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Keeping your business afloat may quickly turn into a challenging and tricky task without reliable financial management software. Since financial matters are an essential part of every business, even companies that are built on the most promising of business ideas will fail without a properly run finance and accounting system oversight.
According to the Chamber of Commerce, about 80% of small businesses get through being a first-year startup company, while that number falls to 70% of survivors at the end of their second year of existence. After five years of existence, only half of the small businesses are still going strong.
The article comprises valuable insights describing the uncovered potential of financial management tool and the contribution it makes to business resilience and growth. Explore the main challenges of financial management, the benefits of custom-built solutions to overcome them, and uncover the advantages which integration of advanced technology.
Finance management challenges to be aware and ready for
According to the Small Business Administration, about 67% of small businesses fail within the first decade, since entrepreneurs focus mostly on selling their services to clients, often overlooking the importance of financial intricacies. Thus, they fail to track finances, overlooking things like cash flows, reporting, accounting for various overhead expenses such as sales and marketing while the business is in growth mode. It is necessary to reign in and get a handle on your business before it expands and becomes out-of-hand.
Sooner or later, startups are faced with an urgent need to fix the situation with financial matters. Notably, the breaking point often happens when management or investors opt to assume close control on the finances when their patience runs out with regard to the profitability of the business. Where owners or shareholders become fed up with constantly having to add money to the business as a result of cost overruns, revenues not hitting targets, or both, resulting in the business being consistently loss-making.
Here is the table reflecting the main financial challenges, consequences and finance management solutions helping to avoid and overcome those challenges.
| Challenges | Consequences | Solutions |
| Lack of wise budget management |
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| Lack of liquidity |
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| Lack of reporting |
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| Lack of tax compliance |
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Financial management programs – a powerful weapon in your arsenal
Quick, handy control over the financial management system is possible only with the use of corporate finance software. The following procedures can now be performed automatically and regularly due to the existence of finance management software:
One of the key targets for SMBs is to reach the global market and stay competitive. Moreover, to stay afloat, you have to be flexible enough to cope with unpredictable challenges. Investing in the digitalization of your business means entering the market with a solid and functional finance software solution in your arsenal, putting your company on track, and giving it the infrastructure basis for growth and expansion.
How will your business benefit from finance management software
Dealing with establishing a working finance management system demands accuracy, regularity, and the absence of any money delays. Are there any instruments that are more necessary than financial management tools? Automation of internal and external financial processes greatly reduces, if not eliminates, the possibility for errors.
Benefits of finance management software:
- Financial custom software assists in consistently tracking transactions, payments, and other records, which is helpful in effectively controlling the cash flows, contribute to better planning, forecasting, as well as categorizing and following through on expenses.
- Enables entrepreneurs to conduct more accurate audits, helps bring better visibility into finances, thereby giving the people in charge the ability to optimize business liabilities and positively impact profit margins.
- Transparency – you see and control all financial processes.
- Security – protects from cyberattacks, data leaks, fraud, and theft.
- The finance management software allows saving human resources through the automation of, time-consuming, employee-intensive, large-volume data processing tasks, especially when the projects already need full employee involvement.
- Financial accounting software enables the entrepreneur to objectively evaluate the company’s position in the industry. It contributes to the company’s long-term sustainability and growth.
Indicators to implement financial software applications
Financial custom software can be a magic pill for your business and assist in streamlining all your key financial processes. How will you know that your business needs to implement a financial management tool? Here is the checklist:
A financial management system is a tool providing accurate, timely information to enhance the company’s control over finances, allowing allocation and investment of company resources.
Ready-made or custom-built – that’s the question
Among the finance management software solutions, business entrepreneurs may either choose the ready-made apps or hire an experienced team of developers and to get custom-built finance software. What is the main difference, and what is better for your business?
At a first glance, Apps belonging to ready-made software present an attractive universal variant for SMBs. However, every business has its specific needs and demands the availability of a specific set of features. User interface design is not intuitive and user-friendly enough, and the system may not refresh automatically. It also takes time for tech support to fix the errors. Even after spending money, you might still have to struggle with certain aspects of business automation, as some features might not be available in your ready-made financial accounting software, while others may take considerable time and effort to set up.
Wrike is a cloud-based platform designed for teams with more than 20 members, suitable both for large businesses and SMBs. Wrike integrates with a variety of tools including Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Adobe Creative Cloud and offers an open API. The app has a standard set of features, such as payroll, expense tracking, reporting, is suitable for remote teams, and the pricing entails recurring subscription fees per user.
Pros: Configurable features, intuitive design, detailed task management
Cons: Ability to integrate a limited number of employees, poor customer service
AccountIQ is another type of cloud-based application, enabling a user to deliver financial reports, offering a rich set of intuitive tools for audit, digital VAT returns, cash flow control, and budget management. AccountIQ is particularly suitable for businesses where multiple entities need access to a common platform.
Pros: Cloud-based, accessible at any time and location, support team works smoothly
Cons: Some processes need to be done manually, generating reports is time-consuming
Thus, ready-made finance management software is a good option for those who are willing to tolerate inconveniences, some of which were mentioned above. However, for those who always keep up with the times and want to drive one’s business to the next level, we offer the custom-built software option. Such a solution will for sure tackle the specific needs of your company and will doubtless become a powerful instrument to reach your business goals.
Benefits of the Custom-Built Apps
Main features of finance management software
Here is the set of the main features of financial management software:
Develop custom finance management software with Altamira
Altamira has expertise in supplying financial software for Small and Medium-sized Businesses alike. Through the discovery stage, we make sure to have a deep and thorough understanding of the considerations that need to be taken into account for each project individually.
By choosing us as your tech partner you definitely benefit since:
- We build detailed specifications to refresh your financial management system integrating new beneficial features.
- Agile approach allows to cut the time of the development cycle and frequently introduce updates.
- We can build a solution for you from scratch, as well as upgrade the available software with the new features
- Our team can build MVP which fully illustrates the customer’s idea and enables us to test it in real-life situations before making the considerable investment.
- We utilize the design thinking methodology to create friendly interfaces that predict users’ behavior for your target user
- You are involved in every stage of the project delivery. We constantly keep you informed concerning the ongoing processes and the progress of the project delivery.
- We are always open to new ideas, being very flexible, aiming to put your idea into a reality with our expertise
Tech aspect of the question
Having practical experience in the industry domain, Altamira offers unique tech expertise while integrating new features for finance management solutions:
- ERP solutions able to capture big sets of data with integration of advanced reporting features for in-depth data a analysis and enhanced operational visibility – EPM(enterprise performance management)
- Cloud based solutions that allow to shift the responsibility of diagnosis, management and bug fixing to a vendor
- Custom code management
- Our solutions support all the security regulations and protection of PII (personally identifiable information) – GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, enabling us to guarantee the complete safety of private data
- Successful integration of API’s for providing better customer and business partners experience
- AI powered systems for better analytical analysis
Developing a custom financial management app will take approximately up to 2500 hours. The ballpark budget for developing the finance management software application is USD 150 k, however, it may vary depending on the set of features, platform, app complexity, and integration. Check out the table below to see an estimation of what specialists you will need, how many hours of work are required, and what the cost of those hours is.
In one of the latest projects – LTApp, we have built the software for easily evaluating and underwriting deals. This mobile-based platform features eCALC – a free financial engineering software tool – designed for on-the-go use or while working remotely. It allows buyers, lenders, and brokers to fully underwrite transactions.
Eastern Union Mortgage calculator – an App enabling users to log in and get instant access to all private contacts, leads, and notes so that the user can work using a mobile phone. It is a one-stop app for calculating deal/loan metrics, having a better understanding of where interest rates are, and learning more about real estate.
The App interface is comprehensive, free, and easy to navigate. It is characterized by a rich number of features:
- Calculate Cap Rates
- Determine Blended-Mortgage Payments
- Calculate First Year Cash On Cash
- Compute Internal Rate Of Return (IRR) & Equity Multipliers
- Analyze Equity Waterfall On Deals
- Show Equity Splits Between Partners
Conclusion
Long-term business success hinges on a lot of factors, but chief among them is mindful management of company finances since the reality is that the long-lasting existence of businesses is impossible without first ensuring organization and structure. There is then an obvious need for an up-to-date streamlined solution that will enable the handling of financial matters and guarantee that all financial aspects are under strict supervision and control.
Utilizing the latest technologies allows reducing records redundancies and improving budgeting. You can make the forecasting more precise and make better planning. You will manage the expenses thoroughly and precisely. Accurate audits, detailed and efficient tracking of debits, credits, as well as recordings of assets and liabilities with custom finance management apps is an investment that will definitely boost your company’s efficiency and tune all the internal processes to run smoothly.
