projects in Forecast, users get total visibility over operations and financial information to secure a more sustainable future.

3. Harvest Forecast - Simple invoicing software

Harvest combines with Harvest Forecast to get the best of both worlds in one project management accounting software. Harvest brings time tracking visibility for data driven decision making in real time, while Forecast time planning lets users create schedules they can trust.

Harvest Forecast is an extremely visual project accounting software. Users can alternate between views of projects and views of people to gain both in-depth and over-arching insights at a glance.

Harvest is a central place for project plans, which is easily shareable with all collaborators and stakeholders. This replaces confusion with cohesion, allowing for maximum productivity. Design projects from the ground up, starting with the most basic tasks. Adjust tasks, timelines or budgets as needed, while seeing the impact on overall project financials.

4. Paymo - Tools for generating invoices & automating payments

Paymo is a project accounting software that's all about collaboration. Among its features, users get time tracking, project management and invoicing software for an all-in-one work management and project accounting software.

Paymo is about creating a single source of truth. It becomes one place to manage all manner of project finances and schedules, including time, tasks, billing, reporting, scheduling and more. This means users don't have to manage multiple subscriptions and logins - all project information is available in one place.

Forecasting is also made easier by having easy access to previous timesheets and project templates, helping to inform future projects. Create realistic expectations based on what's happened in the past and track them with greater visibility in real time.

Paymo has a wide range of integrations that allow users to double down on its benefits within existing workplace technology. It integrates with popular tools such as Google Suite, Slack, Xero and Zapier.

5. Hubplanner - Billing & budget management

Hubplanner's approach to better project accounting is in enabling better resource management. Users can plan, schedule, report and manage teams and other resources all in one place, including on a per project basis.

Get a birds eye view of resource availability and utilization on an engaging dashboard, get informative reports and analytics in real time, and create and update schedules with drag and drop functionality that empowers teams to get on the with job.

Hubplanner's timesheets tool helps with both project planning and project management by being able to measure the actual time reported against forecasts and schedules. All of this points towards valuable insights into team and resource performance to inform project accounting reports.

6. Meisterplan - Cloud-based project accounting dashboards

Meisterplan is a cloud-based project accounting software that makes it easy to manage a range of projects from one interactive dashboard.

One of its standout features is a resource allocation heatmap, that helps project managers staff projects while not overloading or under-utilizing team members. This also means resource conflicts can be spotted and managed in advance, reducing costs and ensuring all resources are productively managed.

Meisterplan helps users to create effective project portfolios, with a particular focus on those that will impact businesses most significantly. This allows users to both resource priority projects first, and re-deploying resources to get the most out of them.

7. Mavenlink - Project accounting & resource management software

Mavenlink needs no introduction. It is a united project accounting software that incorporates a range of business data and analytics for easy, real time decision making.

Its engaging dashboard hosts reports on resource management, project management, team collaboration, project accounting and business intelligence. In all, users can generate dozens of reports to inform activity around project costs, margins, resource utilization and availability - all of which are crucial in project accounting.

Mavenlink also integrates with popular tools such as the Google Suite, Slack, Xero, Salesforce and more.

All in all, project accounting software helps to inform your business intelligence by generating automated reports on project financials. These are intuitive tools that greatly improve decision making ability by bringing the most important aspects of project performance to life without requiring long hours of manual analysis.

To get started with the best project accounting software for your business, try booking a free demo of Runn today.

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